A Night to forget … 21-22nd June 2018

A Night to forget …  21-22^nd June 2018

It’s 10pm on the “Longest Day”. Gloria wrote her blog entry and we’ve just finished watching the first episode of season 3 of “Broadchurch” on my laptop. It’s pitch dark outside and we are anchored in a quiet creek, but the lightening flashes of a storm some distance away punctuate the darkness. Rather than go to bed, which is what I want to do because I’m tired after a long hot day, I force myself to grab my tripod and try and get some boat shots in the lightening. At first it’s pretty mellow – push the cable release, time about 3 minutes and check the results. Then it starts to rain and I try to keep the camera and lens dry with an umbrella, but it’s getting hard to hold the umbrella steady. So I retreat under the shelter of the dodger and take some shots looking backwards. By this time it’s starting to get really gnarly and when I get my camera and tripod back inside the boat I dump them unceremoniously in the galley and turn to check our small GPS anchor alarm. It’s difficult to tell whether we have just swung round when the wind overpowered the current or whether we are really dragging. I decide we need to switch on the main instruments and as these fire up all hell breaks loose. I swear that I saw 40 knots on the wind meter but studying the plot of wind-speed over time later only shows just under 30 knots – it’s entirely possible I was totally freaking out! The boat is rocking violently and I become convinced that the anchor is dragging. We have 40 feet of chain in the water with depths of a little more than 8 feet. I grab my jacket and head up to the bow and let out some more chain. The rain is torrential, the wind is howling and lightening flashes every few seconds. The extra chain does the trick and the boat is secure, except that with the anchor dragging, the extra chain and the wind blowing us towards shore we are now in only 7 feet of water, not enough depth for comfort. After some agonizing we decide to move to deeper water and re-anchor. Gloria jumps out of bed and puts on her jacket as I fire up the engine. I know it starts because I can see the rev counter, but I can’t hear it because of the screaming gale and thunder. Gloria bravely works the foredeck, raising the anchor, and we motor back-out to deeper water (still only 8.5 feet). Thank God for chart plotters and track records to show us where to go. We drop 60 feet of chain, put the “snubber” on and check to see that we are holding firm. Crisis over, we go back inside. There’s half an inch of water on the floor of the aft head, the result of our soaking clothes as well as accidentally leaving the window open. By this time the wind has dropped but the thunder and lightening are as fierce as ever. I spend the following two hours at he nav-station monitoring the situation and tracking the storms on Sirius Weather downloads to our chart plotter. This storm system is absolutely massive. The depth sounder gives me some nervous moments as the apparent depth drops from 8,5 feet to 4.2 feet in 30 seconds, but we aren’t aground. I presume it’s the anchor chain under the depth sounder as the current pushes the boat in strange directions. At about 1.30 a.m. I retire to bed, exhausted. At 3 am we are both awake again with a whole new set of storm cells, not as fierce as earlier in the night, but certainly requiring some attention. Next morning we get up about 7am feeling somewhat relieved, but totally shattered. This was one of the worst storms I have ever experienced.

After a quick breakfast (bread and jam, coffee) we pulled up the very muddy anchor and headed out of Broad Creek on our way to Belhaven. The morning was cloudy, so not as blisteringly hot as yesterday, and we made good progress motor sailing with the genoa. The journey was about 40 miles (statute) with sections of open water through the Neuse, Pamlico and Pungo rivers and about 10 miles in the pretty Goose Creek / canal, and we arrived in Belhaven in the early afternoon. We are desperate for a peaceful nights sleep so we chose to anchor at the more sheltered west end of Pantego Creek.

In 2012 we visited the town of Belhaven and were underwhelmed with what it had to offer - one café / restaurant that was only open two nights a week and a former garage that sold Mexican food (excellent as it turned out). So having re-launched the “Dumb Dog” we motored ashore with limited expectations. I have to say that Belhaven bears no resemblance to the place we visited six years ago. There is an excellent tavern (where we ate), a fancy restaurant, a fish café/restaurant, bakery and a place to buy ice cream. We even found a hairdressers and Gloria was able to get her hair cut! We were very pleased to have made the effort to go ashore – well worth visiting.

It’s now 8 pm and we are back aboard Cotinga. A thunderstorm passed close by a couple of hours ago, but we are optimistic it will be a quiet night. We have complied with Mike’s new rule: “Never less than 50 feet of chain regardless of the depth.”

Mike

Panego Creek, Belhaven, NC : 35 32.35 N, 76 37.88 W

Cotinga in Broad Creek, NC at ~10.30 pm lit entirely by lightening from nearby storms. At this point it was still calm in the anchorage

Things start to get a little wilder in Broad Creek anchorage as Cotinga swings in the wind and current.

Similar to the previous shot, but now you start to see the streaks of waves and the shore is barely visible

The morning clouds have gone and it's hot again as we head north up the lovely Goose Creek

We were impressed by this guy sailing in the Pamlico River with less than 10 kts of breeze. We had our genoa out but it wasn't doing much as we headed past under power.