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.