Alternate titles for this post could have included: “the week of mediocre sunset pictures” or “now we really don’t do much in towns”.
Savannah marked our last stop in Georgia and next week we will be cruising into North Carolina. After leaving Savannah, we spent a night on the anchor at Last End Point. This was a great wide open spot that we shared with only one sail boat. We missed the sunset via drone, but I snapped this while cooking our dinner on the BBQ.
It was a pretty uneventful night, but would be our last night on the hook with this particular anchor, which has served us well for 3 years primarily in the Pac NW, but as I mentioned in an earlier post had been giving us some trouble in the sandy ground in Florida and Georgia. After doing some research and chatting with my Dad, we decided to upgrade to a Rocna anchor, which has a big roll hoop that helps it to remain the correct way up when it moves around on the sea floor, and we also got a heavier one since our original anchor turned out to be generally below the recommended size for our boat.
We had the anchor delivered to Beaufort, SC. As we were pulling in to the marina, I found a bakery just down the street and decided to order some curbside pickup for lunch, planning to grab some pastries and other goodies when I arrived. After we tied up and I put on a load of laundry, I headed through the deserted downtown street towards the bakery…only to discover that apparently it had recently moved locations!! After placing a call to the bakery to say that I was standing outside their old and empty location, I would not be able to pick up our order due to being on foot! The person on the phone said that they did delivery (yay!) and offered to drive our order to the marina. I added some cookies, pastries and a loaf of bread to the order and headed back to the boat. As it turns out, the guy who had picked up the phone was the owner of the bakery and he personally delivered our order and refused to accept a delivery fee or a tip. Loving the Southern hospitality! If you ever happen to be in Beaufort, SC, I highly recommend the Beaufort Bakery! The food was yummy, but I don’t have any pictures of that, but I did bake a carrot cake that afternoon :).
The new anchor had arrived safely to Beaufort, so we got that swapped out.
After leaving Beaufort, we immidiately tested out the new anchor at a spot called White Point Landing, which was basically a nice deep area right off the ICW, a half-way point between Beaufort and Charleston. We spent the day working on the boat, and I did some reading in the evening. Once again we missed the sunset by drone, but I took a quick snap with my phone.
Our next stop was Charleston, a town I had really been looking forward to pre-coronavirus. As the number of confirmed cases continues to rise, and we are more nervous about getting off the boat when in towns, we are finding that it is really not worth it to us to be paying for marina stays when we do not do a whole lot. Therefore, we have now decided to spend as much time as possible on anchor for the next couple of weeks, stopping at a marina every now and then to top up with water and pick up supplies etc. So as I plan our weeks now, I am looking for interesting and highly rated anchorages over towns to visit. We mostly only have close personal contact with the dozens of gulls that constantly follow in our air wake everywhere we go.
In Charleston, we only got off the boat for a quick trip to Publix (Instacart failed us here by continuing to push out our order by a day for the whole weekend). Since I knew we will likely not be at a marina for a week, I decided to get a bit of pole practice in, building the pole on the dock right behind Highwind! We also forgot to drone video the sunset again!!! (Never fear, I have now set an alarm on my phone for sunset time!!!). We did have two great delivery meals, including another amazing Seafood feast with the best crab we’ve had on the trip so far! Thank goodness I didn’t throw away the crab crackers and crab-forky-things that came with the boat, thinking ‘we don’t fish/crab/shrimp, so we’ll never need those on the boat – any crab we eat will be at a restaurant’!
While doing engine checks in Charleston, David first noticed some dripping coolant on the white absorbent rags we keep under the motors. Some more investigation revealed the beginning of a leak from the water pump (coolant pump, not raw water pump.) This somewhat forced our hand on making sure to have a marina to get to, so we planned out the next week to get to a marina next Friday, and started ordering things. Hopefully the marina will still be open when we arrive… While ordering parts, David decided that it’s also time to change out some ancient relays in the cupboard-of-Meridian-factory-shame, so we have some projects for next weekend, it appears.
Hi David and Hannah! It’s always a delight to find one of your updates when I get on the computer in the morning, especially in this time of “social separation”! Many thanks for continuing the effort to post! What size is your new anchor? Seeing the two lying on the dock, it does not look all that much bigger than the one you had. Continued good luck on your journey!
Glad you’re enjoying it!
We got the 55 lb (25kg model) Rocna. I didn’t weigh the other anchor, and the model numbers were pretty rubbed off, but it felt ~10 lbs heavier, and it’s a few inches larger in all dimensions. It’s definitely not hugely bigger in any way, the design just seems to actually make it set much faster and harder than the old one. We’ve had a bunch of nights in big currents and/or winds and the anchor has held fast. We actually snapped our bridle in a windstorm a couple nights ago while the anchor held nicely.
I enjoy following your trip! I also upgraded my Delta anchor with a heavier Rocna, and use a swivel too. To reduce the risk of side loading the swivel when the tide or current shifts, consider adding a shackle to the end of the swivel and attach the anchor to the shackle. But likely not an issue anchoring in sand. Rocna anchors are really good.
Yeah that’s an interesting idea. I’ve been watching our rotation patterns, and it definitely does take ~5-10 feet to reset when we rotate by more than 45 degrees or so in a current or wind shift, so maybe that’d help a fair bit with that.
That is one rat’s nest of wiring…was the boat built like that?
Bayliner quality, baby.
Wow, at least you won’t be bored…