Unlooping - Days 6 - 10

Belhaven Hurricane flood levels

It was a very quiet morning after the wild late afternoon storms of the previous day.  The temperatures in the high 90's were replaces with a cool 70 degrees.  Gray clouds overhead hinted of what the night had been, but now it calm and only a light breeze remained.  Woody, Don and I were discussing our planned destinations and trying to determine who would go first.  It would be easy for me to just let the wind blow the boat off the dock and then the other guys would have lots of room to get out.  So that's what we did, I slide off the dock, backed out of the channel and went down to River Forest Marina for fuel.

The bay behind Beaufort

The trip for this day back tracked one of the worst legs that we had on the way up.  I was a bit concerned that it could be rough again.  Winds were out of the north today which gave us following seas and a really smooth ride.  We went down the Pungo River to the Pamlico River across Goose Creek to Bay River that lead into the Pamlico Sound and Nuese River.  All of the way it wasn't glass, but it was not a bit rough.  The ICW makes a turn into Adams Creek off the Nuese and goes over to Beaufort, NC - our destination for the day.  When we got to the small bay on the north side of Beaufort, the first requirement was to fuel up for the next days trip.  I pulled into Town Creek Marina to do that.  Our slip reservation was at another marina across from the fuel dock, but something was wrong and they were not answering the phone or radio.  The dock hand helping us fuel said we could probably stay right where we were for the night and so we did.  This was much better than moving again and the face dock gives us an easy out in the morning.  Not to mention, they have a really good restaurant, called City Kitchen, right here!

So we departed Belhaven a little before 8 AM to begin the run to Southport.  It was a nice morning and things seemed to be good as we left the marina.  That didn't last long!  I was having issues with Navonics and my course wasn't coming up correctly.  Rebooting and restarting wasn't working and the wind started blowing out of the west at about 15 to 20 mph.  Distractions took over and before we were 10 miles from the start point, I had found an area of shoaling.  My port side prop took the brunt of the encounter and we were stuck on the shoal.  BoatUS came quickly and did a great job getting us free, but I had bad vibration when running up the engines so they towed us back to Town Creek where we had started.  It was shortly after 2 PM when the travelift pulled the boat out.  They pulled both props and sent them to the shop to be reconditioned.  The mechanics checked the shafts and found a very slight bend in the port side, which we decided was not bad enough to address immediately.

BoatUS is a great service, but I truly hate this view!!

Two of the blades are twisted way out of tolerance.

Rob and I had to go get a hotel room while the boat was out of the water.  There aren't many choices to start with in Beaufort and all but one was full.  Our home for the next two nights was the Beaufort Hotel located, as they said, at the end of Front Street.  Now Front Street is the road right in town where everything is located.  The end of Front Street is 3 miles from downtown and there's nothing there but the hotel.  At least it had a restaurant!  We wasted the day roaming in town, had lunch, visited a museum and an 1880's pub.

On Saturday morning, I got the call to say the props were back on and the boat is ready to launch.  We got an Uber and got back to Town Creek before 10 AM.  There was no one at the marina who could drive the boat so when they set it back in the water and did the final checks, I backed it out of the well and we were off again to Southport.  This time the trip went much better.  We ran the 108 miles in about 7 ½ hours.  Boat traffic was ridiculous because it was a weekend and that slowed us down, but we got lucky with bridges and hit the openings.  At about 5:55, I pulled up to the dock at Southport.  They put us on the fuel dock so the first thing done was to get filled up for tomorrow's trip to Georgetown.  After that was a wash down to get the salt off the boat and dinner at the Frying Pan.

Southport sunset

Day 10 was Sunday and the conditions on the ocean were perfect for an outside run.  We left the marina at 7:30 AM and headed out of the Cape Fear River Channel into Long Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.  There were no outside runs on the east coast during our trip north so today is my first trip into the ocean.  This run was about 12 miles offshore past Myrtle Beach to the Georgetown Inlet.  The forecast was right on and the ride was nice.  It took about 4½ hours to cross from inlet to inlet.  The Waccamaw River up to Georgetown was smooth enough for water skiing.  We pulled into Harborwalk Marina about 1:45 PM, fueled up, pumped out and chilled out for a while until dinner time.  Tomorrow morning we leave for Hilton Head.

Nothing in sight of miles!

How do you grow a sign in a tree?

Good night Georgetown.

Tracks and photos
Day 1 - https://www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/1601553/

Day 4 - https://www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/1606654/

Day 6 - https://www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/1606819/

Day 7 - https://www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/1610061/

Day 9 - https://www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/1610038/

Day 10 - https://www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/1611648/