Naval Firepower

I spent my time somewhat stranded in Swansboro, fixing the engine and plotting my escape 

Tuesday March 6^th:

After far too long in Swansboro, NC I found myself pulling away to head south dolphins in tow (which I hoped was a good sign), engine running smoothly without any of the smoke that crippled me the last time I had moved the boat.  I was charting completely new territory, and as long as the engine held out- there was nothing that could stop me.

Except… the Navy.  They did a very good job of it too.  Not 7 miles from Swansboro a Navy patrol boat turned me back, telling me via the VHF radio that the ICW was closed “due to a live-fire exercise”. 

I had been hearing thundering booms for a whole week while I was in Swansboro- they went through the night and even in the wind storms that hammered me while I was trying to fix the engine the thunder could be heard, if a little muffled by the wind.

The restricted zone defeats me again, this time with an Apache

I cannot express the disappointment I felt having to turn back AGAIN… and returning with my head bowed and shoulders defeated to Dudley’s Marina back in Swansboro literally cursing the Dolphin good luck sign… only to find out (by calling the base later) that I had the choice of waiting and getting clearance to pass through the restricted zone (which the Navy hadn't let on); this is the same restricted zone that contributed to the decision to turn back when Antonio and I were on the ocean that fateful night little more than a week prior.

Wednesday March 7^th:

Try, and try again.

I disembarked from Dudley’s early in the morning and was back to knock on the Navy’s door again, this time armed with the knowledge of my rights to halt their Live-Fire after a 20 minute wait to make “best speed” through the firing range.  Here is a low-quality taste of what war games sound like:

What you’re hearing is the whine of the Mini-gun, a rapid fire computer controlled Gatlin gun that will make Swiss cheese out of anything the computer might be interested it targeting, and the deeper sound is the fifty caliber machine gun, the heaviest of the human point-and-shoot death machines.

The Marine base seemed to shut down after I got clearance- the sudden lack of "war sounds" while the military stood down to little old me was eerie.  The skeletons littering the landscape didn't help- I got to see some of their casualties as I passed through this land of cloak and dagger:

The V-22 Ospreys were just as active as I hauled ass through the trench back to the safety of civilian life and out of the barren wasteland of the warzone.  Blackhawks and Apaches were abound amongst the F-18’s and all sorts of larger aircraft; I couldn’t help but feel a sense of imminent invasion and causes for war were right around the corner.

I got another intimate taste of how unpredictable the waters of ICW are- I was where I was meant to be, but “something” very hard stopped me in my tracks while I was at my top engine speed- BOOM the whole boat lurched forward as my keel struck whatever was submerged and I winced at the too familiar sound of everything in the cabin flying off the shelves and onto the floor.  Later, I found things that were originally at the back of the boat very near the front.  Whatever I had hit, I hit very hard and all five tons of my boat was stopped instantly.  I’m guessing it was a boulder, or a huge chunk of steel, but whatever it was I half expect to find a sizable chunk missing from my keel the next time the boat gets hauled out of the water…

After that unexpected halt my nerves were pretty frayed, the gunships were still circling and the best part was I had a bridge that needed to open just for me (a first).  It was an intimidating roadblock I knew was in my way, but not as intimidating as the zone I was already in.  The bridge was the finish line, so I was glad to have gotten there.
As I passed out of the restricted zone is seemed like a cease-fire had been lifted and with all the more gusto after being halted, the war machine revved into motion, with every imaginable weapon lighting up like a Christmas tree- of course, I couldn’t see any of them.  But seeing isn’t believing when it comes to the sounds of shells exploding, or the hum of mini-guns spitting out hundreds of rounds per minute, or fifty caliber mounted machine guns hammering away like a construction worker high on caffeine.  All. At. The. Same. Time.

With no ceremony, and still somewhat jarred from the “open-fire” order that went out upon my departure, I requested the swing bridge be opened as Moses and the Red Sea, and so it was.  I passed through and my boat and I were re-christened “movers of bridges”.  A pretty exciting moment, that nobody was around to witness, although Morgan the Dog seemed a little bit worried to see the massive bridge move out of the way…

I didn't realize how used to such a thing I would become

For the rest of the day military craft were buzzing around like big gas guzzling flies and I could still hear the battleship cannons for miles and miles.  I made some calls and found a cheap place to keep the boat overnight- a small dock still under construction.  I was in a slip reserved for professional fishing boats that were apparently out to sea for a few days taking advantage of the pause in rough wind weather.

Lots of empty vacation homes on the ICW

Two swing bridges in one day, what!?

An anchored boat in a spot I had considered trying to anchor my boat

Before realizing this boat was permanently grounded making the mistake I considered....

Apparently John Travolta played a character that lived in this building... or something

Ron's building was basically a convenience store on the water right next to the public boat ramp that was being updated with some new technology.  He couldn’t offer me shore power or wireless internet, but he did let me ride with him into “town” which was a gas station.  The ride gave us plenty of time to talk, and upon hearing my description of the restricted zone, he offered up some of his own local rumors.  

Apparently between two and three Navy destroyers were off the coast, and possibly an aircraft carrier- which accounted for the massive thundering blasts and subsequent explosions I’d been listening to.  He explained that for the past 6 weeks they had been running war games constantly 24/7.  He was worried about it because similar war games had taken place in similar fashion before every major conflict, most recently the Iraq War, before that- Desert Storm.  He could only surmise that these latest games were training for an imminent Iran conflict.

Made it 36 miles... a record under my own power!

Marker 90 Marina (on the right, Travolta to the left)

I went to bed, belly full of Subway, thoughts heavy with a much more tangible sense of war looming.  It was a very rural area, but I felt that this is where you find people who have a deeper insight into these matters than most of the populous.  Mainly for two big reasons; they witness some things that don’t make it to the realm of public knowledge, and they have been around long enough to know what it means.
As I lay there drifting off to muffled sounds of shells being fired from offshore, I thought about what would happen if war games like these were publicized.  We were living in Venezuela when Desert Storm went down, and I remember news footage of the newly instituted “Smart Bombs” doing their damage.  I was 8 years old.

With the Iraq war still fresh in even the youngest citizen’s mind, I think some more interest and scrutiny would be taken regarding where we are with Iran, and what the mobilization effort is really doing if these war games were in the public’s face they way they were for me that day.  If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years of travel, if it’s going on in one small place like Sloop Point NC, then it’s going on nationwide, and there are military bases and installations everywhere.

I listened to hundreds of thousands of American dollars being discharged (or more) and thousands of gallons of jet fuel being burned in that one day- and this had been going on for six weeks.  While I doubt there were any injuries or fatalities, it brought the cost of war very close to home, and impressed me that an engagement (even the vague possibility of one) costs our people much more than what we send overseas, and has a lifelong lasting impression on locals who have seen decades of this behavior come and go…

Thursday March 8^th:

The next morning Ron arrived with a big heavy anchor.  We had talked about how I wanted to get a cheap anchor because I really couldn’t afford marina prices every night, but wasn’t confident that my current anchor I had gotten at Lake Norman was heavy enough to hold my boat in rougher weather.  Confidence is king when it comes to getting a good night’s sleep while anchored in unfamiliar waters alone in the rural dark.  For $20 he gave an anchor that would hold for sure, and after getting some basic contact info for if and when I returned his way, I pushed off to continue south to Wilmington.

So long, Sloop Point NC

Going Solo

Battered and bruised we dock at Town Creek Marina via Boat Tow

Friday, February 24^th Continued:

After arriving at Town Creek Marina we were treated with quite the opposite response as when we arrived at the private yacht club-

We had access to a courtesy car, laundry facilities, bathrooms- all the simple pleasures taken for granted until you need them and don’t have them.  We decided to ride in Ford Taurus style back into Beaufort to check out a restaurant, the first we’d been to since we started this adventure, and got to enjoy some really fresh seafood at “Finz”, a casual and seasonal local favorite that had reopened for business that very day.  After a week of only eating things that can be prepared with hot water or can opener, this meal was sublime; complete with sweet potato fries- my favorite kind of fry:

Shrimp and Crabcakes and Sweet Potato Fries...capitol!

See the satisfaction on his face!  Mine too- AWESOME!

Downtown Beaufort, NC

Some views from the boat-

Then we turned our attention to what was ailing the engine, and replaced the air filter and added some cleansing agents to the fuel.  This got us over the issue of the engine shutting off after five minutes.  We declared this a success and hoped our engine troubles were over (although skepticism still hung in the air after such minor fixes).  Unfortunately, we didn’t have a chance to move the boat and really test out the engine for all too soon Antonio would have to return to Charlotte and get back to work and the real world. hahahaha!

There's only one mast in this picture... guess who.

 Saturday February 25^th:

Naturally, since up until now we had gotten used to forced backtracking in the face of adversity, the nearest bus station where Antonio could catch a Greyhound happened to be back in New Bern… so we found ourselves back at our origin point.  "Where it all began"-  After a brief “So long”, Antonio was gone and I was driving the courtesy car back to the boat in Beaufort- and on the way I crossed over the first bridge Bernoulli went under, not nearly as spectacular a sight from inside the car. 

Driving a car again, sort of a weird feeling going so fast while doing so little (dropping Antonio off in New Bern).

The view from above the first bridge we went under on the ICW... not as cool from above-

This begs the topic of how much more you get to see when you travel by any other means than car; granted it took a few hours to cover the distance (twice) that it took two days to do in the boat.  But in that time we got to see waterfront homes on the ICW, stranded boats, dolphins, massive boat yards, bridges and shipping ports, plus tons of wonderful swampy scenery.  We got to drink wine and congratulate the owners of a freshly re-launched yacht.  We got to struggle in headwinds and walk to gas stations in the middle of the night.  That is all part of the immense fun.

I’ve been travelling solo since Antonio headed back to the real world, and I have had many adventures in that time.  But I need to take a moment and appreciate (explicitly) how much fun it is to have a companion on an epic trip like this, and especially how appreciative I am for his help and opinions in the times of trouble we shared.  Bouncing ideas back and forth on how to escape this or that mild disaster we’d gotten ourselves into was invaluable.  There were many more than got described in this blog after all.  Which also brings up the point of how a blog, by necessity, only skims the surface of what actually happens on an adventure because, simply put, readers don’t have the attention span for all the details of a great adventure.  So I recommend embarking on as ambitious an adventure you can conjure up; it’s the only way to know what really goes into such an unrivaled and idiotic pursuit, and it’s totally worth it to try.  I definitely recommend picking a travel companion carefully; the right companion will be helpful and reassure you, while I don’t even want to think of what the wrong companion might be capable of.  We only made it a tiny fraction of the distance we meant to when we set out from New Bern, and by most accounts the results would be considered an utter failure.  But I don’t consider it a failure in the least.  On the contrary, we had a really great time, and we determined by the end that we had made the right choices in the circumstances, risking as much as we were willing to, and caving to the will of nature at the right times.  The adventure is composed of the events, not simply the reaching of a predefined goal.

Cheers Antonio!  I certainly won’t forget this one anytime soon!

So Antonio was gone and got to re-enter society and could stop worrying about threatening his own life… but I was still very much at the whim of the adventure gods.  I still had many hundreds of miles to travel before reaching the first available destination where I would have a semblance of a support system, which turned out to be Beaufort SC, where my uncle and his family lives.  Also, I was now in the hitherto untested scenario of having to dock and disembark without an extra set of hands, and any mistakes to be made would be mine alone, and the only person around to help me out of tight spots would be Morgan the dog, whose expertise was limited at best.  

I was effectively on my own, and I was spending almost $60 a day staying at Town Creek Marina.  Meanwhile, wind storms were still pounding the boat which kept me from leaving.  It was two days after dropping Antonio off in New Bern before I was able to pull away from Beaufort NC and raise the sails to continue the journey.  But I was able to get laundry done and restock the boat- as well as get to eat a meal with my parents who drove up from Wilmington to see me and my boat:

Monday February 27^th:

The mood (my mood) was cautious but somewhat triumphant as I pulled away and went past the shipping port for what I hoped would be the last time (and was, by boat anyway).  I was worried about leaving on my own- but couldn't afford to stay even if I wanted to, and I was anxious to reach a new destination- anywhere but where I'd been for far too long...

Pulling away from Town Creek Marina- striking out solo for the first time

I was able to use the wind for most of my endeavor that first day- saving the engine as much as I could.  I was still hesitant to trust the engine, if only because after all the trouble it had caused I couldn’t quite believe that a $15 part and a fuel additive could have really fixed the problem.  But I made my way by wind for as long as I could and got to see and do these:

Turning the corner, leaving that bridge behind (for the last time)

The sights as I moved away from the big shipping port 

This is the video I shot, you can probably hear the notes of caution and feigned excitement as I made my way towards what was next...

Unfortunately, I was right to be cautious, because when the wind died and I was forced to rely on the engine it wasn’t more than about 15 or 20 minutes before smoke started pouring out of the cabin, and it was clear I had bigger problems than a faulty and decomposing air filter.

Before I knew it I was dead in the water, and drifting onto the sandy shores of the ICW.  Again, I got to call Boat U.S. to tow me to a friendly port.  However, this time at least I got towed the right direction, further south, and away from the cursed Beaufort NC.

Nearly half of the distance made that day was by tow boat, so overall a pretty failed day.  In fact I made it about as far down the coast as Antonio and I did when we were on the ocean, but this time I was on the ICW side of the barrier island versus on the ocean side, where we were stranded.  I was delivered to Dudley’s Marina in Swansboro where the wind was picking up again.

The distance traveled in this post-

The Coast Guard boat that pulled up the night I arrived in Swansboro, just to make things interesting, and it leaving again in the morning- 

Over the next several days, while getting pounded by more windstorms that would blow me back north if they had their way, I learned more about how to diagnose the problem with my engine (because I couldn’t afford to hire a proper mechanic) and with the help of some of my Lake Norman boat buddies and the internet I tracked the problem to the raw water impeller- which is a little water wheel that draws seawater into the engine as coolant.  My problem was that there was no coolant running through the engine (hence the smoking cabin).

A bad picture of something about 2" wide- that black stuff is what is left of the raw water impeller

I was able to take their courtesy vehicle back to Beaufort NC, back to Town Creek Marina, where the mechanics had the part I needed… yet again in Beaufort.  

On the way back to Beaufort NC to pick up a new impeller

I like to go over every bridge I've gone under- just to be thorough...

It seemed no matter what I tried I just couldn’t get away from that town.  But at least the boat wasn’t coming back with me.  I changed out the obliterated impeller and ever since then I haven’t had any serious problems with the engine.  Considering that a working engine is a must for travelling on the ICW this layover of about a week in Swansboro was a necessary delay.  Additionally, I now know much more about my engine, which I’m sure will come in handy as the adventure continues.

So... here's to looking on the bright side!
Next Time:  Naval Firepower

Recovery, Shower, Legal Unsubtleties

I’ll admit, after our little jaunt on the ocean complete with wind-storm/coast guard/general worry about personal safety-adventure, returning back to the norm (especially in retrospective writing) is a tricky transition.  Even at the time, there was a sense (for me) of “something has changed” and it needed to be respected.

Sort of like the morning after an epic night of partying, like you can’t really believe things could go back to normal.  I don’t know if it was made clear in the last post, but we narrowly escaped a really sad(and stupid) ending to the adventure, and I don’t know if it was luck, or that we didn’t need to be worried in the first place, or what- I guess I feel like I need more stormy experiences at sea before deciding if I had the right to be terrified. 

Honestly when I thought about it when we were out there in the dark and heavy seas, it was a lot simpler to dwell on how exhausted I was, or nauseous, or that all my stuff I had spent months finding the utilitarian place for was all on the floor…  So that pretty well covers the topic of if I was scared… if I did get scared I just thought about how irritating it was, and sort of forget fear as an option.  Cheers, way to deal with reality.

Thursday, the 23^rd of February:

What ended up being our "Safe Port" after the sea adventure- the slip was a bit shallow at low tide but was nonetheless a welcome respite from the sea.

Well, reality is what we tried to avoid the following day.  We were back at “The Hotel” in Beaufort NC and picking up the pieces (literally) and putting the boat back together, while making tea, and avoiding the marina staff.  Turns out “The Hotel” was a marina attached to a condo complex, and all the old people were complaining about us just being there and reporting us to the dock master anyway… a very nice guy who had no problem letting us spend the day there before starting to charge for dockage.  So that gave us most of a day to recuperate, shower, fix up the rigging, take a good look at the engine and our surroundings before moving on in search of a mechanic.

I spent a fair chunk of time taping up the page from the chart book, which was in tatters (see image in previous post), and hanging it in the head to dry.  I was going to need to continue using it when it was time for me to depart however far away that might be.  

Meanwhile, we got to take showers, quite the amazing experience after our endeavor (and it had been a couple of days- since New Bern, I think).  We were also marooned in fog… so we needed to wait for that to clear before pulling out and finding a place that could help with our engine trouble.  I even got a little work done with what was left of the battery on my laptop and phone.

Then we set out for town on foot.  “The Hotel” was on an island almost entirely alone, and we had to walk a few miles to actually get into Beaufort:

As much fun as can be made of this sign, it's really quite nice, and so was Historic Beaufort...

... which is apparently the third oldest “Towne” in North Carolina, and I’m still trying to figure out if that is actually a distinction… but I guess it’s enough of one to excuse Old English spelling.  It was a pleasant walk that felt like solid ground, which was probably the best part.

But normalcy wouldn’t last forever, because the tide was coming back in (thus lifting the boat off the bottom so we could depart) and we needed to get the boat somewhere with a mechanic.  The fog had lifted by the time we got back to the boat and so we wrapped up and pulled away from “The Hotel”.  The wind was sufficiently strong enough to get us most of the way to a marina we had picked out for having a mechanic. For the record, it was listed on a map we had gotten from the Three Blind Mice.  In fact the wind was quite forceful and although we didn’t have far to go I was getting increasingly worried about docking in the dark in that kind of wind.  What made it worse was that the marina was barely illuminated at all, and I had to get pretty close before I could tell where I was going to enter the dock.  I chose a slip on the end to ensure I wasn’t going to run aground which would have been particularly unpleasant without a reliable engine in a dim marina with the wind getting stronger by the minute in a shipping port.

We did manage to slip in like we were drunkenly parallel parking, using a post on the starboard side to sort of violently guide us into the slip.  Then we celebrated with food and drink, and pictures because we had yet again (however briefly) braved the water and wind again with faulty equipment, too little experience, on a deadline:

Food, drink, and music to forget our troubles...

The spectacular view from the hatch

That really big boat from an earlier post, and a bridge

Friday, the 24^th of February:

… only to wake up the next morning to the bitter disappointment that we were trespassing and didn’t know it.  Turns out there was a huge “No Trespassing” sign attached to a post on the next slip down, that was probably there the night before, in concentrating on docking in wind I neglected to read on arrival.

In the darkness we had pulled into a private yacht club, the kind were outsiders are unwelcome, apparently regardless of the condition the craft is in (engineless) or how tired and irrational the crew.  (In my defense the marina was very poorly lit...?)

The club president ducked his “real job” in order to come out and deal with us troublemakers with ample threats of legal prosecution if we didn’t get the boat out of there.  Oh, and the wind had only gotten worse due to another wind storm coming in to attempt to break our well-intentioned spirits.

So there we were, stranded where we were unwelcome, nary a mechanic in sight and trespassing charges dangling over our heads.  Jail time has always been well within the realm of possibility in every adventure; almost expected really, knowing my luck and my way of doing things.  But I was expecting it would at least be in another country, like Cuba, for not respecting local visa laws or something- or for a mistaken case of identity in a mugging or bar fight in Italy.  Not for trespassing at a yacht club in the welcoming southern “towne” of Beaufort NC.

Had the wind been lighter, I would have tried sailing away.  But it was time to get the engine fixed.  We definitely couldn’t keep hoping it would hold out and that we’d keep getting it to run for 5 minutes when we needed it most before dying again.  Especially in building storm conditions.  So if I had to get the boat towed, then I needed to find a place where the cops weren’t waiting for me with open handcuffs, especially for trespassing, weak…

So I called in these guys:

Boat U.S.- I signed up for a membership and the nice young guy politely towed and listened without too much judgement as I tried to salvage some dignity by describing our predicament- the whole way round the island to Town Creek Marina where there was a fully outfitted boat mechanic department.