A view of the IntraCoastal Waterway in North Carolina. We passed many scenes like this at our snail's pace of 5 - 6 knots, or about 7 mph. The post is an Aid to Navigation (ATON) to tell boaters where the channel is. Outside of the channel might be only a foot or two of water. We saw many osprey nests in the ATONs, with large teenage ospreys cheeping plaintively for their parents to bring them food.

Chesapeake, VA. You can tell when a marina, with its laundry facility, is used to working with sailboaters instead of mere powerboaters, who wouldn't know what to do with a sail. Actually any sailor who would try to stuff even a small sail into an ordinary washing machine has maybe been at sea too long.

After a couple of days crossing the Pamlico, Albermarle, and Currituck Sounds in good weather, and only two soft groundings, we came to Pungo Ferry, VA and anchored in one of the richest blue crab areas around. Larry caught this guy and several of his buddies for hors d'eovres. After cooking, the blue changes to bright red. Very tasty indeed!

A view of the commercial fishing fleet at Oriental, NC, right behind our boat at anchor. We watched three of these big boats jockeying around in the small harbor yesterday afternoon, trying to get settled in their berths, something like an awkward dance of the behemoths.
Oriental is a tiny town with vastly overpriced real estate, that is becoming unaccountably popular. For the cruising sailor, we had trouble locating basic essentials, like a place to fill our water jugs. Nonetheless we enjoyed our stay here, and especially visiting with our friends Joe and Priscilla.

New Bern, NC is a tidy town on the Neuse and Trent Rivers, just upstream from the Pamlico Sound. We've enjoyed our time here, so much that we looked into spending a month here, but they are full at the marina and we must move on next Thursday.
We have met many friendly people in town and on the docks. People from all over the world have sailed here, and they are very interesting to talk to.
The town still has a very Swiss feel to it, with European architecture, and many buildings and houses preserved from the 1700s and 1800s.

Here's a view from our anchorage in Oriental, NC, where we spent one night. When we made landfall in Beaufort, we had no idea that big celebrations were planned for the cities of Beaufort (the tall ships were coming for the Fourth), and Oriental (a big local Fourth), and all we wanted was to rest. So we kept going, all the way inland to New Bern, which is a wonderful town on the Neuse River. It is here that we got our needed rest after the offshore adventure and started to fix the little things that need attention on the boat.

Searching for misplaced books, or repairing a water pump? Sometimes it's difficult to tell but there is always rummaging and digging into the boat to do, and it's not always pretty!

By June 25, we were at the maximum Gulf Stream, and the seas had grown to 10 feet. The winds were still about 30 knots, and we were broad reaching as close to south west as we could. We were being set to the north east by the stream, so were not making much progress. Rain squalls were pelting us, and we motor sailed for a few hours to try to get progress westward against the Stream. Now we faced another problem; we had four jerry-jugs of diesel fuel, but they were all lashed together on the wrong side of the boat (bad planning!). And, we hadn't thought through how to put the fuel into our tanks in a bad sea-way; we needed some type of siphon system while keeping the jugs in place. So we had to conserve fuel to only use what we had in our main tank. It was a wild ride. The only good thing about night fall was the fact that we couldn't see the size of the mountainous seas coming at us. The boat was handling it all very well, with good motion. Twice I watched, transfixed, as she went over to almost 45 degrees, with the whole side in the water up to the portholes, and then just came back up, shook herself off, and went on!

The motion of the boat was such that even off-watch not much sleep was to be had. We had the starboard settee wedged with pillows and cushions all around, but the breaking seas kept us awake, even as tired as we were. Larry suffered some sea-sickness during this time, which subsided when he put on another patch.

On June 26, we sailed and motor-sailed in towards Beaufort, NC, and docked at the Town Docks for two nights. Then we motored over to Oriental and dropped anchor, where we went to dinner with our friends Joe and Priscilla Brant. It was great to see friendly faces and have a relaxing dinner.

On June 29, we went up the Neuse River and docked at the SkySail Marina at New Bern, NC, for 2 weeks of rest and relaxation. We both had quite a bit of recovery to work on. Our friends Judy and Bob Reuss came over from Raleigh to visit with us, have brunch, and a drive into the North Carolina countryside. We made some new friends on the docks and in town, and are now ready to sail north towards the Chesapeake starting on Thursday.

People have asked what the seas were like during our offshore experience. Here is a sketch that gives an idea of how it felt. We were unable to contact the other storm-tossed ships pictured here as they were from the 18th century and so were not equipped with VHF or SSB radio.


By June 24, after talking to our weather router, Chris Parker, on the SSB radio, and a long email exchange with him, we made the difficult decision to turn back to the East Coast. We were both tired, and, if we went forward, were facing another 7 days of beating into the wind just to get to Bermuda. Going south to Puerto Rico, as we had at first planned, was still out of the question, as a nasty low-pressure trough had developed north of the Bahamas with even worse weather down there. We just didn't think we could take another seven or more days and nights of beating into the wind, bruised and tired. So we headed westward on a close reach, under reduced sail.

On June 22, four days after we had set out, we finally got some good wind. We set the jib and the main and beat into the wind for a day and a half. On June 23, the wind increased to about 30 knots, and we shortened sail to a triple reefed main, pulled in the big genoa jib, and raised the small staysail. Also on June 23, on Deb's night watch, the bilge pump went on. She had a search to see where water was coming in; nothing looked like a problem, so we finally figured that it was water left in our bilge after our plumbing problems prior to leaving.

Beating into the wind as the seas built became increasingly difficult. We were still going fairly slowly, with speed made good, as we were going south and south-east against the Gulf Stream. Seas were about 5 feet at that point and we were getting tired and beat up. The staysail's standing stay gave way in the afternoon, and first Deb, and then Larry crawled forward to reattach it. We were successful, but it is a "quick-release" clevis pin and could go again given the right conditions. Our forward excursions took a lot out of us both, and Debby acquired a very colorful set of bruises on both legs.

We had light winds and several days of no wind at all. There was still an ocean swell, and we still had to stand watch all night for shipping and other traffic. We motored for about 2 hours a day to the south-east, but were getting pulled north east by the Gulf Stream at an alarming rate. By June 22, we had been pulled by the Stream up to 33 degrees, 33 minutes north, and 75 degrees, 38 minutes west.

On June 18, 2006, we left the Ashley Marina in Charleston, SC at noon, headed for Puerto Rico. We motored out of the harbor, and three hours later were in open water. We spent our first night out headed east at a very slow pace in very light wind.