Saturday, October 4, 2014

2014/10/04 Morehead City to Wrightsville Beach


October 4, 2014: Wrightsville Beach – The Voyage Begins

10/02/2014 Morehead City Yacht Basin to Wrightsville Beach, NC         74 nm


Total Miles For Voyage: 74 nm

O're the glad waters
of the dark blue sea,
our thoughts as boundless,
and our souls as free.

Lord Byron

Spritsail Skiff
 Sometimes You Da Entertainment

“Sometimes you da audience and sometimes you da entertainment,” or so the saying goes. It was our time to be on “stage”... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

It was an absolute “bluebird” day – a good day for beginnings and heading South. Not a cloud in the sky with light NW winds and 1 to 2 foot waves - a prefect day for the run off shore from Morehead City to Wrightsville Beach, NC. Galen Newton and friends helped us slip our docklines and we were away by 7:30. We even had the current with us and cleared the inlet by 8:30.

The only fly in our ointment was the watermaker. I had rebuilt it this summer and needed sea water to test it but there was a “but.” In a casual conversation with the manufacture of the membranes he said, “Oh they only have a shelf life of 6 months before they should be installed.” We had had ours stored in the bilge for 2 years. The kind man speculated they would probably not work. If not we had just pounded $900 and 2 days work down a rat hole.

Once off shore and in clean water I cranked the generator, brought up the watermaker and held my breath. After an hours run time we were making water with only 184 ppm salt, better than that straight out of the tap at the Yacht Basin. Life is beautiful...and we were lucky! More to the point we were $900 richer and I don't have to rebuild the damn thing again.

Rickshaw
The Fates really were with us on this day. We caught a nice Spanish for supper. Had dolphin dancing our bow. Scared hell out of a lot of flying fish. Our new friends on Rickshaw (another Defever-44), and Kenny on Tortuga, a friend that runs a dive charter out of Morehead, caught us just before Wrightsville Beach Inlet. We anchored just before the bridge in Banks Channel. Dropped the dink in the water and had sundowners with Jim and Belinda Wolfe on Rickshaw – a perfect end to a perfect day...or so we thought.
Tortuga
 The weather was supposed to continue to be trouble free until late Friday night when a significant front was supposed to pass thru Wrightsville. At 2:00 AM in the morning (Friday morning not Saturday morning) a squall hit with probably 40 k gusts. It was about then that the horns started blaring announcing someone was dragging. Why! Why I ask! Is it always 2 in the morning when shit happens! Rain was blowing sideways, visibility sucked, and as it turned out the Turtle and Rickshaw were the someone and consequently ordained as the entertainment for the evening. I'm still not convinced we were going walkabout but we were closer to the boat behind us and elected to move.

Let me tell you getting up an anchor in a driving rainstorm with a 52 thousand pound boat to hoss around is no small task. An hour later drenched to the skin after wandering around a bit we re-anchored a little further South in Banks Channel off the Wrightsville Beach Yacht Club. Like I said, if you voyage sometimes you are gonna be the entertainment and not the entertained.

Wrightsville Beach Morning
 There is a little “Ying and Yang” in everything however. We may have lost a bit of sleep and got soaked to the skin but we did get our clothes washed for free even if they were on us at the time.
Morning Peace
 Faiwinds and Rum Drinks,

Vic C.

PS – The Saturday night front was a non-event...go figure.










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