13Sep

Brunswick Boat Delivery

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The trip up from Brunswick, Georgia to Annapolis was great fun but it took several days longer than planned. The car ride from Annapolis was… well let’s says not the highlight. There were 4 of us (Peter, Ned, Rob and myself) in a mini-van plus all our stuff, plus a white Cockatoo! No problem, she was Rob’s pet for 21 years but he needed to get her to Fort Lauderdale and Brunswick was ¾ of the way. At the beginning she would talk, “Pretty Bird” or other cute outbursts but after a short while she would screech an eardrum bursting yell that prevented any sleeping during our night trip down. But we made it in one piece; Rob took the bird to Ft. Lauderdale and returned the next day as we check out Peter’s new boat White Bird and went shopping for food as well as visiting the town.

On Friday morning we left Brunswick, stopped and topped off fuel tanks and soon were in the ocean heading north, guess where the wind was coming from, yes the north, if we had to make a course change the wind as if watching our track would shift so it was on the nose pretty much all of the Atlantic Ocean part of the trip. The real problem, it turns out, was the prop. Because we could not sail (sailboats cannot sail directly into the wind) without tacking we relied on the motor, but the prop was adjusted wrong and instead of motoring at 7 knots we were hitting 5 knots at best and sometimes as slow as 3.5. Peter decided he would try to dive down and see if anything was physically wrong. Nothing was found but as Peter was getting out of the water a big jellyfish stung him on both legs, the sting was painful but quickly the stinging stopped bothering him. We decided we need to fix this prop problem so on Saturday we diverted from 5 miles or so at sea into Edisto Island to fix the prop and get more fuel. We got the fuel but the current was too strong for diving the prop so we left. It became obvious that the trip would take much longer than we planned; Rob and Ned had to get back before Thursday. So Monday morning we changed course to Morehead City, NC and dropped off crew, we also had a diver go down to adjust the prop but he was unable to turn the adjusting plate underwater. The diver suggested we have the boat hauled out, but we had a weather window to get around Cape Hatteras so we left, just Peter and me. We were finally sailing, ah no stinking engine sound, but that was short lived around Cape Lookout the wind shifted, not so bad we couldn’t sail but not strong enough that we didn’t need the motor. The night motor sail around Cape Hatteras was uneventful, we had almost no traffic the seas were fairly calm with gentle swells. We stood 4 hour watches during the night starting at 10, I had the 10 to 2 AM and Peter took the 2 to 6. During the day one of us would go down for rest and the other would run the boat. The wind shifted to the south when we hit Cape Henry at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, which allowed us to sail for most of the trip up to bay. On Wednesday at midnight we anchored on the Rhode River and got some sleep. The 640 mile trip had taken us less than 6 days but during that time great friendships had been established and stories generated to tell our grand children.

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