During our stay at
Cape Lookout from Sunday (17-Jul) until early Thursday (21-Jul) we hung comfortably
on the hook and enjoyed an absolutely beautiful anchorage – it’s a big bay with
room for many more boats than were there, with deep, clear water, and is protected
on all sides. The anchor set firmly in the soft mud, which was proven by a pretty big blow on Tuesday when another
line of TRWs blew through with wind gusts above 30K.
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| Cape Lookout Anchorage |
Of course initially we spent time tending to our recurring
theme of boat maintenance – adding a third packing ring to the main shaft’s
stuffing box, patching up a cracked bleeder valve on the water maker, and
investigating an apparent leak in the steering ram. Michelle also spent quite a bit of time
mission planning the next few legs of the journey north…we decided to head to
the inside ICW route for a few days for three reasons: first, there aren’t many inlets, ports or anchorages
between here and the Chesapeake that would be usable for us; secondly, if some
of the new boat issues arose again we wanted to be able to reach a decent
marina within a day’s cruise; and third, with our water maker issues we needed
to find a marina to top off our fresh water tank which was getting
uncomfortably low after 6 days of use. We
also ordered our next round of “needed stuff” from Amazon (as well as some
water maker parts) to be delivered to one of our next marina stops.
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| Cape Lookout Anchorage...It's an Absolutely Gorgeous Place to Hang |
Rick also spent some time reviewing the historical weather
forecasts for the previous several days – mainly to see if we had missed some
important clues about the nasty weather we ended up encountering on the second
night. In retrospect, the first day’s forecast was pretty accurate, with storms
staying inland over South Carolina as predicted; what we missed was an upper
level trough hanging out in North Carolina that pushed a wave of nasty moisture-laden energy
out to sea. We didn’t recall whether
PredictWind (our weather routing service) had noted that, so we’ll need to be
careful to check more than one source in the future, especially on a multi-day
voyage. (As some wise soul once said: “Experience is a harsh teacher: She gives the
test first and then teaches the lesson later.”)
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| Ghost Rider Hanging on the Hook at Cape Lookout, NC |
After all that we finally got around to launching the dinghy
(mucking around with carb settings again) and then exploring the area. The shorelines surrounding the bay here are part of
the U.S. park system’s national seashore program (link HERE),
located at the southern end of the Outer Banks, all lined with sandy beaches,
and are largely uninhabited – unless you count the seabirds, fish, and the 130 or
so wild horses that call Shackelford Island home. We cruised the shoreline there at the
northeast border of the bay looking for the ponies for a while, but no joy.
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| Another USCG Encounter....the Coasties Stayed With Us Through the Night |
We also had another close-up Coast Guard siting, thinking: are they following us around? The cutter Beluga
entered the harbor as we were returning in the dinghy for a lunch stop back
aboard Ghost Rider. They tied up to a
marker light just 150 meters from us, and we were waiting for them to launch
their boarding craft for another visit. Instead they just
hung out there, conducted some sort of military ceremony on the fore deck, and
then at the end of their duty day, stripped the uniforms and went swimming. They were still moored there the next morning. Good for them.
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| Cape Lookout Light House |
After lunch we took the dinghy over to the eastern side of
the bay to explore the Cape Lookout Lighthouse.
On that mini sortie Rick somehow managed to get water into the SIM card
slot of his cell phone, and upon return to Ghost Rider discovered it had nada
for network connectivity. Sigh. Fortunately we carried a spare, and a swap of
SIM cards revealed the card itself was still good. Now the next project is to restore and/or
update all the apps on the spare phone.
We called it quits early in the evening, recovered the
dinghy to its perch on the boat deck, got a head start on engine room checks
for the next morning’s departure, and then fired up the genset for some cool
air and a test of the water maker bleed valve patch….which surprisingly
worked. But the unit still threw a high
pressure alarm tantrum after a few minutes, so more to research there.
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| River Dunes Marina |
On Thursday (21-Jul)
we pulled up the anchor at 0930 and headed inland via the ICW for the short
(40 NM) run up to River Dunes Marina near Oriental, NC. The weather was perfect all day, so we ran
the boat from the fly bridge for much of the voyage. The boat performed well, although Rick continued to
make adjustments to the main shaft’s stuffing box after inserting a 3rd
packing ring earlier in the week. Damned
thing is finicky…although today we had a max temp reading of 113F at WOT, which
in 89 degree water is actually pretty good.
(Ambient water temp +30F is the bogey.)
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| River Dunes Marina |
We watched the steering ram very carefully today as well; it
does have a very small and intermittent “scatter leak”, which one can only
detect by putting a white diaper below it, and observing it over several
hours of use. But while very slight, that’s an
important piece of equipment, so we may seek service / replacement once we get
to one of the good boatyards in Virginia.
We have not had a chance yet to look around River Dunes
Marina yet, but our first impression is it’s the classiest marina we’ve ever
seen in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
We’re giving ourselves another day here to explore it.
