Sunset at Adams Creek in North Carolina off the Neuse River and near Oriental.  It’s our last night at anchor at the end of the trip.

After posting so many pictures of pretty things on these trips, it may be time for a “Boat Horror”.  This piece of bronze piping dips to the bottom of our toilet waste holding tank and is used to suck out whatever is in there.  You can see the corroded hole in the side that kept us from completely emptying the tank during the last months of our trip.  Bill made a special trip to New Bern after we got back home to replace the whole thing.  Yuck, yuck, and double yuck.

 

Hello from Tennessee.  Bill and I are in our land home, and Irish Eyes is tied in her slip in Northwest Creek Marina.  It is nice to be in our cool house and not to have to fret about the weather.

We left our peaceful anchorage in Cow House Creek in the early morning of June 13 headed north.  The tidal currents were in our favor, and we were rapidly washed up the Waccamaw River to Socastee and then all the way through Myrtle Beach to the Little River Inlet crossing with the ICW.  We did not go out the inlet because the seas were still high from the offshore weather.  At the crossing a tug and very large barge was aground in the ICW.  It was quite a feat for the tug captain to get the barge out of the shallow water while dealing with the fierce tidal current.  The tug had to turn the barge completely around to get it free.  We passed by the tug as it was maneuvering and managed to stay ahead of him all afternoon.  We worried about the two shallow trouble spots in the next stretch, the Shallotte and Lochwood’s Folly Inlets, we did not have any real trouble with either.  We anchored in Dutchman’s Creek Park near Southport, NC as the sun set.  It was a very long day, 72.5 miles.

The next day, we were up and away early to have favorable currents in the Cape Fear River and then through Snow’s Cut.  We made good time until we arrived at the Wrightsville Beach Bridge where the scheduled noon opening was delayed by an EMS crew that was attending to a medical emergency on the island.  We thought about leaving the ICW and going outside to Beaufort, NC, but again bad weather in the ocean nixed that idea.  Our anchor went down in Mile Hammock Bay in Camp Lejeune as both the sun and the temperature went down.  All was nice, quiet, and calm until the marines started their nighttime operations.  The sky overhead filled with helicopters and Osprey tiltrotor aircraft all coming and going from the adjacent airfield lighting us up with their spotlights and making a deafening racket.  Bill just slept with his good ear buried in his pillow seeing and hearing nothing.  At 2 am when the marines finally stopped, I was ready to go outside and wave a white flag.

A dry cold front passed over us during the night.  The air was cooler and drier, but the post frontal wind was 20 knots.  We had a lot of small boat traffic between Swansboro and Morehead City, but we managed to completely avoid the Big Rock Fishing Tournament traffic in Morehead City.  That was a relief.  The Big Rock had 220+ large sport fishing boats competing for a total prize pot of $6,000,000.  Understandably, the sport fishing boats would  always be in a hurry and not have time to be polite to little slow sailboats like us.  This was a short day for us; we were anchored in Adams Creek by 5:30.

Thursday, June 16 was an even shorter day.  With only a 3 or 4-hour trip to Northwest Creek, we did not depart until almost 10.  We watched a thunderstorm, with lots of lightening, bomb the town of Oriental.  Luckily for us we only had a few sprinkles of rain.  Irish Eyes was tied up in her slip at 2:30pm.  We got the car unlocked, moved the air conditioner to the boat, and said goodbye to the summer heat.  Ah, Freon, my dear friend.

I was looking forward to a shower with unlimited hot water and the use of a regular flush toilet.  We do have a 5-gallon water heater on Irish Eyes as well as an excellent marine toilet, but I was just ready for the conveniences of modern household plumbing.  To my dismay, the marina women’s bathroom was being remodeled and could not be used.  The closest women’s toilets and showers were at the recreation center a good distance away and only available during their open hours.  To Bill’s dismay, while I was using our on-board toilet, he could not replace the corroded and leaking piping on our holding tank.  Oh well.

We packed our clothes, food, and Bahamas boat stuff and took them to the car then moved the things that we had stored in the car back to the boat and did a little boat maintenance.  That sounds so simple.  It wasn’t.  It took four days.  While we were in New Bern, we had dinner with three other couples we met years ago while cruising.  Two of the couples now live in New Bern, and one couple was just passing through on their boat.  We had a wonderful time catching up.

We left New Bern Monday June 20 and made the long drive back to Kingsport.  Most things here in our house did well.  The refrigerator was not working properly, but Bill has worked on it, and it seems fine.  The washing machine had a leak, but Bill fixed that too.  It is probably one of the things I am most grateful to have, a very handy husband.

Hope you all have a wonderful summer.