False Starts

We put the finishing touches on the electrical refit and decided Minerva was done. One more test sail and then we'd finally escape North out of the hurricane zone. We were invited to tag along with Phoenix for a Cape Lookout weekend sail. We were even smug enough to consider, for a moment, leaving right from there on the outside around Cape Hatteras and up to Virginia that way.

Oh, how the smug get smote.

We followed Phoenix down Adams Creek and out into the open ocean. In Beaufort we sailed out against the incoming tide - with all our sails out on a 15 knot beam reach we inched past the channel marker buoys which were leaning hard against the current and throwing up wakes of their own. It felt a little like those nightmares where you are running as hard as you can and not going anywhere.

Eventually we escaped the incoming tide and Minerva realized the speed she'd been straining for. We sailed alongside the shores of the Outer Banks in rather sloppy seas. It felt good to be out in open ocean for the first time on Minerva, she handles the slop like a champ. Ahead of us, we saw the wave action rolling Phoenix around near the mouth of Cape Lookout so we made the decision to take a longer but more comfortable approach which delayed our arrival.

By the time we came around the sandbar that makes up the hook of Cape Lookout, Phoenix had long been settled on her anchor way up in the protected part of the anchorage. Just inside the hook we turned into the wind, fired up the engine, and Lance started taking down the sails while I kept her pointed into the wind. As soon as I put Minerva into gear, she died. I started her back up again, put her in gear, and she died again, and again a third time. Lance was unaware of my struggles and yelled back "hey the boat is coming around you gotta turn into the wind so I can get the sails down" to which I shouted (first a string of cursing, then) "she keeps dying". He let go of his armful of sail to check the engine compartment; I watched in horror as the depth meter read 24 feet, 20 feet, 17 feet. He still had his head in the engine compartment while I ran up and dropped the anchor. In my haste I dumped some chain on top of the anchor instead of letting it set first and then paying out the chain carefully - a rookie mistake and I know better. He didn't find anything obviously wrong with the engine - the filters looked clean and water was entering and exiting like it should. All seemed to be running well until we tried to put her in gear.

The winds were howling and we were being blown against the lee shore.

We looked hopefully for an obstruction on the propeller, alas there was nothing to cut free. Which meant we probably had a transmission problem. Not so easily solved at this remote location. I reluctantly put away the dive knives.

The Lighthouse at Cape Lookout 

As the afternoon became night, the winds increased to a steady 40 knots. We inched towards the lee shore, in hindsight I think the chain was just freeing itself from the top of the new Mantus anchor, but at the time I was convinced we were dragging and so we set the second Fortress anchor. The shelf was disturbingly close behind us and so we took turns on anchor watch.

In the morning we hashed out our options over coffee. The Saturday morning winds were changing direction a bit too haphazardly and we were too close to the 3' shoal to try sailing off the anchors into deeper waters, and the afternoon and next two days were predicted to be the same high winds blowing us onto the lee shore, followed by flat calm on Monday. Ultimately we swallowed our pride and called TowBoat US; they agreed the best course of action was to tow us into a safer part of the anchorage closer to Phoenix for the time being rather than drag us off the lee shore after running aground later, and do the long tow on Monday when conditions were calm.

Wild ponies of Shackleford Banks

With our plan established we explored all we could between rain squalls. By Monday Lance decided rather than getting towed to a shop he wanted to return to our Oriental slip, pull the transmission and replace it himself with the help of a local mechanic in Oriental.

Our tow ride home on Monday was smooth as silk. At the end of the ride I signed a document for $0 towing fees. Yay unlimited towing.

The open ocean portion of the long tow home

The mechanic gave us some good news: a whole transmission replacement wouldn't be necessary - just a cable which was obviously frayed - a readily available $30 part. We were up and running again quickly. We thought the problem was solved, so we scheduled another "last" shakedown cruise before our big escape.

The following weekend we took out a handful of friends for an afternoon sail. It was glorious... until time to put the sails away and go home. I powered her up, turned her into the wind, put her in gear, and she died. Exactly the same as the weekend before.

This time we were close to home, had a nice beam reach, and lots of able-bodied sailors aboard, so the decision to sail her into her slip was a natural one.

Now, if you've never sailed a boat into a slip, let me tell you - getting the speed juuuuuuuust right is of the utmost importance. Too fast and you'll destroy something on the boat or the dock, or someone will get hurt trying to prevent just that from happening. Too slow and you'll drift uncontrollably in the anchorage. In both cases the boat will seek out the most expensive thing to run into. Lance and I practiced this with smaller previous boats; Minerva weighs in at a beastly 16 tons.

Nevertheless, luck was with us. We landed at just the right speed, placed the lines easily, and stepped off the boat like pros. It went off perfectly, largely because the wind was just right for such a maneuver, and also because we had plenty of agile crew aboard. Despite being the only ones aboard with any experience in this maneuver (or perhaps because we were) it was only Lance and I who appeared to suffer from flop sweat. From the outside it probably looked impressive. I still shudder when I think of all the ways it could have gone wrong.

Once we'd waved our friends goodbye, we moved on to problem-solving. Clearly the transmission cable was A problem but not THE problem. More troubleshooting required. Our daily mantra.

The mechanic is a busy guy. While waiting for him to find room for us on his calendar Lance started poking around on his own and discovered some errant belts around the shaft under the engine, probably used by the last technicians to align the propeller with the engine after the last service and then forgotten, and also the transmission was empty. As in NO fluid at all empty. Lance flushed it out - thankfully discovered no glitter - and replaced it with new transmission fluid. By the time the mechanic arrived she was purring like a kitten and smoothly shifting into forward and reverse in the slip, straining against her docklines, ready to go.

With quite a bit less confidence we launched shakedown attempt #3. We joined in with 3 other boats headed to Ocracoke for the long holiday weekend. We put her in reverse, pulled out into the river and pointed into the wind. All seemed well. We motored for a while, then sailed for a while. When it became clear we were not going to make it against the contrary winds to our destination before sunset we tried to fire up the motor again. No love. Turned the key on and... no go.

Once again Lance had his head in the engine compartment while I watched the depth gauge free fall towards zero. When I decided it was getting too shallow I turned her around, filled the sails and we surfed back to the marina on following seas and a strong tailwind. Marina staff towed us into our slip when it became clear there wasn't enough wind in the marina to land her the rest of the way on our own.

Our good friends Janet and Joe, who had been watching our inReach breakcrumbs and guessed we were in trouble when they saw us turn around, were waiting on the dock to catch us, and accompanied us for a commiserating evening of alcohol abuse.

Time to quit. This girl needs a drink.

The next time we opened the engine compartment - a broken spring glinted in the sunshine. Yep, you guessed it, its job had been "kill switch". A 25 cent part; Lance swapped it out in less than a minute. She fired right up, purred like a kitten, shifted smoothly and strained against her docklines in forward and reverse.

We're hoping the third time's a charm, and that we can escape to safety soon. Storm after storm rolls across the Atlantic, we've witnessed two of them become hurricanes, and they are likely to keep threatening us through October. I try not to lose sleep over when the big one is coming for us, and my obsession with weather websites might be bordering on excessive.

It's starting to feel like we will never leave Oriental.

I wonder if Minerva's cursed. Lance believes she just wants to show us all the areas she needs attention up front and when she is content she'll behave. He believes she's testing our worthiness. She's certainly testing the limits of my sanity.

There are worse places a person could get stuck, surely. At least the sunsets are pretty.

Another beautiful post-squall summer sunset behind the Oriental bridge

Sandwiched Between Two Squalls

"All the little boats are going in. Should we take the hint and follow them?" Lance was standing amidship, the mainsheet in his hand, squinting at the stream of little sailboats high-tailing it for the safety of their slips in the Oriental Harbor Village Marina.

The line of demarcation between squalls

We were on a downwind run with all three sails out. For the first time, I was sailing wing on wing on wing; something I'd been wanting to try since I first saw this boat in the yard.

Sailing wing on wing on wing

We had been watching the storm raging over the town of Oriental for some time. The wall of black sky which had approached from the West was still hugging the shoreline. The town was getting battered. It wasn't bothering us at all out on the river. In fact we were quite enjoying the lightning show. Over there.

"Nah" I said dismissively. "We don't want to try to dock in that, besides if we hang out here long enough it should blow away on its own. Then we'll go in when it's calm." I surreptitiously adjusted the wheel just a scooch to keep the boom on the downwind side, once again it was trying to jibe in the gusty blasts and I was enjoying the cat-and-mouse game of keeping the sails on their proper side.

Less than 20 minutes later the alarm on the VHF radio went off. When Lance pressed the stop alarm button we were directed to the weather channel.

Sustained winds of 45 expected, gusts to 65. Quick-moving weather front crossing Emerald Isle and heading North. Steady lightning and thunder, golf ball-sized hail expected. All boats should seek immediate shelter.

"Where is Emerald Isle?" Lance asked. I shrugged. I assumed it had something to do with the storm we were watching - that squall was still raging over Oriental and now we were all alone on the Neuse River except for the shrimp boats which had suddenly appeared from thin air and were screaming towards us from every direction.

I wonder where they're going I thought to myself, and turned Minerva to fall in with them. It was then that I saw another black wall coming towards us from the other side of the river, and they were heading directly into its outside edge posthaste. This second squall had sneaked in behind us and was closing on us quickly. We got the sails down and secured just in time for the first blast of wind and whipped up water.

Minerva rocked sideways like she'd been slapped in the face, then popped right in to the boiling waves that followed behind the wind surge and stubbornly held her course. Lance and I exchanged wide-eyed glances. That blast would have pinned us down for a while in any of our previous sailboats and we definitely would have been wrestling for control with the subsequent whirlpool wave action. But Minerva took it like a professional boxer with a "that all you got kid?" smirk. My soul filled with pride and relief. We had chosen well. This boat can handle herself in a blow.

We quickly decided the best course of action was to follow the shrimp boats into the narrow and protected channel of Adams Creek on the South side of the Neuse River. Once we got past the tree line the wind and waves settled right down. We found a shallow spot out of the channel and settled the anchor. Lance started dinner while I pulled out the map and found Emerald Isle. Yep, it was just South of us. The strongest wind we clocked on our short journey in was 35 knots so it had lost some steam on its short ride from the Outer Banks to us on the Inner Banks.

Sailing into our sunset slip

The squalls here are fierce but generally short-lived. By the time I'd cleaned up the dinner dishes we were treated to a peaceful ride home under a spectacular pink sunset.

Note to self: when studying the charts and planning the daily sail, also take a moment to look over Google Maps and become aware of the nearby towns and their relationship to the day's planned sail. Lesson learned.

Becoming Liveaboards, motoring along the ICW

Motoring down the ICW on the 4th of July

The hot and wet weather continues. We attack the projects and escape the dock with Minerva when weather permits.

True to our RV lifestyle, flexibility is king, and having two piles of things to do: a rainy day pile and a pile for stolen sunny moments is the way to continue making forward progress.

Loretta in RV jail, waiting patiently for November

We finished scrubbing down Loretta and parked her in the covered parking facility. She'll be safe there for the time being. The plan is to do a shake-down cruise up the NorthEast coast and return to this area in November, swap out boat life for RV life for the month of December in the Keys with our RV friends. We've decided to park Mr. Toad with Loretta until we come to some long-term decisions. By November we'll know how we feel about the boat. One of several things will happen in January depending on how the summer/fall shakedown cruise goes:

• The RV might get sold, which would be better for her than waiting and aging if we decide to do a long extended cruise around the Caribbean and beyond.
• The boat might want significant upgrades which would be easier accomplished while we keep the RV as a home base nearby.
• We might store the RV after our December outing and split our cruising lives in half, with some land-based and some boat-based travel each year.

Our first ever raft-up. From here we had the best view of dueling 4th of July fireworks shows.

With Loretta secured and us finally moved fully aboard the boat, we officially exchanged our nomad titles of full-timers for a new title of liveaboards.

Our planned harbor-hopping route North has been complicated by COVID-19. As of this morning, many of the harbors we were planning to explore are not accepting transient boaters from states that have out-of-control new Corona Virus case numbers, and NC is one of those at the moment. Nova Scotia is definitely off the table since Canada is completely closed to Americans, some states including Maine and New York insist on a two-week quarantine upon arrival. Our harbor-hopping summer plans have therefore become a bit trickier to work out.

One thought is to just kick out into the open ocean, hitch a ride on the Gulf Stream and sail directly to Maine. We could provision for the open ocean trip and the two weeks of quarantine upon arrival, but this is rather varsity-level considering that we haven't had a chance to really get to know Minerva yet. With all this uncertainty we reluctantly agreed to extend another month's rent in Oriental, into the official hurricane season of July, hoping the state restrictions will lift and that we will be welcomed in the NorthEast states for harbor-hopping as originally planned. We'll get out for more local sailing outings and continue getting to know Minerva, by early August we'll be leaving one way or the other. We finished our Tier 1 To Do List and pulled a few items forward from Tier 2. The completion of the Tier 1 list means Minerva is ready to flee the moment a named storm threatens. I start each day checking several weather sources, probably my daily routine for the foreseeable future.

Tug on the ICW sharing a very narrow channel. This one was heading to rescue a barge that was stuck in the shallows.

From the Tier 2 list: get comfortable with GPS routing. That's proving to be a bit more difficult than I expected, the new chartplotter is a lot different from the simple ones we had on previous boats. We followed a friend on his boat South on the ICW for 17 miles to watch a fireworks show, and there really isn't a better way of being forced into learning the GPS than in the narrow channels of the ICW. Here's an example of what we've experienced:

Phoenix picking her way along the ICW on the 4th of July

This is the sailboat Phoenix belonging to our friend Scott, she is a 44' Kelly Petersen. She draws about as much water as we do (depth needed below the waterline not to scuff the seafloor), and Scott knows these waters well, so we followed him down the ICW for the fireworks show. In this picture he's about 200 yards ahead of us. The channel he is in is about 10' wide and about 15' deep and he's currently heading perpendicular to the natural path of the river - in other words he's headed sideways towards the West shore. To his left (port) side the water is about 2' deep. To his right (starboard) side the water is 3' deep. The waters are strong-tea brown from tree tannins, so it's impossible to see through them to get a real understanding of the bottom contours. Can you see the difference between the 15' deep water, the 2' water, or the 3' water? Neither can we. And to us it was unnatural that he was going sideways to our intended direction of travel.

So there we were, happily following along behind him and mostly following along as he jogged here and there for seemingly no reason, we were sort of rounding off the corners of his jogs while chatting with our friends who hitched a ride with us for the outing, when Scott came over the radio and strongly suggested we come back to starboard soon because we'd drifted off course. A quick look at the GPS - yikes - we were heading into 2' water.

From then on we were glued to the GPS. There were no groundings that day, but I see how there could easily become some in the future. Boaters say "there are two types of boaters, those who have run aground and those who will". Yep, our day is coming. We will pay better attention in the future to avoid becoming "those who have" but freely admit it's probably just a matter of time until we scuff our share of soft ICW mud.

Typical waterfront homes in the area known as Sea Gate along the ICW on the way to Morehead City

After the fireworks show it was quite late; Scott and his family chose to sleep on the hook (at anchor) in Beaufort. We decided to motor back up the ICW to return our guests home with just the stars and occasional marker or house lights to keep us company as we motored quietly by. I do love night sailing, and it was easy enough to follow our GPS bread crumbs back home.

Chloe enjoying the breeze

We're hoping for lots more outings like this in July.