Wednesday

A little weather moving in...

Between showers

We got up about 5 on Wednesday morning so that we could make the drawbridge opening at 6:30. By going north out of Beaufort instead of south, we did not have to go around Radio Island to head back up to the Neuse. We arrived right at the Highway 70 drawbridge at 6:30 and sailed on through the open bridge. As soon as we cleared the bridge, we started looking for the next channel marker. As it was still dark, Rich brought up the Blue Max spotlight and flipped it on. Pretty soon after that, all of the lights and the GPS went out on the boat. The spotlight blew one of the two fuses at the battery that power the electrical panel. When I had rewired the boat, I had used 10 amp fuses because I was out of 20 amp and  I just forgot to change them. I was still steering the boat while Rich looked under the port settee for the fuse holders immediately near the battery. I put the boat in neutral and helped Rich find the spare fuses. There were no other boats around, so it seemed safe. After Rich located the spare fuses and changed the blown one, we had power restored. The GPS rebooted and shared with us the knowledge that we were in two feet of water. There was a little bit of light by this time and we had drifted over near two sign posts jutting up out of the water. It appeared the channel was way off to port. I asked Rich if he could read the signs as I could not. He replied "yes, Danger, Shoal!" As the boat shuddered to a stop it seemed the information was not received in a timely fashion. Ah, the joys of a swing keel boat! A few cranks on the keel winch and we were off and back in the channel.

Can you go any faster?

Stylish as usual

Another few hours of motoring through the ICW and we were back in the Neuse. The weather was still iffy with a lot of cloud cover, but we headed east towards the Sound. We got caught in two or three rain squalls and spent our time putting our rain gear off and on. We sailed several hours until we were past the outer markers for the Neuse and we were in the sound proper. We could see what appeared to be a wicked thunderstorm coming up behind us traveling northeast. We turned south east to try to get some distance from it. As the wind wasn't friendly for that direction, we fired up the Honda. Unfortunately, we were closing on a prohibited area which is used for gunnery and bombing practice for the armed forces. The farther south we got, the closer we were closing on the bombing range! We could actually hear what we assumed to be 20 millimeter cannon fire in the distance along with jet fighters passing near by. "What are the targets they are shooting at?" Rich wondered. "Probably old sailboats." I replied. As we had run right up against the markers proclaiming "Keep Out!" we had no choice but turn back north into the storm. We weren't really concerned about the rain and there wasn't much wind. It was just the lightning that had us worried. We plowed ahead into the storm. Rain came down in sheets and the visibility dropped to 50 yards. Aside from the lighting, it really wasn't too bad. We were through it in a half hour and the sun came back out. We had been on the move since 5 and we were getting pretty tired, so we started looking for a place to anchor.