I’ve been trying to do the write up on our passage from Florida to Virginia. It was on the fourth day of going over my passage notes in my logbook that I realized, I really don’t like doing detailed technical write ups. I don’t like reading them either. I also had the epiphany that I absolutely don’t have to. This will be an upcoming theme, the realization that we can choose whatever we like and if its an unconventional choice, that is ok. But I digress…
We motored up the ICW from Cocoa, to Titusville. As we were waiting for weather to clear, we dinghied in and took Trusty the little red wagon on an excursion for diesel and provisions. As we made our way back to Ceol Mor, I noticed 3 crows sitting on our bow pulpit. This instantly activated my superstitious tendencies and I told Mark that was a bad sign. He being the rational, logical person who has no superstitious leanings what so ever dismissed my heebie jeebies. “What exactly does 3 crows portend?” he asked. “I don’t know but it gives me the willies”.
We stowed the dinghy and provisions, had dinner, checked the weather again and went to sleep ready to leave in the morning.
So the passage to Virginia? It involved some sunny days, some rolly days, a 36 hour visit from a wee swallow sheltering from the wind ( I named him Fred Weasley) and some unexpected surprises. Fred Weasley hanging out with us was counterbalance to the creepy crows. Swallows are always good luck. We’d be fine.
We set off in decent winds hovering around 20 knots and began to sail North. As we hit the Gulf Stream, the assistive had us sitting comfortably between 9-11 knots. Ceol Mor is a big girl, she’s loaded with way too much stuff and sits shockingly low on her waterline and yet she can still just keep on trucking. The sailing was so good and the weather forecast looking forward was amenable so we decided to skip our early stop of Charleston and make for Norfolk.
And then, the next day we got surprise number one.
A surprise building low that was not on any of our forecasts and an unpredicted shift of the wind from the North. The one thing you never want when you are sailing the Gulf Stream is wind with any kind of northerly component. You get wind against tide and it creates steep, walls of water which will beat you up. Not fun. Do not recommend. We were trying to get up and around Cape Hatteras before the winds shifted from the North as we had passed our option C bail out of Beaufort long ago, before the weather changed.. We were now kind of stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
We had just managed to get around the tip of Hatteras in 30+ knot winds and awful, awful short, steep confused waves in the dark of night. Why is it always at night?!? The winds began to increase. We were desperately trying to furl our Genoa in more but there was just too much wind to do it without the assistance of a winch and not being able to head directly into the wind without getting clobbered by the waves. Not having a winch by the furling clutch, we ran the line to our jib winch. While Mark was trying to manhandle the furler, the tension on the foot was too great and the stitching gave up , ripping the foot and we lost the head sail. It was far too boisterous to change it out for Frankensail, so we could no longer continue our course for Norfolk but would have to divert South.
We managed to get the torn sail furled and after trying to motor, realized our best option was to lay ahull once we were in a relatively safe position. We did so to catch a break for a few hours and once we had a bit of light, we ducked into a sheltered cove dropped the anchor and slept as Ceol Mor rocked and rolled at anchor.
We studied our charts and decided we would try to put in at Okracoke. We knew there had been serious shoaling as that is always the case with inlets but even more so in this region. Its the shoaling here on the Carolina coast that has caused the demise of so many boats, earning this area the nickname “The Graveyard of the Atlantic”. Even Blackbeard’s ship the Queen Anne’s Revenge met her demise due to the shoaling of Okracoke. Yup, what the British admiralty fleet could not stop the shoals of Okracoke did.
Despite this, Okracoke was our best option given that Ceol Mor was unable to sail around the Cape without a functional head sail. We flipped on our forward looking sonar and hoped for the best. As we entered Okracoke, the sonar unit failed. Less than a year old and it was caput. Of course. We now only had charts that are definitely not accurate and a couple of channel markers that had been moved by the tides and bore no relation to a channel of any kind. We ran aground in the supposed channel that the charts indicated had 21 feet of water. Not so. More like 4 feet. We managed to extricate the boat and headed back to anchor in the cove and wait for daylight to begin the chug down the coast to our next option- Beautfort, North Carolina
As we chugged out into the Atlantic, we noticed water coming into the engine compartment. Water coming in the boat is always top priority. It seems that our prop shaft seal decided now would be the perfect time to develop a crack and a troublesome, worrisome leak. We were now without our forward looking sonar, head sail and Bonus! now had water coming in. Good times.
Mark managed to slow the leak of the prop shaft seal thanks to an application of my washable, resuable Swedish dishcloths and zip ties. We still had a significant drip with the engine on, but it was slowed enough to allow us to motor through the day and night and arrive at the Beaufort inlet in moderate fog at dawn.
We had identified two possible anchorages. The first in Taylor Creek had a few areas that would accomodate our 6 foot draft. We scouted it out and there was no room. There were so many boats here! It seems everybody had decided it was time to visit Beaufort. Apparently, the Big Rock fishing tournament was in town for a month and there were no berths at any marinas for miles so the anchorage was filled beyond capacity.( This will be an important factor in the next installment so keep this in mind!) There was literally no room for us unless we found someone willing to allow us to raft up so we headed for our second choice anchorage, Town Creek. There were only a couple of boats at anchor here and we found a spot and dropped the hook to begin the process of repairing Ceol Mor to head to Virginia.
What transpired over the next 2 weeks would be some of the absolute loveliest experiences I’ve had in a coastal/boating town and one experience that was so bad, it nearly changed my opinion on Beaufort from one of my favorite little Southern cities to one I couldn’t leave fast enough. But that’s a story for next time…