On the Dock in Morehead City
Saturday 14th October 2023
After raining all day on Thursday it was a shock to wake up to clear skies and sunshine on Friday morning. What a beautiful day! We had a somewhat lazy start because we wanted to arrive in Morehead city at slack tide. Currents can run strongly in that area and docking Cotinga can be a challenge at the best of times. In fact, pre-docking anxiety occupied my mind for much of Thursday evening and the following day. It was a lovely warm motor down Adams Creek, with only a couple of large barges to navigate around! We arrived at the Morehead City Yacht Basin and got instructions of where to go. We prepared to back into the slip, but when I saw the situation I chickened out and decided a bow-in approach might be safer. It’s one of those slips where you have to attach a rope to a pair of pilings (one port and one starboard) as you enter, which we were prepared for. In fact there were already lines on the pilings and all we had to do was lift them off their hangers with a boat hook, and voila … home and dry. Of course it didn’t go down quite like that! I managed to back the boat down the fairway and then drive forward to the slip. Rod did a stellar job reaching for the line on upwind piling, but unfortunately it had become knotted around the hanger. After some tense moments we did get Cotinga secured and we all took a deep breath! We ate Butter chicken for dinner … delicious … and drank a couple of Dark and Stormy’s to celebrate our arrival. None of us had the energy or motivation to write a blog!
We chose to come into Morehead City Yacht Basin a day ahead of schedule because the forecast for Saturday was high winds and squalls. As I write this blog it is pouring rain and blowing up to 25 knots. Our planning was good!
So why are we here and why now? Beaufort inlet is about 2 miles from here and is an “ideal” departure point for the Caribbean. The Gulf Stream lies relatively close to the coast and so you can reach it and cross it in a time period that you have confidence in the weather forecast. Specifically, you don’t want to cross the Gulf Stream when the winds have a northerly component as this creates really nasty conditions. Once across the Gulf Stream you want to head south east “until the butter melts” and then turn south in the trade winds as you close in on the islands of the eastern Caribbean. Unfortunately for us, a "250 miles from land" limitation on our insurance coverage will force us to take a more direct route, for better or worse. Timing your passage to the Caribbean is a balance between leaving late enough to avoid tropical storms, but not so late that you start encountering North Atlantic winter storms. Early November is viewed as the best compromise. In 2017 we sailed Cotinga down to Portsmouth, VA in early October and left her on the dock until the start of the Caribbean 1500 rally in early November. Leaving Narragansett Bay in early October gives you a better chance of decent weather for the passage to Portsmouth and also means that you aren’t up against a deadline for the subsequent passage. This year we chose to go a little further south to Morehead City in the hope of getting warmer weather sooner. My friends Dave Anderson (who joined us on the passage in 2017), Pete Leeming and Simon Wilsher (both from the UK) are all scheduled to fly in on November 1st. We will get settled in and then look for the first opportunity from a weather perspective to start our offshore passage. In the mean time, Gloria and Rod will fly back to New England on Monday and I will stay with Cotinga to prepare for the ongoing journey.
Mike
N34 43.316 W76 42.198
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