In Myrtle Beach this sign told us that we were 713 miles north of Miami.  It would be four more days until we are in our slip at Northwest Creek Marina in New Bern.

In this little clip we were sailing downwind with only the mainsail up in the ocean.  The land ahead is Bald Head Island at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.  The autopilot was steering the boat.  In good conditions we can sail faster than we can motor.

In the Cape Fear River this ship overtook us.  You can't see it, but on her stern is the red flag of the Isle of Man with the three legged man in its center.  We moved out of the channel to let her pass.  A sailboat a mile or two ahead of us did not, and he got a whistle and a polite radio call when he stayed mid-channel.

Hello.  We are now home in Tennessee and living on dirt again.  We have been here a week, and what a busy week it has been.  I brought home two months’ worth of dirty clothes, sheets, and towels along with all the remaining food from the boat.  Bill brought his collection of boat things to repair or put away.  That little collection filled our Ford Expedition to the roof.  Our house did fine without us, the weeds and bushes both grew exceptionally well, but the insects and spiders stayed outside where they belonged.  There has been (and there still is) a lot to do.

Our trip north from Miami to New Bern was slow.  Back when we thought we would be leaving Miami for the Bahamas, we sent all our cool weather clothing to our daughter, Julia.  With little to wear except shorts and tee shirts, we could not go north faster than the spring, and this year spring was slow with cold front after cold front coming off the southeast coast.  We seemed to have windy cold weather every two or three days.  With each front the wind increased, and the temperature dropped.  We had two especially ‘interesting’ cold fronts.  One while anchored near Titusville brought several warnings of nearby tornados along with black skies, rain, and a wind speed hovering above 40 knots.  A second cold front with tornado warnings caught us at Pine Island north of St Augustine where a 3am blast of 48 knot wind coupled with a 180° change in direction dislodged our anchor and dragged us about 250 ft before the anchor reset thankfully stopping us before we hit anything.

With all the cold fronts, it was not good weather even in Florida for going out into the ocean and making faster progress.  Finally, passing through Georgia we got a break in the weather and motor sailed in the ocean from St. Catherine’s Sound to Hilton Head.  Along the way, we started hearing a metallic scraping noise coming from the engine compartment.  We anchored in Bryan Creek west of Hilton Head Island but found the creek to be too shallow, too narrow, and too infested with no-see-ums for our liking.  

Another cold front was coming our way, so we moved to the wider, deeper, and less buggy Bull Creek.  Bill found the shaft bearings on our engine coolant pump to be worn, so he called the local Yanmar dealer and ordered a replacement.  It was Wednesday and the promised delivery date was Monday.  That was okay.  We were not in a rush, and in five days spring would be five days farther north.  The forecast cold front arrived as expected.  In our well sheltered spot, the 30 knot wind did not bother us at all, and the bad weather soon passed.   However, over the weekend the governor of South Carolina relaxed his stay-at-home order, and our peaceful creek turned into a busy highway of small boats and jet skis intent on filling our calm spot with large waves.  We launched our dinghy, started our outboard motor, joined the mob, and took a two-hour-tour of the Bull Island salt marsh creeks.

On Monday, the crowds went back to work, and we were once again alone on the water.   A morning phone call told us that the replacement coolant pump had arrived.  We moved the boat to a spot near Hudson’s Seafood Restaurant on Hilton Head Island and anchored it there.  Bill put on his homemade face mask, picked up his rubber gloves and wipes, put on his pack, and took the dinghy to Hudson’s dock.  In a three hour walk around the island, he picked up the pump from the dealer, bought fresh vegetables from a roadside stand, got two bags of chips from a gas station, and bought two fried oyster salads for our supper from Hudson’s.  He even had a cold beer while he waited for his takeaway order.  The oysters were our first restaurant meal in seven weeks.  He installed the coolant pump that evening, but unfortunately it leaked, and he spent the next day doing a better job.

Our series of cold fronts continued.  We had a taste of one as we traveled through Beaufort, SC to the Ashepoo River where we got the real blow during that night.  Another one caught us anchored in Awendaw Creek north of Charleston.  Farther north after two calm nights anchored in the Waccamaw River, still one more cold front sped us on our way as we sailed in the ocean between Little River, SC and the Cape Fear River.  It then blew hard enough to keep me awake that night while we were anchored at Bird Island near the river mouth.

From the Cape Fear River, we motored in the Intracoastal Waterway to Wrightsville Beach, and the next morning we went out into the ocean for the trip to Beaufort, NC.  Anchoring that night near Fort Macon, we watched the dredging crew that had been working for months in the Morehead City Harbor pack up their equipment on barges to be pushed to Norfolk by three tugs.  The next day we traveled north with them for hours at almost exactly our motoring speed.  The first two tugs departed before us.  We overtook one when he slowed in a tricky area, and we overtook the lead tug when his barge momentarily ran aground in Adams Creek.  It was interesting to watch them maneuver in the twists and turns of the ICW and thread their barges through the narrow opening under the Core Creek Bridge.  They chatted on the radio between themselves and other passing commercial traffic.  It was something that we had not witnessed so closely before.

A calm night anchored in Cedar Creek and a short morning run up the Neuse River brought us back to Northwest Creek Marina and our slip.  It was Friday, May 15.  Tropical Storm Arthur was forecast to skirt the North Carolina coast over the weekend bringing wind and rain.  We began the three-day dance of moving things from the boat to the car and from the car to the boat in dry weather and ended our work in the rain.  By Monday morning all was done, and we left for Kingsport.  

We were away from home for 116 days.  During that time, I never got to walk on a beach, pick up shells, or eat a “cheese burger in paradise”.  This year’s trip was definitely much different from those of years past.  Our mechanical problems and the virus threw a monkey wrench into our plans.  Bahamas trip number 13, while not a disaster, was not the trip of my dreams.  But, there is always next year.

Hopefully, we will all have a good, safe, and healthy summer.

From our new anchorage spot at Miami’s Marine Stadium we had a different view of the city’s night  skyline.  This is looking across Biscayne Bay at the southern part of the city near the Miami River.  The Rickenbacker Causeway is just out of sight to the left.

When we arrived at Elliott Key there were only a few boats.  When the weekend crowds came that changed.  The early morning stillness did not last into the day.

Back at the Marine Stadium you can see Miami in daylight.  Over toward the right is a small island with a sand beach.  It is much closer to us than the city.  This was the scene of a back and forth, cat and mouse game between the people who came to play on the beach and the Miami Police who were enforcing the mayor’s beach closure order.  While the police had helicopters and high speed boats, it was not quite as exciting as Miami Vice.

Protected by his hand sewn mask and rubber gloves and with a pocket full of wipes saved from Publix weeks before,  Bill returns in the dinghy with 30 gallons of water, 15 gallons of diesel fuel, and a gallon of gasoline to fill our tanks for the start of our journey north.

I baked us a loaf of bread saving us a trip to the store. 

Spring is on its way, and we are on our way home.

When I last wrote, we were anchored in Miami Beach and planned to go to the Florida Keys, around to the west coast of Florida, then back to the Florida east coast by passing through the Okeechobee Waterway.  Well, as soon as we were ready to leave, the roads into the Keys were closed to all but residents.  Just to make it obvious that we weren’t wanted, Monroe County closed the bars, restaurants, marinas, beaches, and parks.  Key West even closed the sunset.  Bill and I took the hint and decided not to go there.  Our earlier decision not to go to the Bahamas turned out to be most fortunate.  The Bahamian restrictions on cruisers have gradually become increasingly severe.  Currently, not only are foreign boats prohibited from entering the Bahamas for any reason, but if already there they must stay in a single place, they cannot travel from one island to another, they must register with the national government, and they cannot go ashore.  All foreign boats are encouraged to leave as soon as it can safely be done.  Foreigners must seek medical aid in their home country, not in the Bahamas.  I am glad we did not go.

Even in Miami Beach the things we usually enjoyed doing either were closed or prohibited by Emergency Orders.  I thought it unwise for us to even go ashore to walk around because we were both 69 years old and Dade County was the Florida virus hotspot.  With little to do, we decided we needed a change of scenery and motored south about 5 miles to anchor in the Marine Stadium at Virginia Key.  This anchorage gave us a different view of the Miami skyline.  The state, county, and city Emergency Orders that were designed to discourage boating seemed to have little effect in the Marine Stadium.  Every afternoon motorboats and jet skis whizzed around with loud Latin music.  One morning when it was still quiet and calm, Bill said, “I think I’ll take the engine apart today.”  I was horrified and talked him out of that project.  Instead of taking apart the engine, he took apart the toilet, the only other necessary part of the boat, to repair a valve which had been leaking seawater into the bowl.  He stopped the leak and got the toilet back together before I needed it.  Whew.  Later, he did take the engine apart; well, not really.  He took the rocker arm cover off and adjusted the valve clearances.  Our little diesel was suddenly much quieter.

After being at the Marine Stadium for a couple of days, we decided to go a little farther south to Elliott Key.  Elliott Key is the most northern of the Florida Keys and is part of the Biscayne Bay National Park.  All the shore side facilities at the park were closed, but it would be a change of scenery.  We spent the weekend anchored with about fifty other boats.  It was a hang out and party spot for local boats providing small sand beaches for lounging and a dock that gave access to trails on the island. Folks took their dinghies to the beaches, set up umbrellas, laid out on beach towels, and waded in the water.   One large boat tied up to the dock and the crew went inland.  It was not long before a police helicopter repeatedly swooped above the crowd with flashing blue lights, a siren, and a loudspeaker telling people that the beach and dock were closed, and that everyone must leave.  The next morning a police boat came and strung yellow tape along both sides of the dock.  The foiled beach parties resumed on several boats and continued all weekend.  Binoculars made the anchorage a great people watching spot. 

A coming west wind would make our Elliott Key anchorage uncomfortable, so we moved back to the Marine Stadium.  A small island with a white sand beach was behind us.  Like all public and private beaches in Dade County, the beach was “closed”.  That had no effect on the people in motorboats who would anchor just off the island then go to the beach.  We watched the periodic arrival of Miami police by helicopter or boat, the evacuation of everyone from the beach, the departure of the police, and the return of the people to the beach.  It was like watching a basketball game where two evenly matched teams alternate scoring with neither gaining an advantage.  We cheered for both sides.  Even encircling the island with yellow police tape failed to upset the balance in the game. 

Tiring of the unresolved skirmishing for the island and the co-current nearby battle of competing boat stereo systems, we returned to my favorite, quiet, and uncrowded Miami Beach spot between the Julia Tuttle Causeway and the Sunset Isles.  We just hung out on Irish Eyes reading, knitting, occasionally watching a movie, and listening to the Sirius radio work its way through the top 1000 classic rock songs, top 1000 classic pop sounds….  It was time to go.

 

It was mandatory to wear a mask in Miami Beach, so Bill sewed himself a mask out of a blue car washing towel.  Masked and gloved, he took the dinghy and returned with fuel and water to fill our tanks.  There was plenty of food on the boat, so we skipped a trip to the grocery store.  We put the dinghy on the deck, cleaned a month’s worth of marine growth off its bottom, folded it away, and left Miami.  There were small craft warnings offshore, so we motored north in the ICW through all the bridges.  There was little boat traffic until we got to Fort Lauderdale where the traffic picked up dying away again past the St Lucie Inlet. 

Tonight, we are anchored for our second night in Fort Pierce waiting for the wind and rain to leave before we do.  Back when we planned to go to the Bahamas, I sent all my warm clothes to our daughter Julia.  I have a pair of capri length pants, one three quarter length sleeved shirt, and a sweatshirt.  I also have a pair of socks because I knitted them.  We’ll travel north slowly to be sure that spring stays ahead of us going no farther north than the tee shirt weather.  We are headed back to New Bern then home to Kingsport.

 

Hope to see you distantly soon.  Stay at home, it’s the only safe place.

The Southport storm put almost 4” of water in our rain gauge.  Traveling on the Waccamaw River between Myrtle Beach and Georgetown, we could see its effects.  The river was out of its banks and flowing fast.  This house had the water up to its doorstep; others were worse.  We normally motor at about 5.5 knots.  That is how fast we travel through the water.  But here, the water is moving in the same direction that we are moving, so together we are making over 8 knots.

Just south of Beaufort, SC we ran into fog.  Hidden behind the haze were a pair of nearby highway bridges, and a park like shoreline, and the naval hospital.  Like you, all we could see was fog and our lifeline.

In Georgia this huge collection of tugs, dredges, barges, and floating dredge pipe met us.  They were going north.  We moved way over to the side to let them past.

The 656-foot-long car transporting ship, Golden Ray, rolled over on its side last September as it was leaving Brunswick, Georgia.  It had 4300 cars still on board.  They will soon begin slicing it into eight pieces to get it out of the channel.  You are looking at its bottom.  This was as close as we could come to it.

In Port Everglades I saw this cargo ship with a sailboat perched on its foredeck.  I wonder where it is going.

A motor yacht came and anchored behind us for a few days.  It had the little umbrella on its bow.  I had a similar umbrella on my drink.

This 200+ foot long motor yacht is docked east of us.  Like most large (and some not so large) yachts, it does not fly an American flag.  The flag you see is the Marshall Islands.  That is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  I doubt that it has ever even been there.  Its name is Utopia IV, and Google can tell you more.

To our west is the Miami skyline.  We get this view every evening.  Nice, isn't it?


Hello from sunny and warm Miami Beach.  I hope you are all well and polishing your newly learned Social Distancing Skills.  On our floating home Bill and I are definitely good at Social Distancing.  We are 200+ yards away from any land or other boat and farther still from any person.

After all our mechanical troubles were resolved, our trip south was relatively easy.  It was cold, but it was not nearly as cold as in past years.  To stay warm outside, I never had to wear two pairs of wool long underwear or two pairs of socks.  We navigated the shallow ICW trouble spots without incident due to luck with the tides, recent dredging, and river flooding.  Against my long-held opinion that travelling on the ICW in the dark was not a good idea, we did do a short trip in the dark.  After going through the Wappoo Creek Bridge, south of Charleston at 3pm, we agreed it was too early to stop for the night.  I asked Bill if he had a place picked to anchor before dark.  “Of course, there is a perfect spot”, was the reply.  Well, the guidebook said the spot had room for two boats.  When we got there, exactly two boats were anchored in our spot.  There was nothing to do but to push on.  The sun went down, and we motored in the dark for about an hour before arriving at Church Creek on Johns Island.  My opinion proved correct; navigating the ICW in the dark proved both scary and dumb.  Even with our radar and GPS, all around us were the lurking beasts and terrors that we could not see.

In the morning a few days later in Beaufort, SC, it was cloudy, and rain was predicted to begin in the afternoon.  We raised the anchor just after sunrise and headed south.  Only thirty minutes into the trip, fog descended.  I mean thick, dense fog that obscured anything not on the boat.  We managed to creep over close to the shore without hitting it and dropped the anchor.  The fog lifted a couple of hours later, and we were on our way.

I think our coldest day was February 29th.  Well, the temperature may not have been the coldest, but the wind was blowing at a steady 25 knots which made it feel cold.  We were crossing St. Andrew’s Sound between Jekyll Island and Cumberland Island.  The wind was on our nose, and waves were breaking over the bow of the boat.  In addition to my worries about the weather, we motored past some folks in kayaks who were paddling across St. Andrews Sound.  Both Bill and I remarked that they should not have been out there.  Hours later we heard them call the Coast Guard.  A 53-year-old woman was missing.  A helicopter and boat were dispatched for the search.  Long story short, they found the yellow kayak pulled up on shore at Cumberland Island with footprints in the sand, but we never learned the rest of the story.

Once past Cumberland Island we were in Florida!  Each day was warmer than the one before.  A stop in Vero Beach was in our plans.  Bill had ordered a cell phone booster and some other stuff from Amazon.  I had ordered some knitting needles and a pair of shoes.  All would be delivered to the Vero Beach City Marina.  It was also time to shop for a few groceries, have an unlimited hot water shower, and get off the boat.  We had on board an antique double barrel shotgun that last belonged to Bill’s deceased stepmother.  Bill’s step nephew Cyrus, who lives in Stuart, wanted the gun.  He came to Vero Beach, we gave him the gun, then we all had a lovely restaurant meal and visit.  My missions in Vero Beach were accomplished: I had my new shoes and knitting needles, and the shotgun was off the boat.

Corona Virus began to fill the evening radio news.  We continued south.  The two-day trip through Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale to Miami was trying.  There were 27 bridges that had to open for us.  Most had a fixed schedule, and we were forced to wait at those bridges for a scheduled opening.  All went well until we arrived at the Fourteenth Street Bridge in Pompano Beach.  It was broken, could not open, and took two hours to repair.  We were the first boat at the bridge, but there was a long line of boats assembled behind us.  When the bridge finally did open, the parade began.  We were slow, and the others were faster.  As we went from one bridge to the next, first one, then another, and finally all the other boats overtook us, but we were always in the parade.  The faster boats got to each bridge at its scheduled opening time, and the bridge stayed open until the whole parade had passed through.  That way we got all the way through Ft Lauderdale without waiting on a single bridge.  It was a record for us.  

We were in Sunny Isles Beach when the sun began to set.  A right turn, a trip down a long canal, and we were anchored in Lake Maule for a peaceful and quiet night.  It rained a little in the morning, and after the showers moved away, we left for Miami.  Bill was on the bow putting away the anchor and cleaning up the deck when I tried to leave the lake by the wrong canal.  The one I entered was a narrow dead end canal with boats docked on both sides.  There was no way to turn around.  Panic!  Bill took over, revved the engine in reverse, straightened the boat out, and backed us out of the canal as the neighborhood dogs barked their heads off.  Whew.  It was not a good way to start the day.

Three more bridges opened for us, and we dropped our anchor here in Miami Beach south of the Julia Tuttle Causeway just after noon on March 12.  It was our latest arrival in Miami Beach.  The Corona Virus news continued to get worse.  The Mayor of Miami Beach told the Spring Breakers, “Go home.  The party is over”.  The crowd started thinning.  The next day Bill got a prescription refilled and picked up an Amazon package from an Amazon Locker.  I got a haircut.  The guy who cut my hair was very pleased with his work.  Me, not so much.  My hair was left shorter than Bill’s.  Oh well, I will not have to have another haircut for quite a while.

On Saturday we went to Lincoln Road, a popular Miami Beach pedestrian outdoor mall, and stopped at our usual pizza place.  At 1pm only two of their thirty or so outside tables were occupied, and we were one of them.  The promenading crowds that we love to watch and comment on were sparse to say the least.  That afternoon all restaurants and bars with occupancy of 250 or more were ordered closed, and the others were reduced to half their licensed capacity.  Later, all the restaurants were made take-out or delivery only.  First, much of the beach was closed, then all the beach was closed.  At Publix on Tuesday. there were a few packages of fresh beef but not any chicken or pork.  The egg shelf was bare, and rice and pasta were rationed.  There were no paper products, no Clorox, no hand wipes, no flour, and no bottled water.  At the laundromat Wednesday rules were posted --- one person per family in the establishment at a time, put your clothes in the washer and then wait outside, put the clothes in the dryer and wait outside, no folding allowed in the store, and keep away from other people.  We obeyed the rules.  The crowds were gone.  The street traffic was light.  By Wednesday our necessary onshore chores were completed.  The boat is now stocked.  Except for a fuel and water run, we do not plan to go back into town.

With all the concern about Corona Virus, Bill and I have decided to make this year’s trip, ‘Irish Eyes to Florida’.  We are worried we could leave for the Bahamas and be refused entry.  We are also worried that if we left we might not be able to get back into the US.  The areas we like to visit in the Bahamas lack medical services.  Most of the food in the Bahamian stores there comes from the US.  I am sure the shipments will soon become slim.  I do not need to eat their food.  Instead of going the Bahamas, we are going to go south through the Keys, around the bottom of Florida, up the west coast, and return via the Okeechobee Canal.  There are lots of places to anchor with no shore access.  That is fine.  Bill can work on his boat projects, and I can knit while we watch the sunsets from our cockpit alone.  We have plenty of food and toilet paper, gin and tonic water.  We’re all set.

Stay well and safe.  We’ll try to do the same.

While stopped in Wilmington, we walked around town.  Passing by this house Bill pronounced it the home of his great aunt Neely.  Now, he was only there once, and that was in about 1970.  When pressed, he says that it looks like the right house anyway.

We had the boat hauled out in Southport, N.C. for repairs hoping to stop a loud squealing noise that was coming from her engine.  Here she is, all 13,500 lb resting on her keel and propped up with these flimsy jack stands.  That is were we were sleeping (or not sleeping) during the night of the storm.

In the previous photo you can see the metal steps leading up to the cockpit of our boat.  I thought you would enjoy a close-up view.  While they were a great improvement over the usual 12 ft stepladder, they still left much to be desired.

After they made us leave the boat for our safety and while the wind was still howling, we walked into town and had a nice breakfast in this restaurant.  The hair of the woman in the picture looked as bad as mine did.  Bill, without much hair, had less of a problem.

The storm blew down this 100 ft tall, 100-year-old signal flag tower in town.  It was used to display storm and hurricane warning flags.  It had weathered every wind until our storm came along.

Four motorboats on the top tier of the dry stack racks near our boat blew off their wooden bunks in the storm.  They did not fall to the ground, but they ended up resting on the steel framework.  It took a crane to get them down.  You can see it in the picture.

While the crane was working, the yard crew launched Irish Eyes with her new propeller shaft and Cutless bearing.

In a second attempt to fix the noise, a diver was called to remove our propeller and install our spare.  You can just see his feet as he worked head down in the cold water.  The spare propeller and his tools were on the dock.

We are now finally underway again and headed south.  This is the 13^th time Bill and I have taken Irish Eyes south to the Bahamas.  If I were a superstitious person, I would be really worried about this trip because we have already had a bucket load of troubles.  But, I am getting ahead of myself, so I will back up and start at the beginning.

On January 11 Bill and I packed lots of clothes, three seasons worth, and anything else we thought we might need into our car and headed to New Bern, NC.  The driving trip was uneventful, and we were happy to be back on Irish Eyes.  Bill had a list of boat projects to complete before we could leave the dock.  The biggest one was installing a complete AIS system on our boat.  AIS stands for “Automatic Identification System”.  It broadcasts our name, position, and course so other boats can tell where we are going.  Up to now, we have been able to receive information from other boats but had not been able to broadcast our own information.  I like this addition.  I have never been sure that anyone looking down from a big ship and could see little us.  Now, we will show up on a screen on their bridge.

The morning after we arrived in New Bern, Bill started the engine and noticed a leak from the fuel injection pump.  We had a leak there last summer making our trip home a little scary.  Bill had replaced an o-ring during the summer fixing that leak, but this leak was another spot.  There was a mechanic working on a boat across the dock from us.  Bill asked him if he would come and look at our pump.  The mechanic came, looked at it, and said, “Call Troy at Coastal Diesel Service”.  Bill knew another mechanic.  He came out the next morning.  He said the pump needed to be fixed, and he said, “Call Troy.”  Bill called Troy.  Two weeks later the pump was fixed and back on the boat.  During that time Bill was busy with things on his boat to-do list, and I was busy with my knitting and reading.  As soon as the injection pump was installed, I bought the fresh food, Bill filled the car with everything we wanted to leave behind, he parked the car in the long term lot, and we were ready to go.

On January 30 at 9:30 in the morning, we untied the dock lines and headed out.  As we were motoring away from the dock both of us heard a squealing or singing noise as the engine passed through 1500 rpm, but it stopped and neither of us thought that it was a problem.  We motorsailed to our usual first night out anchorage in Cedar Creek where we had a quiet and peaceful night.

But, the noise remained.  Between 1300 and 1700 rpm there was an unmistakable monotone scream from somewhere around the engine.  Bill thought the nut on the packing gland was rubbing on the propeller shaft.  Neither greasing the nut nor re-packing the gland fixed the problem.  After four days of listening to an unhappy boat, we went up the Cape Fear River to the Wilmington City Docks.  There we could try and find the source of the noise with the boat stationary, and there we would be near boatyards with expert mechanics.  Once we were tied to the dock, we tried to reproduce the scream, but the noise was not there.  What was up?  I googled the problem and told Bill my findings, perhaps a loose alternator belt, a worn alternator, a faulty Cutless bearing, or maybe a bad shaft.  Bill found the alternator belt loose, tightened it, and pronounced the problem fixed.  Elated, Bill and I played tourists in Wilmington enjoying lovely warm weather, restaurant meals, and a railway museum tour.

As soon as we untied from Wilmington City Docks, we could hear the 1300 to 1700 rpm scream.  Bummer.  Bill called Wilmington Boat Works, and we went there to have a mechanic look at our engine.  A mechanic came and decided we needed to have the boat hauled out of the water and the shaft and Cutless bearing replaced.  There was just one small problem.  The yard was having concrete poured the next morning, and they said it would be three weeks before it would be hard enough to put us back in the water.  The yard guys suggested we go to Zimmerman Marine in Southport.  That is what we did.

Zimmerman’s mechanic, Steve, went for a short ride with us, listened to the noise, and recommended that we have the boat hauled out so that the shaft and Cutless bearing could be examined.  We said okay, they plucked the boat out of the water, propped it up on jack stands in their yard, and set to work.  They gave us a set of twelve foot tall metal steps to come and go from our stranded home.  This was February 5^th, Bill’s 69^th birthday.  Happy Birthday, Bill.

An old friend of ours from Salisbury, George Wilson, lives on Oak Island.  George came over to Southport to visit.  Bill and George traded stories for an hour or two, then we all went out to lunch.  Back at the yard they condemned the shaft and Cutless bearing.  A new bearing was ordered from Norfolk, and a new shaft was to be made by a Wilmington machine shop.  It looked like it would be a short repair process.

The next night a cold front passed through Southport.  The wind howled, gusting to 80mph, lightning flashed, and the rain poured.  Our boat on jack stands swayed in the wind.  In my mind the boat was threatening to fall over any minute.  I did not sleep much.  At about 6:30am we heard some knocks on the hull and a voice saying, “You have to get off the boat right now.  It is unsafe.”  Bill and I dressed quickly and left the boat.  The wind had unfurled the sail on another boat in the yard, and the yard master was afraid that boat would blow over toppling us and the other boats like a line of dominos.  In addition, four motorboats on the top level of the dry stack storage were blown off their supports.  They did not fall to the ground but were just sort of hanging there.  The wind was still howling, the place was unsafe, and all the workers were sent home.  This was Friday.  No work was going to be done on Irish Eyes until Monday.  Another bummer.

Bill and I walked into town.  I had the clothes on my back, my phone, no makeup, and unbrushed hair.  I felt, and looked, like a homeless person.  We had a gourmet breakfast, spent two hours touring a one room museum, and gawked at the 100-year-old hurricane warning flagpole that the winds had destroyed while a TV news crew interviewed the police chief and mayor.  We then went back to the boat yard to see what was happening.  The yard master said we could not stay on the boat until a crane could come and remove the four motorboats.  He did let us go back on Irish Eyes and get our things.  Bill and I walked back into town carrying our belongings in the two tote bags we had with us and checked into the Inn at River Oaks.  The Inn is a 1950s motel which has been refurbished and is lovely.  We spent three nights sleeping in a stationary bed.

Monday morning, Bill walked back to the yard to see what was up.  The workers said the crane would be there Tuesday.  Bill really wanted to be back on Irish Eyes and convinced the maintenance manager to say we could move back aboard so long as we kept a low profile.  So, even though the motorboats had not yet been removed, we moved back on our boat.  Work continued on Irish Eyes.

On Tuesday as a crane was lifting the motorboats off the dry stack’s steel racks, the Travelift launched our boat.  Bill, Steve, and I went for a ride.  The noise was still there.  The shaft and cutlass bearing were new.  Where was this noise coming from?  In desperation engine oil and the transmission fluid samples were taken and sent away for analysis.  Bill replaced our alternator and two vee belts in case that was the problem.  Then, to add to our woes, our hot water heater suddenly ruptured spilling water into our battery box.  Bill mopped up the mess and ordered a new water heater.  Friday, Nick, an engine specialist, went for a ride with us, and he said he thought the scream was coming from our propeller.  Friday night as the sun was setting, a diver came and replaced our propeller with our spare propeller.  (Bill of course had a spare).  Our replacement water heater had arrived, so Bill had something to do over the weekend while the yard was closed.  Sunday, Bill and I took the boat for a spin.  The scream was at last gone.  We needed to have the engine aligned, and we needed to pay for all the work.

It took two days for Steve to align the engine with Bill’s “help”.  They had problems with the engine mounts, but finally on Thursday they were both satisfied.  Another cold front was coming, and snow was predicted.  The wind picked up on Friday, it was very cold, the marina closed because of the weather, but there was no snow.  After two and a half weeks repairing the boat, we untied our dock lines on Saturday and left.  It is great to be on the move again.

Stay well and warm.