July 2016 - Boat Life Larks

We’ve been moving to a new spot each day. The intracoastal has been a lot of work for me - you won’t believe the number of jet skis and fishing boats with huge wakes I’ve had to tell off! And then there’s the bridges. We’ve never hit a bridge, but each time we approach, the LHI screeches and says “Oh, Jesus!” even though my name is Hastings, and I have to get up and bark. The good news is the water is calm and not sick making like the ocean. Until yesterday, when they decided the ocean was good and bridges and jet skis were bad. I hunkered down and prayed for it all to be over. My supplications were heard and once again we lived long enough to eat dinner. What a relief.

Today, they said it would be a relaxing day. Finally! Of course, I should know better than to believe them. They said we’d do a quick trip to the other side of the bight to see the lighthouse. This looked like fun! I love me a good dinghy ride! I led the way and they followed.

This looks like fun!

Unfortunately, instead of running full steam to the ocean, they had to keep stopping to “read interpretive signs”. This is about the most dull activity anyone has ever invented. I’d rather be dead than have to know the difference between a welk shell and a clam shell, but the humans find it fascinating. Little things please little minds.

Cape Lookout Lighthouse

Cape Lookout from the Atlantic Beach

Lightkeeper's Accommodations, Now Museum

Bight-side beach

After torturing me like this for, I don’t know, HOURS, we got in the dinghy to head home. This is good news, because it’s nearing dinner time, and I’ll have to remind them to feed me by scratching at the fridge. It started getting wavier and wavier and the bow was slamming. The LHI said her back was getting compression injuries. A terrifying cloud darkened the sky while the temperature dropped 15 degrees.

Following a rude discussion about “transferring the weight” LHI decided to drive so DDD could hold down the bow. Towering waves broke over the dinghy and drenched all of us to the core. This is an even worse death than death by sign reading. I should never have complained about the sign reading. It wasn't that bad! In fact, I’d like to go back and read even more about the difference between horses and ponies!

LHI and DDD kept dementedly smiling at each other as water in the dinghy rose higher. I’m in DDD’s lap, but no one can save me. We’re all going to go down to the depths within sight of shore, exactly like the shipwrecked sailors we read about on one of those god forsaken signs. And we’ll leave un-eaten cheese in the fridge.

Hark! Our boat is in sight! All is not lost. I, by my magnificent refusal to give up despite being in the valley of death have brought us through the storm and to rescue. Of course, because I’m with the humans, the atrocities are not over. I try to lay down and forget my troubles, but they insist on “rinsing the salt out of my fur”. (The salt that should have never been in my fur to begin with, FYI) Then, the skies cleared and the ocean was as flat as a millpond. If only we’d stayed to read more signs about barrier islands being shaped by winds and waves like I wanted to, we could have avoided all this trouble. Instead, I’ve been shaped into a miserable wretch by the winds and the waves. The humans just don’t listen to reason, do they?

Up Cape Fear River against the current, very slow progress.

We amused ourselves with reading Grumpy Captain reviews of terror and groundings at every turn, stayed in the channel (against apparent insurmountable odds) and arrived at Wrightsville Beach at lunchtime. We were further entertained by two sailing camps sailing around and around us. Watching 10 year olds capsize and struggle to right themselves (which is a real struggle, because their little 50 pound bodies aren’t enough ballast to right their sailing dinghy) made the pain of the yuck berry incident fade. We dinghy-ed ourselves to a little beach and had our first swim since Miami. Now this is the cruising life!

Sailing Camp in the anchorage, Wrightsville Beach, NC

Wrightsville Beach is a very strange place. There are lots of power boats and kayaks and sailboats and they are all helmed by teenagers. Water skiers do slaloms around the anchored boats and paddle boarders. One particularly articulate Grumpy Captain described it as, “where maritime law comes to die.”

We took advantage of the free town dinghy dock to seek out new granola bars (fail). ~~Sleazeville~~ Wrightsville Beach is a good place to have visited so you know not to go back. There were drunk people staggering around (in the middle of the day!) trying to give Matt flip flops that they found on the beach. "21 year olds" were angry that the grocery store didn’t sell vodka. It was like Spring Break in Ft Lauderdale, only with high schoolers, and not Ft. Lauderdale.

Sleazeville also seemed to put Hastings in a grump. A lovely seeming young lady saw him, and literally ran to him with her arms open, saying “I love you so much puppy”, and he turned and refused to acknowledge her. Sleazeville: where doggie manners go to die.

Back to Inde. We had been joined by another catamaran that anchored too close. Catamarans are the worst; so selfish and oblivious. They and their kind should be outlawed. (I’m going to make a note to Grumpy Captain about it!) We glared at them for a long time before deciding to move ourselves, and then had to re-anchor twice to get everything hunky dory. We enjoyed another bug-free night. In fact, the only buggy night we’ve had since leaving Charleston was in Winyah Bay.

Sailboat, sunset, Wrightsville Beach, NC

Sailing through the anchorage

Sunset from our re-anchored spot

Departed: Cape Fear River, MM 296
Anchored: Wrightsville Beach, MM 283

You don't want to be distracted, or you'll be grumpy!

I thought the intracoastal would be terribly dull and boring. Not so. It’s a little dull, then extraordinarily exciting, then there’s betrayal and deception followed by war. And every once in a while you have to pay attention.

For instance, in the Cape Fear River (which is on a red right returning system, opposite the red-land-intracoastal system) there’s a channel for an army installation. If you get confused and go into that channel, you get blown up. It’s a mistake no one makes twice. Or, if you are enjoying Cape Fear River, you can keep going to Wilmington. I’m sure it’s lovely there, but it’s a dead end!

Matt has an app “Active Captain”. This app overlays on a nautical chart on his phone. Boaters add reviews of marinas, anchorages, routes, and hazards to navigation. A lot of them can be quite negative, so we like to call the app “Grumpy Captain”. Matt likes to entertain us by reading out upcoming hazard reviews. "Ooooh, prepare yourself for grumpiness", he’ll say. "At marker 35A some grumpy captains ran aground. One says to hug the green, but the other says to hug the red and if he’d hugged the green he’d be even grumpier." “So, stay in the middle of the channel?” “Yeah, that would be good”.

I know what you are thinking. How hard is it to stay in the middle of the channel? Well, it’s impossible. You could be in the middle of the channel and everything is hunky dory. Then you see a pod of dolphins, or you have to bat at a fly, or you have to have a conversation with the dog about the flies, and suddenly, you’re running aground or headed the wrong way. You could be so enamored with reading grumpy captain’s tales of woe and laughing to yourself, that you yourself run aground. Or you could be caught up in one of the worst conspiracies of deception and despair that has ever been perpetrated on mankind and you are simply unable to cope with straight lines while you angrily wave your arms and pout.

Let’s say you’re a cruiser, and grocery getting involves dinghying miles to shore against the waves. You arrive at the dinghy dock soaked and march a mile to the grocery store. You purchase delicious, wonderful almond chocolate chip granola bars, march a mile back to the dinghy, and dinghy back to the boat.

The next day, while headed between the markers, you open said granola bar with a smile. But that smile quickly turns to revulsion and disgust. For nestled in between the delicious, life affirming nuggets of chocolate are a betrayal called raisins. Raisins used to be good back when they were grapes, but some miscreant perv set them in the sun and made them into vile yuck berries. To add to the horror, unsuspecting granola bar eaters think they look like delicious wonderful chocolate, but they are the exact opposite of chocolate.

So, while you are retching and stamping on the vile imposter granola bar, who can cope with details like channel markers and currents and bridges? Who can head in the right direction while writing an angry letter to your congressmen, and the President, and creating a petition for the banishment of all imposter dried fruits that could be chocolate instead? Now you’re aground, and wondering why Grumpy Captain didn’t warn you of the danger of yuck berries at Red 44A.

Water-side

Charleston Curmudgeon here. I’m not a fan of boating in Charleston. The anchorage is crowded, and after you’ve squeezed yourself into a very marginal spot, power boats use the anchorage as a short cut. 3 knot reversing currents add to the fun. Grumpy Captain reports indicate that many have fouled their anchor and never seen it again, lost to the murky, nasty torrent that is the Ashley River. Oh, did I mention that the water is brown and murky? Yes, I’m a little bit spoiled. We spent one night on the hook here and we did all survive (including our trusty Rocna anchor).

On the hook in Charleston

<<Since the anchoring options in Charleston aren't great, docking is a better option to see the city. The absolute closest marina to downtown is the Charleston Maritime Center, just a few blocks north of Market Street and very near a grocery store. The marina itself isn’t much to write about but if your goal is to be close by the city it’s the place.

Charleston Maritime Center (our dinghy in the right corner)

The next best option would be the Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina which lies across the Cooper River from Charleston but has water taxi service into the city. The marina is the location of the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier and a Navy submarine which are open for tours.

Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina

The most popular marinas are on Ashley River on the other side of town, which is either a long hike (we were here in summer!) or getting on the free trolley. Because we were leaving the boat for awhile to drive out West, we opted for the cheaper Cooper River Marina 3 miles north of downtown on the (you guessed it!) Cooper River. Cooper River is a large country operated facility with transient docks and nice facilities. The downside is that it is very far from anything, but we did manage the 3 mile dinghy ride to downtown once (it was nearly the death of us, but that’s another story!).>>

Cooper River Marina from Independence

Saltwater Marshes surround Cooper River Marina

Non-stop container ship traffic on the Cooper River. We got some pretty hefty wakes!

Research Vessel, Ravenel Bridge, Rainbow (It was either raining or 110 degrees in Charleston)

Playing Tourist

Land side, Charleston is a pretty and vibrant city, with death marches to suit all tastes. I have some humans in genetic proximity to me that self-reportedly prefer death to walking, history, and nature. What’s on the plan today? Some nature and history walks! Maybe the ghost tour will be OK? Nope, thats a walking history tour!

In Charleston, you can do death by churches, death by ghosts, death by plantations, death by carriage tours, death by shap-shap-shapping, death by eating, or death by submarines. The least maligned tour was the ghost tour, since it featured other people on their own self-inflicted death marches.