Toews ‘r Us — a family sailing adventure

Why is it when one thing goes wrong, everything seems to go wrong? I believe it’s the principle of compound - quandaries - on - the - spot - while - hung - up - in - a - bind - near - a - quagmired - predicament - with - a - dilemma - on - top - and - a - pickle - on - the - side.

While making pancakes this morning, I looked out the window and noticed we were right up on the shore. We didn’t plan to be there, but there we were. “Our anchor dragged.” I told the girls.

There’s a first time for everything. We’ve had great success with our Rocna Anchor. It’s 88 lbs of galvanized steel formed into a nice wedge shape. It’s one of the “new generation” of anchors and has rated extremely high in all the latest anchor tests. It’s attached to the boat with a run of 3/8 chain. This system should be sized to hold us in up to 60 knot winds.

I guess here at Cumberland Island the bottom is just a big too muddy and soupy to be good holding ground.

We motored off the beach and tried to reset the anchor. It wouldn’t reset so we had to pick it back up and re-drop it. While picking it back up the second time, the windlass control seized up in the up position. It dragged the bridle up and into the chain shoot. Once it got jammed it tripped the breaker. The control is still stuck in the up position and we had to manually let the chain out on the last set.

In Plymouth, MA, I had to pull the controls apart and clean the contacts. This time it seems that they’re either welded shut or the solenoid is jammed. Hopefully it’s fixable. I’ll take it apart tomorrow and see what’s up.

Latitude: 32°51'06.85"N, Longitude: 79°41'56.62"W
Location: Capers Island, SC, Map It

There’s a great little island with nothing on it, but lots to do and see. It’s just 15 miles north of Charleston, SC. Caper’s Island is convenient from the ICW but can’t be accessed from offshore. At least I wouldn’t try it in a sailboat, or any other cruising boat for the matter.  Capers Island is managed by the SC Department of Natural Resources.Anchorages include Whiteside Creek, Capers Creek and Toomer Creek, we chose Whiteside and went up into the creek a couple of turns and anchored in 9 feet of water at low tide. The anchorage was desolate the first night we were there, but there were six other boats in the creek with us on Saturday night. Watch for shoaling, one of the boats got stuck in the mud on the way out; they tried to cut the inside of the bend on the creek. They motored back off without much problem.

It’s about a mile and a half dinghy ride to Capers from where we were at. At the island, dinghies can be left at a dock or just brought up on the beach on the southwest side of the island along the creek. Watch the tide! Along this channel we saw many dolphins right up close to shore feeding.

If the dock is chosen you’ll be using the paths that go by the swamp and through the woods. DON’T FORGET THE BUG DOPE! There, consider yourself warned. While walking on the eastern side of the swamp in the thick forest the bugs were dense that we needed to reapply every 10-15 minutes. Don’t forget it, you can’t survive without it. Once on the beach we didn’t have any problems with bugs at all.

We didn’t see any, but the swamps are reported to have alligators. I wanted to send Lucy, our dog, in to look for them, but the girls would have none of that.

If birds are your thing, there are plenty to see. Along the swamp are several small observation points where you can sit and watch. If it’s fishing, I saw some people with several Redfish in the creeks, and group of fishermen on the beach with a stringer full of Black Drum. They told us to cast to the stumps first before wading into the water for a further cast.

We had the most fun just playing on Boneyard Beach. It went on for a couple of miles and we only got to see a small portion of it. It’s fun to see what the stumps resemble. It looks like a storm or two has uprooted all these trees and partially buried them in the sand. There are also piles of driftwood up on the shore to look through.

They say you can tell you’re in New Hampshire by all the snowmobiles up on blocks in the front yards.

In South Carolina is it boats in the front yard?

Latitude: 33°15'31.17"N, Longitude: 79°15'12.96"W
Location: Winyah Bay, SC, Map It

We sailed from Cape Fear River, NC on the outside to Winyah bay. We anchored just outside of Estherville Minum Canal in Winyah Bay’s Western Channel. It was A 73 mile day - a long day. Mostly because the wind turned against us in the afternoon - not forcasted.

About an hour before we arrived at Winyah bay, the Coast Guard called on Channel 16 “Please switch to 22 Alpha for a safety advisory regarding Winyah Bay.” We switched. On channel 22A: “Any vessels wishing to transit Winyah bay entrance channel between buoys eight and fifteen, contact Coast Guard Sector Charleston for clearance….” Hey we’re on our way there. I hailed them and got the lowdown. I guess there was a boat that broke up; they gave us the coordinates to where the hull and bow lay. They weren’t in the channel, but it was good to know where not to go. This is one time where switching to channel 22A was worthwhile.

Once we got back onto the Intercoastal Waterway, a minimum of five boats passed us that had passed us two days earlier in the Cape Fear River.

I guess it is faster and easier to go the outside, at least for us. We move pretty fast under sail, but are limited to 6 knots under power with both engines running. And quite often we’ll only run one engine which slows us to around 4 knots.

We must be heading in the right direction - South. Today we had three different birds jump on the boat.

We first noticed a bird plastered to the luff of the mainsail. It was a type of woodpecker. Woodpecker? Yeah a Common Flicker, go figure. The girls thought that he was hurt, I tried to get him but he flew away. I hope he ate his wheaties, We were 12 miles from shore, I have no idea how long he had been stowaway. Maybe it was from the anchorage.

The next two looked similar at first glance, but after getting positive ID from our bird book they were different. The first one, a Savannah Sparrow, just seemed to be resting. It had a hard time finding a spot that was comfortable and out of the wind. It eventually flew off.

The second of these was also restless and kept moving about. All this fluttering around turned out to be the wrong move for the bird. He came to rest on the top of the wind generator. Of course when he took off again he started to fly into the wind. The problem with flying into the wind when you’re looking at the back of the wind generator blades is obvious.

Well, I guess it wasn’t obvious to the bird.

The girls saw the whole thing; Cassidy was beside herself for easily an hour.

Latitude: 33°55'11.09"N, Longitude: 78°02'40.13"W
Location: Dutchman Creek, Southport, NC, Map It

We were anchored in Dutchman Creek. It was an early day and we were in set by early afternoon. The rest of the day we just hung around. I tried fishing, getting some hits but never hooking one.

While I was fishing there was a gentleman checking his nearby crab pots. When he was done he came over to the boat and offered us some crabs. What was I to say? No? I graciously accepted the crabs as I poured them into a 5 gallon bucket (filled to the brim).

We had a great dinner that night, thanks to the vessel Angel Fish and her captain.

Thank You Sir!

There’s a never ending list of things that need to get done on a boat. It always seems like something is in need of some attention.

The engine had an electrical problem during startup one time and didn’t want to crank, Debi asked, “Why’s that causing a problem, it was working fine this morning?”

I told her the truth, “It’s a boat, it’s just because it’s a boat Sweetie!”

Latitude: 34°12'25.45"N, Longitude: 77°47'57.21"W
Location: Wrightsville Beach, NC, Map It

We had some weather to wait out in Wrightsville Beach, NC. I decided that it was time to start looking into the WIFI a little harder. You may recall it just wasn’t what I expected.

Here in Wrightsville Beach I can get WIFI with my laptop, but not the external bridge, something is definitely wrong.

I pulled the antenna, bridge, and box down, wired it to a temporary Ethernet cable and started moving it around to see where it works best. I put it on the boom, pulled it up the mast with a halyard, attached it to the head stay, and placed it in the cockpit. It seems to work best between the boom and the first spreader.

Now I’ll have to devise a plan to mount it under the first spreader. For now, we’ll just attach it to the boom when at anchor.

We finally put one on the boat.

I haven’t really been trolling much since Cape Cod. All my trolling rigs were lost to fish there, or maybe it was to the lobster buoys. But I’m pretty sure the fish were just too big for me to reel in.

Today I put together a new rig, re-lined my big rod, and threw it behind the boat. Trolling is always a waiting game, so find something else to do while you’re waiting. I was soldering some terminals on a cockpit speaker when I heard the rod go off.

FISH ON!

My first tuna ever. YEEEESSSS! “Debi you better get the rice started for the Sushi.”

The kids had heard how Beaufort, NC was the place to be for Halloween, so it was a “do not miss” on our trip. We even skipped over some other (better) things just to ensure we got here on time.

As it turned out we only found one other set of kids, S/V Windora. The kids were two and three, and we all went out trick-or-treating together. Anne St. was the place to be.

Later on I told the girls scary stories in the cockpit by pumkinlight. They were getting pretty rotten (the pumpkins, not my stories) so the next day on our way to Wrightsville Beach we gave them a proper burial at sea.

Rest - in - Peace pumpkins