Day 64

I started out typing today’s post by saying another early morning but by now I don’t think we have early mornings, before dawn seems pretty standard. Pretty much every travel day starts with entering the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway)right as the sun pokes over the horizon, traveling along the channel and navigating the bouys, lunch around 10, an afternoon snack(could be called a second lunch) about 1 or 2 and settling in for the night around 4 or 5.
Today we made ok time and decided to bypass Beaufort and Morehead City and anchor at Swansboro NC.
Not long after anchoring we had to try and do a man overboard procedure because our cover for the winlass went flying into the water and the current was taking it down stream fast haha. We scrambled to get the motor on the dingy and get the dingy launched but Denis with his dingy lift was a lot faster and he retrieved it for us. Since we had the motor all set up on the dingy we decided to go to each boat and say hi. I didn’t realize since it was so choppy that id get soaked!
Not very long after we made our rounds Dick took the ladies (Diane, Karen and Ruth) to town and we pulled up the motor and prepared our dingy to be towed tomorrow….and then Denis somehow let his dingy loose and it headed down the river haha. So we scrambled to get the motor back on the dingy to try and save Denis’s dingy. Luckily Dick had his dingy in the water and went to try and retrieve the dingy. So we stood by and waited incase they needed help. Well tony called us on the VHF and said “Nice Butt we have a situation, Dick is having trouble peeling dingy off of the bridge!”…and some guy came over the radio sounding disgusted and said “ok guys this is a hailing and distress channel only cut it out!” Grama looked at it for a min and couldn’t figure out why he was so upset because it was a legitimate situation…and then we all just about peed ourselves laughing haha!
There wasn’t room for many boats where we anchored but I wouldn’t recommend anchoring there as a first choice. The holding was good but with the 24knots of apparent wind and an opposing current, the boats just danced! One minute Grace C was swinging toward us and Southern Cross was facing the opposite way and the next they’re hurling past each other and trading positions. Each time you look and go “omg they’re going to hit!” but they never did. Later we were talking to Denis and he said “I never thought I’d be happy to hit bottom but when I did it was like =] ok going to sleep now” because when anchored someone always has to go and check the bearings frequently to make sure we don’t drag. Especially in the conditions we were experiencing.

Niki