Myrtle Beach Yacht Club

We get up early and are out by 7:15. We are trying to get through “Lockwoods Foley”, one of the notorious inlets adjacent to the ICW, close to high tide. This inlet constantly fills in the ICW after being dredged. The deepest path, takes boats very close to shore and the deepest route constantly changes, so the charts are never right since the navigation aid buoys are constantly being moved to match the changing bottom. 

 

Lookwoods Foley, the straight channel keeps filling

We get into the Myrtle Beach Yacht Club by 12:15 and are a couple boats down the dock from “Obsession”.

I have been putting off restitching zippers on our Bimini that connect the clear vinyl connector to the Dodger. I actually hand stitched the zippers that were coming apart to avoid pulling out the sewing machine and taking off the Bimini. Today they need more stitching so I set up the sewing machine and take off the Bimini and do it right. Just as I got everything back in place it starts raining.

That evening we go to the “Officers Club”, the restaurant on site and run into Janice and David with their friend Carol.

St. James Plantation, Day 2

We decide to stay another day so I can try to figure out why the autopilot is not working again while Linda does some laundry. I reset the fast-on connectors to the autopilot control module. After making a few more tests the fluxgate compass to the Autopilot seems to be working correctly. Will see tomorrow. I reset connectors to the Tachometer to see if that will help also.

Happy sailors

After lunch we go for a long walk through parts of St. James Plantation. There are piles of branches and logs in selected locations from the recent hurricane clean up. They had a number of sink holes from the water run off from slow moving Florence.

Florence clean up debris

St James Plantation

The wind dies down overnight and we wake up to a cloudy day, but comfortable temperatures. As we pull up the anchor another sailboat,”Jacquelin” (Susan and David), first timers on the ICW, tell us they are heading to St. James Plantation also, and follows our track out of Wrightsville Beach. Again the Autopilot is not working. Two hours later we pass through Snows Cut on to the Cape Fear River. Our timing is good today, we hit the upper Cape Fear River at near maximum ebb tide and get to ride the current all the way down for 13 miles or so, before we re-enter the ICW going west. 

We hit a maximum Speed Over Ground of 11.3 mph and re-enter the ICW at Southport and an hour later we pull into St. James Plantation Marina. We have stayed here before. On our first trip we pulled in here because of the cold weather forecast and had snow on the dodger in the morning. Today we have nice warm temperatures in the high 70’s. 

 

"Red Head" at Southport owned by the creator of Active Captain.
Previous owner Billy Joel

Reaching St. James Plantation Marina early afternoon we find “Obsession” on the same dock and we finally get to meet Janice with her husband, David. Next to them is another Catalina 36 “Shadow”, so all us Catalina owners have a long conversation on the dock. 

St. James Plantation

Later Linda and I have dinner with Susan and David who followed us down from Wrightsville Beach. They wanted to pick our brains on the trip further south, as we did with others on our first trip south. David is ex-military, retired young as did Susan and they are now living full time on their sailboat. They plan to spend the winter on the west coast of Florida.

Wrightsville Beach

We leave by 7:15 trying to time a series of Swing and Draw Bridges that open on the hour or ½ hour making it difficult to get through at normal cruising speeds. We have wind on our stern around 23 mph, gusting to 29 making it difficult approaching a closed bridge with a number of boats in a narrow channel. I hang back to time our arrival at the 10:00 AM scheduled opening. The other boats pass us long before then. When we arrive they are doing loops, because the high winds are pushing them towards the closed bridge. Without any sails up and in neutral, the wind is pushing us along at almost 5 mph. I have to put the engine in reverse to slow us down, until the bridge opens. 


 

Damaged docks and boat

Shrimp boat

Lots of damaged docks

Normally we plan on three hours to the next bridge opening on the hour. The rest of the group takes off and with the wind boost, without sails, and full throttle they make it there in two. Most of our three hour passage was in neutral with the wind pushing us along at over 5 mph. Lost an hour, but we hardly used any fuel. In hindsight I should of popped a partially furled headsail and flew through here. The last bridge was another 5 miles and opened an hour later so we approached that bridge mostly in neutral. Going through the Wrightsville Beach bridge is a zoo, being a Sunday and the fact that there are two marinas immediately to the south of the bridge and many Yahoos see no problem in pulling out in front of boats passing through the opened bridge in a tight area.

We take the Motts Channel short cut into Wrightsville Beach. Many of our friends avoid this narrow short cut, but we never see less and 10 feet under us. The navigation buoys are placed by non-standard norms, so having a chart or chart plotter is essential for non-locals passing through here. Probably the reason the Sea-Tow boat is hanging out in this area as we pass by.

We drop anchor just south of the fixed bridge to Wrightsville Beach. It is still blowing quite hard which causes us to set the anchor quite fast, before even backing down on the engine. We had planned to go ashore to "Tower 7 at Baja" one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, but I was not very excited to put the dinghy down and put on the outboard in this chop with the boat swinging back and forth. So we have dinner on board. No one else anchored here is going ashore either.

By the way, the engine temperature gauge worked correctly all day with the usual 162 degree reading.  The Autopilot worked fine today also, not sure if I can take credit for that.

Mile Hammock

 

Spooner Creek and the dredged ICW

Wake to a beautiful sunny day, but cool and still windy. The wind will be on our nose for the day as we head west. The temperature gauge is still telling me the engine is running too hot, but the temperature is jumping all over the place, convincing me that the problem is with the sensor or display. The Autopilot which worked for the day coming to Spooner Bay is not working again, telling me it is not receiving data. Another day of hand steering. The rain at Spooner Bay had cleaned any salt off the boat, now heading into the wind the chop is spraying up over the boat. We spend the first couple hours traveling on the ICW channel dredged on the north side of the shallow Bogue Sound. The south side of the channel is very shallow and with man made islands from the material dredged from the ICW channel.

We increase the engine RPM’s and the temperature needle is bouncing all over the place. I pull off the engine cover and check the thermostat with my IR gun and it is running at the normal 160 degrees F. So I conclude the engine is fine and ignore the gauge.

Bob Sherer's track in red, our track in purple

Today is the first day that I down loaded the tracks from Bob Sherer from the Poughkeepsie Yacht Club who has done this trip for the last nine years and has extensive experience navigating the trouble spots of the ICW. I load his tracks from when he passed through this area about two weeks ago. I also download additional tracks for a couple problem areas that the Army Core of Engineers survey frequently. So today I just follow Bob's electronic bread crumbs. Amazing how much more information is available to navigate the ICW than was available on our first trip. I have 4 different Navigation apps on our iPads aside from our built in Raymarine plotter. We have Active Captain (Trip Adviser for boaters) and ICW Facebook groups. It amazes me thinking about people we know who did this trip 30 years ago with paper charts and no GPS.

Camp Lejune

We reach the eastern side of Camp Lejune, the Marine Core training base and enter the “Camp Lejune Live Firing Area”. The ICW passes through here for about 10 miles. If the lights are flashing the area is closed for live fire training and we might have to wait a couple hours to pass. We heard explosions, sounded like thunder, two days ago at Spooner bay 20 miles to the east, which we assumed was a training exercise. 

Onslow Bridge

We approach the Onslow Swing Bridge on Camp Lejune and have the pleasant surprise of finding that it is open all day. Never had that happen before.

It is still early as we approach Mile Hammock on the western boarder of Camp Lejune where there is a large basin that the Marines allow cruisers to anchor overnight. Sometimes you get a show of Marine aircraft during the day and at night or Marines on amphibious vehicles. At this remote point on the ICW there few anchorages or marinas so this remote waypoint is quite popular. We arrive at 3:15 and only two other boats are their. The other boat we spent two days with at Spooner is here. By sunset there are 22 boats and its getting crowded. We relax the rest of the afternoon. I investigate the temperature issue and find a potential electrical grounding problem from when I installed a new sensor a couple years ago. I try to improve the ground. Will see what happens tomorrow.

 

Boat on the ICW viewed from Mile Hammock

Panoramic shot of Mile Hammock

Spooner Creek

The wind blows hard all night and I frequently check our anchor dragging program, we haven’t budged. It does not rain until morning when the first squall line comes through and fortunately most of the lightning passes just to our north. We sleep in. 
 

Sunrise Squall

Popovers

I finally get up and make popovers for breakfast. 





Spend most of the day talking to friends on the phone and writing emails as we experience periods of wind and rain.

Spooner Creek

11-1 Spooner Creek

By morning the wind almost completely dies and we have no problem leaving. It is also the warmest morning we have had since St Michaels on the Chesapeake. And again the autopilot is not working, it is not recieving data from the fluxgate compass.
 

The old draw bridge, no waiting

 

Damaged docks from Florence

Unfortunately the weather forecast for the next couple days starting this afternoon calls for high winds and rain for a few days. So we only go a short distance to Spooner Creek, just east of Morehead City. A very protected Creek with space for 3 or 4 anchored boats. This creek is lined with bulkheads and some very nice homes, most with docks. There is a marina here that we have previously stayed at. Most cruisers avoid this place because the narrow and shallow entrance. The surrounding homes and buildings here offer some protection from the wind and the small body of water keeps it relatively calm in high winds. At the end of the creek we can tie the dinghy up to a wooden town sidewalk and walk to a bunch of stores in a few minutes.

When we arrive there is another sailboat in our preferred spot, in the past we are usually the only boat anchored. 
 
After we anchor I take apart the fluxgate compass and make test measurements which confirms it should be working correctly. I pull the internal connector and clean the contacts as suggested on a couple sailing forums. Seems to work we will see on our next traveling day.

 

dinghy tie up

After lunch we walk to a couple stores. Linda first goes to her favorite “Shore Decor”. I walk over to Best Buy and find them closed. Leaks during Florence introduced a lot of moisture into the building and they are now going through mold remediation. We meet at Walmart, pick up a few items and head back to the boat. By the time I haul up the outboard and dinghy the wind is starting to pickup. By the time we go to bed the winds are blowing 20-30 mph and the boat is swinging back and forth on our anchor.