North Carolina

Weather is still favorable and we are making good progress.  We start early and travel with tide under us most of the day.  We are early in the season, so the osprey are just getting started building their nests.

We continually see several reminders of hurricane Florence:

Leaving Myrtle Beach, our thrusters quit working, again!  That issue has plagued us ever sense we've had Happy Daze.  Of course we only find out about it when we need to use them.  Like getting into or out of a marina.  A few miles later, we used them at a bridge holdup and they worked fine.  But when we came into the marina at Southport, NC, they stopped working just when most needed against a strong side wind.  Fortunately, there is a quality marine service there called Zimmerman Marine.  After tying up, I immediately contacted them to help fix our thruster issue.  The site manager came right over to diagnose.  Not sure, but we decided to order in a bunch of parts next-day-delivery then do swap out to find the problem.  In the mean time Angie and I enjoyed walking around the town:

Spring has just begun. so it was a treat to see the fresh blooms: 

We treated ourselves to a lovely meal at a seaside cafe and had another wonderful sunset view with our marina in the distance.

So next day after the repair parts arrived, we began testing the thruster system.  Here is a picture of the wiring behind our control panel (not something you ever really want to dig into):

So after a couple of hours diagnosing and swapping out parts (connector cables, control units, end terminators, etc), we deduced that the whole problem (that we have been having for 2 years!) is probably a bad electrical tee connector:

Hard to believe!  But after previously spending thousands on other "fixes" it may have been this simple, bad,  plastic connector that was causing the intermittent failures all along.

So after a couple of layover days and a big sigh of relief, we optimistically set out to continue our journey north.  Here is a passing shot of Southport, NC.

Further north we travelled through many miles of houses on with water access.  Some more colorful than others:

Our anchorage the next nite was at Hammock Bay on Camp Lejune.  There is always military activity near here.

A hundred miles on, near the Pamlico Sound, our next anchorage was more remote and we enjoyed a beautiful sunrise.

Another  100 mile day, including crossing the Albemarle Sound in rough waves , brought us to Coinjock.  A simple marina with a great restaurant that we once again treated ourselves to.

Tomorrow we will leave N. Carolina, with only 50 miles to Norfolk, Va and start up the Chesapeake Bay.

South Carolina

The ICW route through Georgia and S. Carolina can be quite confusing.  There are no signposts at the river intersections telling you which way to go.  I've found that plotting out a route on our iPad the night before really lowers the stress level when it comes to navigating through these waters.

The reward for this area is the wonderful anchorages.  They are remote from civilization and very serene.  Every one we had was better than the last.

But you still have to be careful of the tides.  Here we are in a side river anchorage, alone as always.

 When the water goes down the width can also shrink dramatically.

We have dolphins show up by the boat every once in a while.  And the osprey are building their nests all along this stretch of water.  We also saw several bald eagles; they sure are impressive.

For a bit of history we cruised by Fort Sumter, near Charleston.

We've always stopped in Myrtle Beach since it has nice marinas on the ICW and the beach is close by.  This time we stayed at Grand Dunes Marina for two nights.  A 1.5 mile walk to the beach was on wide sidewalks and little traffic.  Spring just started and we are seeing new green leaves and a few flowering plants.

The beach is wide and quite long.  We walked 4 miles along it until our bare feet got sore.

Stopped at grocery store on our way back to boat for more fresh stuff.  A total of 7 miles walking felt good after 5 days straight on the boat.  We've come almost 400 miles since leaving Jacksonville.  Only 600 more to reach Washington DC, the goal for this leg.

Georgia

Georgia has a 10 ft tide range!
So it behooves the cruising boater to plan accordingly.  And our timing has been good.  We left JAX at 10:30 am, which was just before high tide.  That allowed us to breath easy over the shallow spots for the next several miles.  The Atlantic Inter Coastal Waterway, ICW, is plagued by stretches that continually get silted in.  What is supposed to be 10-12 foot depths ( Mean Low Water on the charts) quickly becomes 5 ft or less. Which can be a real problem for a boat that draws 4 ft and you happen to wander out of the deepest part of the channel (which you can't see on the surface!). That is where using the tides comes to the rescue. We were able to travel with 3-8 ft of tide under us all thru Georgia.  By starting 3 hours on a rising tide, we would finish 3 hours after high tide, but still with plenty of cushion under us. Here is a picture of one nice anchorage we stayed at:

Same anchorage, but at low tide:

Temps have been down to 60 over night and up to 68 daytime.  A little windy, but mostly sunny, so overall quite pleasant.  We turn on the heat first thing in the AM to take the chill off.  But when sun comes up, we are fine and start opening windows.  Best thing about this time of year is - NO BUGS!

This is our 6th time through this stretch and the least amount of little critters we have ever experienced.  An earlier trip on Snow Bird will always be remembered for the never ending hoard of  biting green headed flies.

 We had a clear view of the Supermoon on Mar 20, marking the first day of spring:
 

But, it didn't hold a candle to the standard old sunset we were presented with most every day:

Jacksonville Beach

On March 16 we flew back to Jacksonville and Palm Cove Marina where Happy Daze was waiting for us.  After 5 hours in the airport the day before, our United flight got cancelled due to weather in Denver, so we went back home (taxi both ways!) and booked flight out next day with American thru Dallas, arriving at midnight Sat.

Melisa and Aslan drove up from St. Petersburg and Cristine had flown in from MO to visit with us before we took off.  Weather did a quick change from the sunny 80 degree days they had been having, to windy, cloudy, and 60's, but we enjoyed our time together, played games, and went out for great meals.

M&A drove back Monday morning so Aslan would be on time for tests at school.  Cristy joined Angie and I for a ride on e-bikes by Jacksonville Beach. 

It was quite pleasant and Cristy really enjoyed herself, until she took a spill.

 No one is sure what happened, maybe a storm grate in the street caught her front tire,  But she took a hard fall and was knocked out for a bit and in a daze after, with abrasions on her chin, cheek and shoulder.  A call to 911 brought the police and ambulance very quickly.

They took her to the trauma hospital ER (wow, what a busy place!).  We spent about 2 hours there while they did tests and scans, with mostly good results.  Her face became very swollen, bruised and scraped up.  It was a somber evening and a sad goodbye the next morning when we took her to the airport for flight home.  Took a couple of days to be rid of bad headache, but prognosis is good and we are relieved.

Angie and I took another day to provision and prep the boat for departure.  It was still very windy and cold, so no great enthusiasm to push off.