Haulout and Survey

I was up very early to drive our spare van back down east....Duane got to sleep in (relatively) and fly the airplane down to New Bern where I picked him up at about 7:45AM.  Off to Oriental to meet the marine surveyor, the broker and the boat owner for the long sail/motor up the Neuse River to Wayfarer's Cove Marina.

Mike Draughan is one of the boat brokers.  Nice, knowledgeable fellow.  Helping us get ready to shove off the dock.

Beautiful fall day - warm - glassy smooth water.  (Not good for sailing, but beautiful anyway!)

Meet John Hughes, the marine surveyor we hired to go thru the boat with a fine tooth comb!  I saw alot of him this way for the next several hours!  He crawled into every cavity on the boat.  Some amazing tight spaces too!

See what I mean?

The boat owner and the broker quickly tired of piloting the boat....so I took over for a while.

View aft

View forward -

John banged on every surface on the boat with a rubber mallet - looking for soft deck or any rot.  He also is holding a moisture meter that he used to test if the hull is compromised by wetness.  No problems were found - he deemed it strong and dry!

We lifted the sails (while motoring) for John to inspect.  They are in pretty good shape.

Nice to see them flying even if they weren't really pulling us along very much.

What is a sailing blog post without a ferry photo???  We are going up the Neuse River, so we passed the Minnesott Ferry on the way.

The channel into Wayfarer's Cove is almost invisible unless you know where to look!  Very narrow!

But we made it thru just fine.

Look at completely calm water - like a mill pond!  Approaching the huge travel-lift.  This marina can lift boats up to 20' wide.  Island Girl is 19'3", so it will be a snug fit!

Two deck hands are waiting as we approach the lift to guide us in.

After a good bit of maneuvering, we are under the travel-lift structure.

The huge straps are underneath the boat and adjusted to exactly the correct "lift points" to stabilize the boat as it's lifted.

Out the boat comes as the guy on the left activates the numerous pulleys.

Coming up!

As the entire boat is now clear of the pilings, the lift operator simply drives the structure onto land where they wash the slime off the bottom with pressure washers.  This gives the surveyor the ability to see all the things that he can't while it's in the water.

Several hours later, we make the decision to have the marina keep the boat on dry land for a while so that the owner can do some fairly minor repairs before we close the deal.  Here they're driving the boat thru the boatyard to it's parking place for the next few weeks.

In addition to the owner's list of items, we'll have them do a few things we want done including new bottom paint.

It was a long day....back to New Bern airport for the flight home.

Home just in time for a beautiful sunset!!

Survey day!

We're "off to see a man about a boat" as the saying goes!  It's 5AM and I'm driving our spare van back to New Bern.....Duane is going to follow in the airplane in a few hours.  I'll pick him up and we'll head to the boat for a day with the surveyor, current owner and broker.  We should learn a lot about the boat!

If all is well, we'll leave the boat out of the water at Wayfarer's Cove Marina for the bottom paint and any other repairs we find before completing the purchase.  Then we'll leave the spare van at the New Bern airport for our use for the next few years!

Introducing The Tobago!! Island Girl

We found a neat boat at a good price listed on the Deaton Yacht Sales website in Oriental.  What could be better?  No long distance handling of the boat haul-out/inspection or crazy week long journey to bring a boat back home.

Here she is - "Island Girl" ! 

We still have to have the boat hauled out of the water and inspected (called a survey for boats) on Monday of next week.  The certified surveyor will give us a report of anything that is wrong with the boat.  If all is well, the purchase will be closed rapidly.  If there are problems, we'll have to negotiate with the seller to have it fixed.   Our preliminary walkthru indicated that the boat is in reasonable shape. 

Nice Yanmar diesel engines,  air conditioning/heat, decent navigational equipment, good sails, and strangely a central vacuum system!  Oh, and an electric head (potty) so we won't have to pump the water manually to flush!  (Probably more info than you wanted!)  Oh, and dinghy davits that will hold the dinghy out of the water so we don't have to tug it behind the boat.  Can you tell I'm excited???

This is the main "salon" area. 

In no particular order as I wandered around the boat....

Navigation displays

Closeup of the galley area - nicely laid-out.

One of the three berths.  (The cockpit cushions are leaned up to the right.)

Captains chair and cockpit seating.

This won't mean much to you unless you've fought with screens to keep the mosquitos out of the cabin! This boat has nice tight fitting screens and cool shades that you can pull over each of the hatches to keep the sun and prying eyes away!

Different view in the salon.

Nice cockpit table.

Lots of seating for the "crew"!

Port side/aft compartment - amazing amount of extra space!

And nice size head (bathroom)....OK - I'll stop.  Can you tell I'm excited????

Boat Shopping!

Early departure this morning for Virginia and Maryland to look at some boats!!

Approaching the airport near Deltaville, Virginia (Hummel Field).  I think this is a bridge that we went under with Sharon and Buddy on our "Chesapeake Trip" a few years ago.

One boat broker met us at the airport - very nice fellow.

We had several boats at his yard to look at.

This one was nice on paper, but pretty rough....

But this one was pretty nice - a 2001 Hunter 410....

Very nice boat!

We met with another broker and looked at a few more boats....none were too interesting....


Off to the second leg- to Salisbury, Maryland.

To see a Brewer 12.8 meter boat.  Neat old boat, but probably more repairs than we would want to undertake.

The owner gave us a cool cap with the boat name on it though!

Back to the Salisbury Airport - nice quiet airport....

Long day.....the sun was setting as we were approaching home.

Lots to think about in the boat search!  No decisions yet!

Searching for new boat!

I've changed the blog name to a more generic "McCrawSails" since it will no longer be Glory Days!   Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we travel to find the next boat!

Glory Days Sold

Sold!!!

I guess I should have put a notice that we sold the boat....we  just got busy with the "Avion" and  I forgot to post it here!!    The new owners are renting the slip from us...so we'll keep an eye on her.

When we get a new boat, I'll rename this blog and pick up where we left off!!

 

Sailing "home" from Ocracoke to Oriental

What's a good Pamlico Sound trip without more ferry photos??

And more fishing boat photos...

This is what the horizon looks like when you are sailing straight into a thunderstorm!!

I stashed the camera away because I knew we were going to get very wet and I didn't bring my waterproof camera enclosure.

At this point, we got busy and pulled in the sail and rode out two pretty severe storms.  There's really nothing you can do to avoid it - the boat just isn't fast enough to outrun the storm.  But, luckily, we didn't get hit by lightening and all the rain washed some of the dirt and salt water from the boat!  I saw winds of 55 knots on the wind-meter - and that was just when I was looking.....most of the time, we were just holding on to wood only - no metal in case of lightening strike!!

The sky cleared up a bit in between storms - passed by this barge....

And you can see a faint little rainbow in this photo as we approached Oriental.  A good trip!!!  Back to work now!

Ocracoke!

Always have a blast at Ocracoke with Sharon and Buddy.  Plus joining the "Greenville folks" that have spent their Labor Day holidays at Ocracoke for years and years adds to the fun!

Had to hit the 3-5PM specials - enjoyed the peel and eat shrimp at Dajio's (used to be the Pelican) and 50 cent raw oysters at The Topless Bar....as in a "topless oyster", haha.  Fabulous local oysters - yes, we're in an "r" month!  Oh, and the PBR tall-boys were $2 each!!

Shopping with the girls at Books to be Red bookstore.....I love to looks at the "suggested titles" books at bookstores.  This one was particularly intriguing - so I decided the best way to take their suggestions for later reading was to take a photo.  Now I can zoom in on the titles and I have a reading list for the next year or so (I've read several of the titles so I'm thinking "Heather" has similar taste to mine!)

The non-adventurous of the group (read that as the "lazy ones") met at the Jolly Rodger to wait on the energetic ones to paddle by....Emma on a paddle board in Silver Lake.

Sharon, Jeannine, and Luke on kayaks.

I've already done the kayak thing....I told Sharon that it was already crossed off my "bucket list" and that I didn't need a repeat.  She gave me grief for that statement!

Next up was the "Greenville Gang's" yearly picnic at the Pony Island Inn.  They always do a fabulous cookout - this time was no different.  It's so nice of them to let us join them!

Howard cooking some yummy corn!  He slathered it with butter and honey!

Shrimp boil - I didn't get a photo, but they bought fresh local sea-trout and fried it up with some good 'ole House Autry breading.  Absolutely the best fist ever!

The boys (Rich, Luke, Duane and Buddy) enjoyed many, many foosball games.  I think it was about a tie overall!

And finally, this nice young man, Gary took Sharon and I "clamming" out in the shallow water.  It was a hoot!  We were out for a couple of hours and came back with the bucket full of clams.  They're gonna be yummy!  That's about it for the Ocracoke visit.   Tomorrow is the sail back to Oriental.

Pamlico Sailing Trip Continued - On to Ocracoke!

After the sun was up nicely and all the mosquitoes decided to go back to where-ever they decide to spend their days....we lifted the anchor and headed for Ocracoke.  Again, winds were good to start with - we were tickled when we spied a group of dolphin.  Finally, I managed to get a decent video!  Usually, the dolphin are a hundred feet away or they just surface once, so it's hard to get a photo.

Watch this short clip - it's taken from the back of the boat - scan out to see and directly adjacent to the boat.  You'll see several.  This went on for several minutes so we probably saw 20+ different dolphin.

Pretty cool!

After that excitement, it was just a lazy sail, then motoring down the channel into Ocracoke.   Cool fishing boat that we passed ....

A few of the channel markers had been moved recently due to shifting sand, but it was easy to navigate by sight (and using the binoculars!)  You know you're getting close when you pass the pretty little sandbar.

And there we are! Safe and sound at the National Park Service docks for a few days of fun and sun on Ocracoke Island!  Buddy and Sharon are meeting us here via the Hatteras ferry.

Sometimes sailing days are pretty mundane!! Leaving Bellhaven there is a neat breakwater protecting the fairly "exposed" marinas.

As you get closer to the breakwater...appears to be a favorite roost also!  (Those little dots on top of the pilings are hundreds of birds!)

Down the Pungo River and then into the Pamlico....the winds started off the morning great, but then were mediocre at best. So, we decided to take our fellow cruisers advice and pull in to Juniper Bay just past Swan Quarter.  Note the dragonfly peeping around the edge of our flag!

Not a lot going on in this peaceful little bay.  I really must get a better telephoto camera....there were some lovely white birds out there in the marsh, but you can hardly see them in this photo.

That's it for the day!  Lovely breeze with all the hatches open (with screens installed for the mosquitos!!)

Then, at 3AM there was a mad dash all around to close them since we got a nice little storm - but the anchor was well placed and we had no problems riding it out.  Off to Ocracoke tomorrow!