Monday, December 3, 2018

November 22-23, 2018 Cape Fear to Myrtle Beach Yacht Club

Happy Thanksgiving
We decided to take the ICW to Myrtle Beach Yacht Club and get a slip for the night to celebrate Thanksgiving.  We set the alarm for 6:00 to get there early afternoon.  When the alarm went off, we could hear the wind blowing pretty hard and neither one of us wanted to get out of bed.  Eventually, we got up and were raising the anchor by 7:15 am.  We had both strong wind, 20k, and strong current at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

When we raise the anchor, Dave directs me, with hand signals, to move the boat in the direction of the chain.  You actually take the boat to the anchor vs pulling the anchor up by pulling the boat to it.  Today, I had to power up the engine to get the boat to turn.  I would be fighting wither the wind or the current.  We spent 24 hours at anchor here, so the anchor chain moved when the boat moved with the tide change.  Since we’re on a river, we changed directions every 6 hours.  The routine is to move the boat in the direction of the anchor, put it in neutral while Dave brings in more chain, then move again in the direction Dave tells me.  All of this is with hand signals and what sounds like yelling, but you’re just trying to project your voice over the wind and engine noise. 

I could tell Dave was struggling with something.  Later, I had him explain the situation to me, so I could put it in the blog.  I told him he may have to write this part, because I won’t remember the details.  So he said to just say “he had trouble with the anchor”.  That wouldn’t do, so here goes.  We had about 150 ft of chain out.   When there was about 25 feet left, I could tell something was stressing Dave.  There is a bow roller that the chain runs across as it goes in and out of the boat.  The bolt that holds the roller had loosened and was coming out.  He was trying to catch it before it came all the way out and splashed overboard with one hand.  He had to lift the chain off of the roller to relieve the pressure with the other hand.  Once the bolt was out, he had to catch the roller before it went overboard.  So he had to throw the bolt onto the deck and hope it stayed on the deck and not go overboard or in the anchor locker.  And he’s doing this hanging out over the bow pulpit.  Once he got ahold of the roller, the bushing inside was jammed so he had a hard time removing it.  All the while, he can’t give me hand signals, because his hands are busy with the chain and the roller.  At this point, the anchor was no longer holding us in place, so we were dragging with the wind and/or current.  That didn’t cross my mind.  I was just waiting for his instructions as usual, which he was finally able to signal that we were free to move.  It wasn’t until he came back to the cockpit holding the roller and bolt in his hand that I figured out his frustration. 
bow roller
bow pulpit with Mantus anchor
Ever since we replaced our windlass last June, Dave hasn’t likes the angle of the chain to the gypsy that’s part of the windlass.  And our bow roller is new and larger.  It’s at a different angle and doesn’t grab the chain we have as well as our old gypsy.  This causes a lot of vibration, hence the roller bolt coming loose.  He’s just glad it happened while he was there to see it, not during the night.  He is going to look at raising the windlass further off the deck to get a better angle for the chain to cross the gypsy and grab the chain better.  So, another project goes on the list. 

Once we were on the ICW, intracoastal waterway, the water was calm.  It was a beautiful day.  There were a few unusual things along the way.  I didn’t get a photo, but we saw a guy using a leaf blower to fan his campfire in his yard. 
ducks in a row on docks in a row
dry storage of boats
Strange to see the boats stacked for winter storage.

We made it to Myrtle Beach Yacht Club by 1:00.  We planned to do laundry, get fuel, cook Thanksgiving dinner and leave in the morning.  The dock master had to help another boat into a slip before he could meet us at the office to check in.  While we were waiting, we checked out the restaurant on site.  Since it was a holiday, we decided to stay two nights, do our chores tomorrow and just take the rest of the day off.

Dave has never been a big turkey fan, so we had chicken wings and a flounder sandwich and pumpkin pie. 

Friday
Today I did laundry at the marina.  They also had a copier/printer, so I made copies of our new passports.  Back at the boat, I cooked our Thanksgiving chicken dinner.
Dave washed the boat using the marina’s water.  We had a lot of salt water, now dried salt, on our boat from the splashing waves on our rough night at sea.  He fixed the bow roller and remounted our spare spade anchor.  It had come loose on the deck when we had the rough seas.  He took the fuel cans to the fuel dock in a dock cart to refill them.  They have about an 8 foot tide here, so the ramps were pretty steep. 


Spade anchor remounted
dry salt on the companionway from sea waves splashing into the boat
There is some weight in those full fuel jugs
This was a nice marina with good rates.  We had heard good things about it from other boaters.

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