Oriental to Pungo River anchorage. Distance: 46 NM/Time: 8.5 hours
So, as planned, I left Oriental today, north bound. I spent last evening hanging out with and saying goodbye to my marina mates, who I’ve gotten to know pretty well over the last two months. Hopefully, I’ll meet them again “out there” someday.
I have a September 7th deadline to pick up my friend, Nicole, in Norfolk. It’s about a 5-day trip up there but I wanted some buffer days for weather, rest, or maintenance issues, and so left today. Not the best day temperature-wise; as forecast, it was in the mid-90’s with no wind. (This was why I waiting around in Oriental for two months!) But, the weather is supposed to moderate tomorrow, and stay much more comfortable moving forward, so I will hopefully only have to suffer one day/night at anchor.
I planned to wake up at 6:00 am to do my final two hours of prep on the boat (stowing the air conditioner, disconnecting and stowing shore power, removing dock lines, etc.), so that I could depart the dock by 8:00 am when the winds were still calm. However, I woke up at 4:30 am for some reason, and wasn’t able to go back to sleep, so just started prepping then. It was good I did, because I still wasn’t ready to go until 7:30 am.
And, it was not an uneventful departure! The wind was indeed calm, and with my friend, Keith, walking the boat down the dock, I backed out very slowly and carefully. I expected to have to use my prop walk to spin the boat round 270 degree clockwise to get out of the fairway, but when I put the transmission in forward and gunned it, nothing happened; the engine revved, but I continued coasting backwards. I’m still not sure what happened. I suspect that I didn’t have the gear lever all the way in forward. But, it happened twice, and I almost hit the dock behind me before I finally got forward gear to grab. The only good news was that I was far enough across the fairway by that time that I had room to turn the short way counterclockwise to get down the fairway. I was close to panicking as this was happening, but nobody else seemed to notice anything was wrong. lol Once I got it into forward, I didn’t dare take it out until I was clear of the marina, and then I started worrying. Was my transmission shot?
To add to the stress, my GPS chart plotter wouldn’t stay on. I had turned off my normal depth sounder because the low water alarm was constantly going off (because I only had 6″ of clearance in the marina!) and so was counting on the second depth sounder–the one that registers on my chart plotter, to help me get out into the channel. But, as soon as the chart plotter would boot up, it would just quit. While still in the fairway, I had to run below to turn on the other depth sounder and just ignore its constant alarm until I finally got into deeper water.
I got safely out of the channel using my iPad to navigate, and once clear and heading east down the Neuse River, I went below and got out some electrical contact cleaner to clean the chart plotter power and solar connections. That solved the chart plotter turning off issue, but the secondary sonar has evidently failed for good. 🙁
I decided to test the radar, and it was also not working! Great, the boat sits for two months and now I have a screwed up transmission, a bad depth sounder, and no radar! Not the best start of my trip.
However, I did get the radar working again by cleaning its connection, too, and then, after a couple of hours of thinking about it, even though I really was afraid of what I might find, I realized I had to figure out the status of my transmission. Because if it were screwed up, it made the most sense to go right back to Oriental instead of chugging along all day to places unknown.
So, I slowed down, put the transmission in neutral (that felt normal), coasted to a stop, then put it in reverse (that felt normal, too). Then the big test: putting it back in forward. It felt normal! Did it all again, and it worked fine again (and has since). As I mentioned, I think perhaps I just wasn’t moving the lever far enough when I was a bit stressed getting out of the slip.
So, of the handful of things that weren’t working when I first departed, only the secondary depth sounder is still inop. The weird thing is that if I go into various display modes (like fish finder), I can see it showing the right depth, but it won’t give me a digital readout on my nav display. Oh, well. At least it’s only my backup depth sounder.
The rest of the day was uneventful. Very little wind and very hot.
I ended up choosing an anchorage just past Belhaven and dropped the hook around 16:30. There were biting flies, no breeze, and sporadic rain showers throughout the night, so it was not a very comfortable one. But, I was expecting that, and it should be the last really hot day that I experience this year. (Fingers crossed)
Tomorrow I plan to continue north to the Alligator River.