The last time I updated the blog Kathleen and I were in Vero Beach, Florida. We had Just leased a new Ford Focus and now had to figure out how to get both the car and the boat back to Sea Harbour. We thought we would both drive the car back and take a one way rental from New Bern, NC to Vero
Beach. No joy! All rental agencies we contacted did not have a car available in the time frame we needed so after much discussion we decided that I would single hand the boat back to North Carolina.
My first stop on the way back was at the Canaveral barge canal to fuel up. I had to wait for about an hour as there was ab oat in front of me and this caused me to have to anchor in Titusville. In the morning when I started out I lost the Raymarine GPS and had to fall back on the Furuno system that was tied into the NMEA network. This was helpful but the system was no very accurate and only was able to give me a position within feet of my true position. I was going to stop at New Smyrna but I arrived there at about 1300 hours and decided to continue on. Just outside of Daytona and I was stopped by the potty police who wanted to make sure I wasn't discharging my heads overboard. I wasn't. Later in the afternoon as I was passing Daytona I ran into a thunderstorm and was forced to slow down as visibility was limited for a while. I decided to continue on and try to make it through Saint Augustine. I made it through the Matansas inlet , it was mid tide, but I noticed one of the markers was aground on the beach. I arrived at Saint Augustine just as dark was falling and decided to continue to an anchorage about 10 miles north of the city. It was interesting going through the city in the dark but I made it through okay. and made the anchorage at about 2300.
The next morning I continued on and made it to Fernandina by about 1500 and was able to relax a little before continuing on. In the morning (0600) I left for the 30 hour trip on the Atlantic to Charleston. The day was fair and I had a nice wind for the first 10 hours. At 1400 the wind dropped and the sea was calm so I pulled down the sails and began to motor. The calm helped the motoring but I began to be assaulted by hordes of biting flies and other bugs. Fortunately at dusk the wind began to blow and the bugs slowly disappeared.
The passage offshore of Savannah was fairly uneventful as I moved inside the ship channel and avoided the many ships that were waiting for passage into Savannah. The evening was fairly pleasant until about 03:30 when I saw north of my position what looked like artillery practice- The clouds would light like bombs were exploding. As I came closer to Charleston the wind picked up and started blowing at 23 to 30 knots and I realized what I was was a thunderstorm cell generating a light show.
When I was about 10 miles from Charleston the seas also started to build to 8 to 10 feet, and my boat speed dropped to only about 1 to 1.5 knots as I had to move into the teeth of the wind to make the ship channel. I finally made the ship channel at about 1400 and was able to make an anchorage at bout 1600. After I made sure the anchor was set I went below and fell into a sound sleep.
When I awoke at 0600 I decided to continue the trip up the ICW as the forecast was still for higher wind and seas. From Charleston I was able to make it to just outside Georgetown and arrived there fairly early in the afternoon.
From Georgetown I planned to make my evening at Southport. The pontoon bridge at the North Carolina border was not cooperating however/ The bridge operator could not open due to low tide and I had to anchor for two hours waiting for the tide to rise to allow the bridge to open. Fortunately I had a nice current and I was able to tie up to the marina slip at 1600.
From Southport I was able to ride the tide up the river and made up to 10 knots for the next 2 hours. This allowed me to anchor in Mile Hammock Bay where I was only one day away from Sea Harbour. The day was uneventful and I made our slip at Sea Harbour at 1500 and was finally home.
The last two months have been busy making repairs
fixed GPS antenna ( broken wire in the antenna lead)
Fixed water system. The original system supply pipe to the pump was too large and was allowing the pump to suck air ( It is amazing how much you miss water pressure when you don't have it)
repaired air conditioning condensing pipe leak
Repaired the solar panel charging system. ( the system showed battery voltage at only 10 volts and all lights were flashing on the charging panel. It ended up being a fuse that wasn't blown but had a high resistance across it. After replacing the fuse the system is working fine.)
Varnishing the teak. The sun had done a job on all exposed surfaces and the varnish was flaking off.
We had Kirk Hathaway dive on the boat to replace the prop zincs and we discovered that the cutlass bearing has spun out and the prop shaft is able to move fairly freely and we are scheduled to go on the travelift at Sailcraft to inspect and repair.
Hopefully all will be complete before we leave November 1 for the Bahamas.
Thursday July 29
Tow Boat US showed up this morning and we were towed to Sailcraft to have the necessary repairs made. When we asked Sailcraft to give us an estimate on the potential cost to repair the high end was $2,500.00 if we needed to replace the prop shaft, prop strut cutlass bearing, and this was an optimistic estimate, if the strut was truly broken we could have fiberglass damage and face a much larger bill.
We arrived at Sailcraft at 8:30am and had to lower the aft mast stays and the forestay to allow the travelift access to lift Legacy out of the water.
Securing the forestay Legacy in the Travellift slings
When we had Legacy in the slings, out of the water, we were pleasantly surprised. As it turn out the prop shaft on Calibers is secured to a shoe with two bolts. The bolts were had loosened over time and
was allowing movement in the prop shaft. The cutlass bearing was worn and it allowed the shaft some movement in the shaft. It was a fairly simple matter to unbolt, and remove the strut and replacethe cutlass bearing on the bench.
After the bearing was replaced and the strut reassembled and the bolts tightened there was zero movement in the prop shaft! Boy did we dodge a bullet!
While we were in the slings we were able to tighten the rudder shaft and prop shaft stuffing boxes and tighten a lose motor mount, and refill the transmission oil. At 11:45 we were back in the water and the total bill was only about a ¼ of the original estimate.
Motoring back to Seaharbour there was virtually no vibration and the engine seemed to be running much smoother. BIG SMILE. It looks like we will be well prepared for this winters trek to the Bahamas.
The only thing left on the punch list is to replace the anchor chain. That will be done on August 18th and we hope to shake down all the repairs on a trip to Ocracoke, or Cape Lookout.
