December 03 to January 04

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One bad thing about cruising is, having to say goodbye over and over again. We left our slip in New Bern on the 15th of December, headed over to the fuel dock, fueled up, called the bridge tender for an opening and headed out into the Neuse River. We were the only boat on the river and enjoyed a great sailing day all the way to our first anchorage Cedar Creek in Adams Creek (24 miles).
Next day, the alarm was set for 6 AM, which gave us plenty of time to wake up before the sun came up. There wasn’t a ripple on the water and the sunrise was quite spectacular. The thing that wasn’t so spectacular was the frost on deck; everything was covered with a layer of ice. The temp was 29 degrees. We dressed up as I remember I used to for skiing, lots of layers of cloths. At least the wind wasn’t blowing, so it wasn’t as cold as it could have been.
It only took us two hours to get through the Adams Creek with occasional fog that was about 4 foot high. There were several places in the Beaufort area, where we had barely 2 feet under the keel, which always is a bit nerve wracking. We followed the markers of the ICW and again no one else was out there, or almost no one else, we really enjoyed that. After crossing the Atlantic Beach Bridge it was all new territory for us. About half way from Morehead City to Emerald Isle the engine suddenly stopped. We attempted to start it several times, but without any luck, dropped the anchor and Sid went to work. First he checked the check valve and fuel filter for a clog, but that wasn’t the problem. Sid is just amazing, he can fix just about anything. One hour later the engine had a new fuel pump, which by the way Sid bought some 13 years ago when we had a fuel problem then, which turned out to be silicon worms in the fuel line. Never really needed that fuel pump, but sure glad we had it on hand. The more amazing thing was that Sid actually found it after 13 years hidden in the bilge. Even though we lost one hour, we still tried to get to our planned anchorage. We had some incredible currents which helped us immensely and at times we did 8.3 knots with a 1.5 knot current with us. Then other times we had one knot against us, but we never went under 5.5 knots. The only thing that slowed us down was the swing bridge in Onslow, they now can only open every ½ hour, regulated by the Coasties, and like the name says it was the slowest opening bridge we have ever seen. We made it just a little after sunset to the Mile Hammock anchorage (51 miles), which is a Military staging area for amphibious training. In the guide they mentioned to expect training to happen at any hour day or night. They didn’t mention about the frequent flyovers of large helicopters. Frequent was for about 4 hours every three minutes and sounded like they were going to land on deck, but that’s OK they are only training to be the best.
The alarm again was set for 6 AM; but a horrendous wind and rainstorm woke us up 5 minutes before the alarm clock did. We turned around in bed and snoozed a bit more, thinking that we would have to spend the whole day here. A couple of hours later, the rain stopped and so did the wind, we pulled anchor and headed further south. It was a gloomy day with occasional rain, but not too bad and at least it wasn’t cold. Surf City Bridge only opens on the hour, with that we arrived 40 minute too early and had to idle around. While we’re milling around in the channel, waiting for the bridge to open, we had a slight current southbound and we had 10 to 15 knots of wind from the west. We decided we would eat lunch and of course as Sid started to eat a gust of wind about 45 or 50 knots came blasting across the channel, grabbed the bow of the boat, spun us around and by the time we recovered we were hard aground across the channel in 4 feet of water. The wind hit us so hard it healed us over about 20 degrees. We were in the middle of the channel and had no room to maneuver. A catamaran (Dream On) came by and tried to pull us off with no success. They had to make the bridge opening because it only opens on the hour as well. There was a power boat (Sea Lion from West Palm Beach) on the south side of the bridge that watched what happened and called us on the radio and offered to help us. He also was very mad at the two big power boats on our side, never offered to help but just stood there and watched. When Sea Lion made it through the bridge they pulled us off into deeper water again. Then of course we had to wait for the next opening which was another hour later, what a bummer. This time we pulled up in front of the bridge and dropped the anchor and waited. All day long we had a current from 1 to 1.5 knots against us, which didn’t help either. We’ve lost already two hours and were a bit worried about making it to our destination before dark in this wind. Luckily the current turned around and for the last two hours we had 1 knot with us. We made it on time for the next bridge which opens on the ½ hour. The last bridge before Wrightsville also opens only on the hour and because of the current now with us we made it there on time as well. In the meantime the wind picked up and was blowing 20 knots with gusts up to 29, anchoring was a bit tricky but we anchored just before dark (37 miles). Who says cruising is boring!
Due to another cold front headed for us we decided to stay in Wrightsville until it blew over. The predicted 25 knots of wind the following day, never made it, or at least not during the day, so we enjoyed a nice day walking along the beautiful Wrightsville Beach and through town. This town has gone to the ducks. It was too funny watching about 20 ducks, walking through town at the intersection and across the crosswalk, stopping cars in all directions, even the cop stopped to watch. Later we talked to the cop and he said that they are kind of like the town mascots; nobody bothers them, except the dogs. Later on that afternoon, the wind picked up and gusted up to 25 knots all night long and well into the next day.
Three very cold days later (in the 20’s at night and not over 40 during the day and it snowed just 40 miles north from here) we could finally pull the anchor and continue with our journey south. About two hours on the ICW again, right in front of Mason Boro Boat Yard (Mile Marker 288) a loud thump got our attention, we hit something. Looked behind the boat and saw the remnants of a crab trap float, this trap was completely submerged and in the middle of the ICW, we saw quite a few more, but they were more off to the sides. The prop started vibrating, but since it didn’t slow the boat down we continued. There were no leaks, so Sid guessed that we bent a blade on the prop. 30 some miles later, before sundown, there was no close anchorage, so we decided to check into a marina for the night. The marina in Holden Beach (41 miles) was a bit on the shallow side, the only slip they could put us in was the fuel dock, which was a good thing, because Sid’s fear of not having a reverse happened, we had no reverse. This put even a worse fear into Sid’s mind “Transmission”. The problems with that and Christmas approaching, everything was closed until the 2nd of January. The other problem the water was 48 degrees, no diver not even ourselves would be nuts enough to get into this murky cold water. We were stuck in a pretty empty place, the bar closed at five and it was a two mile hike to a convenient store. Sid didn’t give up yet and the following morning turned the engine on, put it in gear, then out of gear and in again and it seemed to work. The vibration was gone too, but he still thought it was a bent blade, as the blade doesn’t seem to function properly. Once we put it in gear, we left it in gear and had no problems all the way to Barefoot Landing in Myrtle Beach (25 miles), other then an up to 3 knots current against us. Although we had another problem, the fuel filter seemed to clog every 10 hours and Sid had changed the filters already a couple of times.
Barefoot Landing has a long dock for boaters to use, for free, no electricity or water available but that was fine with us. The dock belongs to a huge outlet mall, with a shuttle running to other malls. While Sid fiddled with the fuel filters, I took the shuttle to Wal-Mart to buy some food for a good Christmas feast. We were in dire need for a treat that day, so we went to the Crab House for Happy Hour and treated ourselves to a Taxi ride to the cinema and watched “Lord of the Rings III”.
All next day Sid worked on the fuel problem, he even emptied the fuel tank. The diesel had the right color and he couldn’t find any growth in the tank, just some little stuff on the bottom. He checked all the fuel lines and found an obstruction in the line just before it goes into the fuel filter. Sid was so relieved to have found that problem, because he was sure we had to haul out, which would have not been happening until the second of January, since everything here was closed for the Holidays as well. After checking the gears, which worked fine we decided to leave after Christmas. We had met Bennie and Ed on Glory, also stuck here with some engine problems and decided to spend Christmas with them and had them over for a wonderful Christmas meal, except for the chicken that turned in to rubber, but had a wonderful time anyway.
Early (5AM) on the 26th Sid got up and turned the heater on (he did that every morning!), so when the alarm goes off at six the boat would be nice and toasty, what a guy. The weather had been very cold, 29 in the morning. This morning it was even 26 and just a few minutes before we headed out, everything started to frost. It was bitter cold, but we left anyway. The first stretch of about 10 miles was literarily going down the ditch. It was fairly narrow in a deep ditch with steep mud walls, towered by barren trees with some occasional bushes down to the bank of the river. The water had the same muddy color as the wall did and was kind of dreary looking. It was even more exciting to see a red fox come down to the water the only colorful thing in the ditch. Unfortunately they are so shy, as soon as he saw us he split back into the bushes. The biggest hurdle was Snows Cut, which is only one mile long, but has an ugly current and a spot with fairly shallow water, shallow enough to get that adrenaline going again. Then the channel stayed pretty wide with a 20 to 30 foot depth, which was an incredible treat. In Bucks Port we stopped for fuel and bought some wonderful Sausage they’re famous for. Getting onto the fuel dock was tricky, we came in with a 1.5 knot current with us, but by the dock the current came from the opposite direction and Sid couldn’t steer the boat into it, so we had to tie up with the current going with us. Unfortunately the fuel dock lady had no clue what she was doing and kept pulling the bow in, so that the stern pulled around with the current. We attempted that several time, but she just kept pulling in on the bow until we hit the dock so hard, bending the bow pulpit. Can we ever have a day of traveling without any problems?!!! The rest was uneventful, luckily and we pulled into George Town (50 miles) and anchored for the night. We weren’t even on the hook for 5 minutes when a pelican landed on the dinghy. You should have seen Tika; she climbed into the dinghy, at first stocking the three times larger bird and finally charging at it, too funny.
Again we had a bitter cold night with frost in the morning. Leaving George Town was a very slow procedure, it was low tide and at some places the depth was just a few inches deeper then our keel. Back in the ICW the depths maintained 20 to 30 feet for about 15 miles. Then it turned into a narrow cut with 15 foot depths. Now we were following Swamps, Marshes and Estuaries, very beautiful sceneries. I started to wonder if anybody actually lived in South Carolina, then for hours we didn’t see one single home. As we finally got closer towards Charleston it got more populated and the ICW a heck of a lot narrower and with the low tide we had just a few feet between the boat and each sides muddy flats, drained by the tide. At times we had only 2 feet or less to spare under the keel. The anchorage that was mentioned in the guide got shallow so fast we had to head on for a few extra miles. Now the sun was very low on the horizon and reflecting in the water, blinding us and of course we were heading right into it. It was almost impossible for us to see the markers, then so blinded from looking into the glare that we couldn’t see the numbers on the depth finder anymore. The channel was still very narrow with just a few feet to play back and fourth before it rapidly got shallow. A few miles further down the ditch we found a creek, Inlet Creek (59 Miles), a bit narrow too, but deep enough for us to anchor for the night. Both sides of the riverbed were covered with piles of oysters exposed by the low tide. You definitely don’t want to run aground in a place like this.
This anchorage was a treat, very quiet and very dark, no street lights shining through the hatches. We woke up well rested to another very cold morning. I tell you how cold this trip has been, our Igloo ice chest holds ice up to 5 days, we left New Bern on the 15th and the ice lasted until the 28th, that’s how cold it was. We pulled up the anchor and headed the few miles towards the huge harbor entrance to Charleston. To port we saw the huge opening to the Atlantic, to starboard the channel leading through Charleston; we looked at each other, turned the weather channel on and listened. It was either another 350 stressful and agonizing miles, 6 days or so on the ICW or a 150 mile straight shot to Jacksonville. It didn’t take us long to make that decision and spun the wheel around as fast as we could and headed out to sea. 24 hours later we entered the channel into Jacksonville with smiling faces. The sea was pretty choppy and unsettled, but that didn’t bother us a bit, we were that glad to be out of the stressful ICW.
While I was down below cooking lunch, I smelled something burning, stuck my nose into the engine compartment and alarmed Sid right away. Sid smelled it too and immediately took the engine cover off and investigated it. He couldn’t find anything and we didn’t seem to have any problems, so we left it at that. About 50 miles before Jacksonville the engine started choking again and we had to pull the throttle back, which of course slowed us down. Something was clogging the fuel line again. Approaching Jacksonville we realized that we left the chart book from Miami to Jacksonville at Ron and Leslie’s house along with all the Mediterranean charts. But with computer and CD charts it was no problems to get safely into the St. John’s River. We also still had an incoming tide which pushed us between one and two knots faster up the river. Down Town Jacksonville was about 15 miles up the river and the Ortega Marina another 5 miles from there. About half way a sailboat heading towards us started screaming our names. We couldn’t believe our eyes, it was MacNab. I think I told you about this family before, we met them camping in Baja de los Muertos, Mexico. At that time they lived in a pop-up camper in Durango in the woods collecting wood to make furniture during the summer, selling them and with the money they spent the winters in Muertos camping. They had a one year old son when we met. As Alan found out that we were going cruising he squeezed everything about boating out of Sid and four years later as we headed up the Sea of Cortez, cruising now, we ran into them again. They now had two kids Alan and little Anna and had been cruising for two years already. We lost contact, but now and then we would hear about them through other cruisers, vise versa. It sure was a great surprise running into them in the St. Johns River. They now have three kids, two boys and a girl on a Bristol 28. This family is just amazing, I think somebody should write a story about them, they are so simple and live on the bare minimum. We exchanged email addresses and will stay in contact, knowing that we’ll catch up again in some other place. Through John we found out that the one bridge by the Jacksonville Stadium needed a one hour notice to open and that the park at the Stadium had free docks to tie up. Since it was getting late and we were exhausted from the long trip, we decided to spend the night there. Trying to get into a slip we chose, the water got shallow rather quickly and it was a tight fit too. It took Sid some maneuvering to get us back out into deeper water when the throttle broke, but we made it safe onto another dock. Later on the evening a fire rescue guy came down to talk to us and told us that on New Years Eve they have an incredible fire work at the next bridges, so we decided to stay the extra two days for that, which gave Sid plenty of time to fix the throttle and to unclog the fuel line.
The next day Sid went up to the park office, which at the same time was a police and fire station, to let them know that we were going to stay for a couple more days. They had no problem with that and were just absolutely super nice to us. One of the policemen, Ray, even gave me a ride in the police car to the grocery store and picked me up an hour later. We’re not even one day in town and made some new friends already.
On the 31st when Sid cleaned the fuel line again, fixed the throttle and started to run the engine to top the batteries off, we smelled that burning smell again. Just before we left New Bern, Sid had the alternator rebuilt, that didn’t last long! Luckily we had a spare too and not even 10 minutes later the new one was installed. Sid’s got it down to a real 10 minute job now. Now we really wondered if we would make it without any more problems through the next 5 miles to the Ortega Marina.
The fireworks was a dueling barge display and just absolutely awesome. The barges were placed on each side of the bridge and in rhythm shot the fireworks into the sky. We had the best seat in the house too, just a few hundred yards away from the display. New Years day morning a stranger (friend of Ray) came to the boat and handed us VIP passes to the gator ball game brunch. The brunch was fun and we even found a ticket for Sid to watch the game, it was a Club Seat for 43 bucks. He had a great time. Earlier that day all the boats got boarded by police and Coast Guard; due to a security alert nation wide. We were spared. Ray just gave us the red tape to tie onto the boat, which was really nice.
On the 2nd of January we headed further up the St. Johns River towards the Ortega River. As we got closer to the river, the chart told us that the depth will be 7 feet. When our depth finder shows 4.2, we should get stuck, heading into the Ortega River for most of the time it showed 3.8, we should have been stuck big time, but we scooted through the water with no problem. The silt must have been really deep. Anyway, we made it OK into the Ortega Yacht Club Marina and will be here until Sid’s back is fixed. This sure has been the trip from hell and we lost a lot of nerves, not to mention all the adrenalin flowing. But we still love doing what we’re doing, always make the best out of the worst, still having fun and most of all are still talking to each other. Life is good!


This was written on a wall for our future cruising friends:

“"IT IS LATER THAN YOU THINK.
THE CLOCK OF LIFE IS WOUND BUT ONCE
AND NO MAN HAS THE POWER
TO TELL WHEN THE HANDS WILL STOP,
AT LATE OR EARLY HOUR.
NOW IS ALL THE TIME YOU OWN,
THE PAST A GOLDEN LINK.
GO CRUISING NOW MY BROTHER,
IT IS LATER THAN YOU THINK."

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