June 28, 2006 – Summer Weather?

We left Wrightsville Beach early Sunday morning with Seaview. The sky was dark and overcast with rain predicted. There were three bridges on the route with restricted hours for opening, and it kept us hustling to make each of them without having to wait up to an hour for the next openings. With the help of a favorable current and a little leeway by the bridge tenders, we were lucky to get through them all with minor delays. About noon it started to rain, and the boats were deluged with frequent squalls, sometimes with zero visibility, and thunder and lightning crashed all around. Fortunately, we are able to completely enclose our cockpit, so we stayed dry and warm, but Keith had to steer Seaview out in an open cockpit, where he was cold and soaking wet. Not fun! They decided to stop at a marina early in the day, while we continued on to an enclosed basin in an upscale housing development, where we anchored for a very quiet night.

Again on Monday we motored through a dark, drizzly day, and found a remote creek to anchor in overnight, before crossing the exposed Pantego Sound on Tuesday morning. Since the forecast was for increasing winds on Tuesday, we crossed the Sound early in the day and had a good trip with a brisk sail. After the crossing, we decided to go to a marina in Belhaven, NC, where we could do internet and laundry and walk ashore into town. With some difficulty in the stiff breeze we managed to tie up alongside the marina dock about noon, and Cliff was having second thoughts about the wisdom of being there.

At about three in the afternoon, a storm came in, and we experienced perhaps the worst weather of the entire trip, with torrential rains, 50 knt wind, and huge whitecaps coming over the breakwater and crashing into the boats at the dock. A couple of boats were damaged and a Nordhaven cruiser snapped off two pilings and a finger dock. Because Skylark was tied alongside on the downwind side, we survived intact, and while the storm raged, I was inside the big colonial inn at the marina, not on the boat. After four days of rain we were ready to put the boat on a truck sooner rather than later and head for home and a pleasant northwest summer. Of course there is the problem that we haven't found moorage in Vancouver yet!

We managed a day without rain yesterday, and so far today it has been dry, but hot and muggy. But as I write, there is thunder and lightning around us. We are in the Elizabeth City town docks, the “Harbor of Hospitality”, and again we are wondering if we wouldn’t be better out on the anchor. This eastern summer weather is the pits!