Southport, NC

What we thought would be a three and a half day trip turned into a four nights at sea with one minor storm. Overall it was a pretty good start to our sailing adventure on the new boat. Southport provided a nice marina with a long easy fuel dock for us to tie up to. We shared the dock with a couple other large cats and a 90 & 120ft power boats. We were tied up by 4:50pm. This is when I remembered that we need to check back into the US. Unfortunately it seems that customs now only works business hours and we were too late to get cleared in for the night leaving us stuck on the boat until about 8:15am when someone somewhere would come into work to approve our entry to the US via the app.

This was the night that we discovered that one of our water tank gauges was off. It had been reading 75% but never went down. I had thought the water maker was in an automatic mode and keeping it topped off. Turns out our water maker was not running correctly and the crew had just been clicking ok on the error code it displayed each time it attempted to run. Luckily before we left the Bahamas I had insisted we fill up our water tanks before we left. Otherwise we might have been a bit thirsty and no one would have been getting showers underway. Turns out our pre filters were clogged up and needed replacement. Once we got those swapped out the water maker worked like a champ for rest of our journey. Luckily we had a second set of tanks that were full and we were all able to still take showers on the boat that night. Just maybe not as long as we had hoped for :).

After being cleared in that morning we headed out to explore town a bit. We had passed by Southport when doing our Great Loop trip unfortunately missing one of the more active AGLCA members houses that have a standing invite for all loopers to come visit their font porch. I was a bit sad the first time we came through to miss it and really wanted to ensure we could stop by to say hi this time. As luck would have it they stopped by the marina to find us. We chatted for a bit, learned that their front porch had been made even more famous by a recent Netflix series called The Waterfront. Seems the show had even gone as far as renting their house to film there making their front porch truly famous. We stopped by for a visit getting some good suggestions on what to see & eat while in town for a couple nights.

After some good guidance we headed to the recommend open air bar ordering some really good cheeseburgers. Turns out this sign was needed as a few of the birds were pretty aggressive about their desire to share my french fries. The guy beside me actually punched one of the birds which seemed to intimidate the rest of them from trying for the remaining time it took to consume our meals. Afterwards we found the nearby ice cream shop and thoroughly enjoyed our Sundays nearly putting us all into food commas.

Coming into Southport we really had no plans for a next stop. We had talked about parking the boat somewhere in the outer banks for a month where it would be much cheaper then Charleston until we could get back to moving it to the Chesapeake Bay Area. We thought the bay might be a good place to leave it for the season. Making for a 7-8hr drive to use the boat vs 12+hr drive to North Carolina. But not knowing what the weather would do we did not want to make marina reservations we might have to cancel later possibly losing at least a deposit or more. The Southport area might have accommodated us for a month but we still had a full week of time available before we needed to get back home so we needed to make some plans to keep moving.

Looking at the weather it appeared we would have several good weather days. Unfortunately good in this case meant good traveling days but not good sailing days. After our most recent minor storm experience we were ok with little to no wind and some motor sailing. Looking at the chart it seemed like in about 3 days we could be in the Chesapeake. We started calling marinas looking for a long term home. Turns out this is not a great thing to be doing on a Sunday. Monday rolled around and we got confirmations from several of the bigger well known locations that they did not want to keep a boat our size for the rest of the season as it would block their ability to take in better paying transient boats. Luckily the same marinas that turned us away were also familiar with other marinas that were in the rebuilding stages thus less popular and able to accommodate us. It seemed we had two choices. One looked really empty as the dock manager took us out to the dock he was proposing via FaceTime and a bit challenging for us to get on and off our boat at. The next one sounded promising but they didn't have any pictures to share. However they offered to let us stay a couple nights to see if it was a fit. We now had a goal.

We went back to visit our friends & their famous porch again and they offered up a car allowing us to go shopping for provisions. At this point we were pretty low and frankly were hungry. By the time we left Walmart we were reminded that it's truly a bad idea to shop hungry. I think we filled an entire cart with food that only needed to feed us for the next 5-6 days. So after two nights in Southport we now had a new destination, a boat well stocked with food, and a good weather window to continue on. We truly enjoyed our time in Southport. We found some great food, it was nice to connect with folks that we meet a couple of times at the Great Loop conferences and we were now ready for the next leg of the trip.

Adventure time

 Our weather window was now and it was time to leave. Which is always when that one more thing comes up. I had just fired up the various electronics and noticed that our depth sounder was not working. Sometimes this would happen on our Tug I would turn everything off and try again and it usually came back on. Unfortunately that trick did not work this time. The question then became how big of a deal is a depth sounder for where we wanted to take the boat. We were at a facility that had knowledgeable folks and a haul out if we needed it. After looking at our charts one more time and scratching my head a bit we decided to go. Unfortunately the channel into the Xquisite center was in the process of being dredged so we only had a two hour window to get out on this tide so if we messed with the problem to long we would miss our window to leave and maybe our weather window. We decided that after we got out of the channel we would not have to worry much about water depth until we came in to the next port or wanted to anchor. On the chart it appeared we would have 20 feet or more under the boat coming into Southport the biggest problem might be if we changed our route and needed to spend a night on anchor somewhere and maybe I might find the problem while underway and get it going again. We untied the boat and headed out for what would be our longest passage to date.

Max up the mast untangling things

It was a fine day to be leaving we had wind pushing us in the right direction at about 15mph. Perfect champagne sailing conditions.  Better yet this was predicted for the next 5 days which should make for a great trip north. Our sailing instructor was leaving the in the channel just ahead of us in another boat training yet another set of new owners. We hoped to make him proud showing off our basic skills as we headed off on this adventure! This is where humility sets in. I let the head sail out first then decided I would attempt to raise the main. Yes that's the wrong order and it's dumb to have a big head sail out while one is pointing into the wind and wave trying to raise the main sail. This was then compounded by some additional frustration as the dumb thing did not want to go up. Yes unfortunately my fragile male ego was endanger and after a few attempts we were not making much progress so in an attempt to save face we put the boat back into the wind and sailed until we were out of sight with just the head sail. 

As we came around the island I found some calmer waters out of sight of our friendly instructor, and attempted the big main sail again this time pulling in the Genoa. Turned out we had forgotten about opening two of the 5 clutches used for reefing. We have 3 clutches in the cockpit and two more on the boom (one on each side). Additionally it also seemed that we had the main halliard crossing into our Lazy Jack system which was also limiting our ability to raise the sail past a certain point. Unfortunately we managed to tangle this up sufficiently enough that someone needed to go halfway up the mast to do some untangling. Have I mentioned how nice it is to have an eager teenager that actually wanted to go up the mast while we were rolling around out in the open ocean. Max volunteered to go up and sort out our problems. Once these issues were sorted we had much better luck getting the darn sail up and then turned to boat back into the wind.

So now we were officially underway! Rest of the evening went pretty well. We decided to put a reef in the main and a reef in the Genoa even though the weather forecast predicted 15mph winds with the occasional gust to 20 during the night. Speeds our sails should be able to easily handle without the reef but it was a new boat and we were erroring on the side of safety. I won't lie the first night was a bit ery. It was full of new sounds and not really knowing what to expect from a "new" boat but we managed it ok.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it yet or not but before we left we also found out that our generator was not working. It seemed the engine was running fine and it produced power but that power was not being sent to the batteries for some reason? This ment we would be fully reliant on our solar and wind generators to produce all the power we would need along the way... Again it's a new boat and we had no idea how much power anything used. So we turned off extras where we could and experimented with running stuff we prioritized like the icemaker, Starlink, charging cell phones, iPads, and microwave use. Turns out running these systems along with our other power hungry stuff like radar, electric winches, auto pilots and what not would use about 40% of our battery bank most nights. During the day our solar would get the two banks back up to about 80%. When this happened turned out to be interesting as half of our solar is on the starboard side of the boat and half is on the stern. Turns out the stern gets a lot of sunlight all of the time vs the starboard side that was in the shade much of the time when were had the sails out on that side of the boat. So depending on our wind angle our batteries might be recharged by 2pm or 9pm. Turned out we had 4 mostly sun filled days heading to Southport and we were generally back up to 80% of power or more by 9pm when the sun started to go away. During the day our panels were pretty good about generating 60-70 amps of power along the way and the battery system/inverter kept up with all of our needs even supporting the hot water heater occasionally.

By the third day we had all mostly settled into a routine. During the day we took turns when awake at watch. I would take the 9pm - 2am shift. Max would take 2am-7am and Amy would take the 6/7am to whenever I showed up again shift. Most nights we reefed the main sail to the first reef but we were now leaving the headsail out and pretty comfortably sailing 6-10 knots in the jet stream. On our last night we had seen some small storm predictions and I was hoping that if we slowed the boat down a bit we might avoid it. Unfortunately we still found the storm. Luckily we were able to sail through the smallest part but we still saw winds up to 35kts and the waves creeped up to the occasional 15ft range. As we sailed into it we had put our 2nd reef in the main sail and pulled in the Genoa replacing that with our storm jib. As the wind continued to build I got nervous and dropped the main completely and we sailed for about an hour under just the storm jib making 8kts. Unfortunately after the rain and high winds passed it was still dark we were still in pretty large seas and while we could easily pull out the head sail I was less inclined to turn the boat into the wind to raise the main again leaving us traveling at about 4kts. This slowed us down quite a bit. Eventually the sun came up and the adrenaline from the past night went away and by about noon the sea had calmed back down allowing us to sail into the Cape Fear inlet and into Southport. We had survived our first minor storm at sea and were all looking forward to some time on land.

Back to the boat

While we were away the Xquisite Service Manager did a great job keeping us up to date on the progress of the various items we had left for him to address. I think he was able to get to all but one thing addressed that was sort of a wish list item anyway... The boat needed new bottom paint and I was hoping that that they might be able to strip the old stuff off and apply Copper Coat. Unfortunately they did not have time to take that item on... Oh well maybe we can find a yard to do it this winter when we haul the boat. Unfortunately he also identified another item he did not have time to fix as the item would need to be sent over to Fort Lauderdale for repairs. It seemed our generator was not passing power to our batteries and would not provide AC to the boat. This would mean we would have to rely on our wind and solar to power everything we needed while underway. What this meant we really didn't know as we did not get a hand off from the previous owner so really had no clue if the wind and solar could keep up with all the systems on the boat? Guess we will learn soon enough :)

So now that our engines had all new fluids in them, the sail drives had got new seals, our dive compressor was working as well as a bunch of other little items we were hopefully ready to bring the boat back to the US. Our insurance company told us we needed to have the boat north of Cumberland Island, SC before July 1. So that was our mission. I had been watching the weather and it seems like we should have a good weather window for 3-5 days of sailing North West. We were originally thinking of challenging ourselves a bit with our first long passage and going straight to Charleston, SC. This would take us about three days and would be the longest continuous trip we have ever done. It seemed like a big inlet with several large marinas that could accommodate our boat. Unfortunately there were three things we were not very excited about 1. The large tide swings of about 6ft they have while being on a fixed dock. 2. The traffic 3. Turns out it's expensive to stay there and it seemed availability might be an issue if we got stuck there over the 4th of July due to weather or something else. Note we needed to leave the boat somewhere for the month of July most of which we needed to be back home for. So we decided to get even more ambitious and take the boat into the Cape Fear inlet to visit Southport, NC. This trip would take us 4 days and the marina was about 1/3 of the cost. We consulted with Travis our training captain. He confirmed it was a good plan and we had a good weather window.

Next step.. Provisioning... Buying anything in the Bahamas is expensive. We had not purchased much to bring the boat over and much of the food we had was given away before we left the boat for three weeks. The question became what do we really need, what can we cook in our one skillet, and what can we fit in our backpacks to get from the closest store. Luckily Xquisite has some bikes we could borrow which extended our range a bit. We picked up some basics like lunch meat, bread, pasta, some fruit, and even attempted some ice cream bars figuring we only needed to have enough for a week or so should something go wrong or take longer then expected. After a couple of bike rides to the store we were all stocked up and ready. I was even able to get a couple of packs of Goombay Punch and some local rum :)

Before we left I really wanted to get our dinghy working. When we did the survey it was noted the steering was frozen up. When we purchased the boat I had tried playing with the steering cable a bit to lubricate it and validate it was really the problem. The captain that we had in Fort Lauderdale attempted to play with it a bit and ended up breaking the cable so I spent half a day driving around Fort Lauderdale trying to get my hands on what appeared to be the only one in stock in the area. Prior to leaving the boat at the Xquisite center I had started the process of replacing it but didn't have a wire brush or anything to really clean out the channel it goes in within the outboard. So now that we were back I had brought the wire brush I use to clean my shotguns. It worked pretty well now the trick seemed to be how to run the cable under the floor of the dinghy and up to the console. After a full day of all three of us attempting various methods we finally figured it out and got the dumb thing working. Long story short as nice as this dinghy is and as clean as it looks.. it is a PIA to work on. I don't think I would buy the sport version given my experience so far. Not to mention it's really too heavy for the boat. But I'm sure it will be fun to run around with! It was almost dark but Max and I felt like we needed to take it out for a test run. Everything ran great, the lights work, the boat is fast, and seems to have a lot of torque which should allow us to pull a tube or maybe even a wake boarder. I am looking forward to using this boat quite a bit one day but for now we had a working dingy should we not find a dock and need to anchor which would allow us to get into shore somewhere.

When arriving in the Bahamas we only had a window of 12 days to get the boat to a place we could leave it for the month of July and that place needed to be north of Cumberland Island. We really had no idea what kind of weather window we might get or where we might end up or if we would have the confidence to be at sea for multiple nights. One possibility was to simply sail back to Florida and do day sails up the coast hoping we would make it out of the hurricane zone. After spending two days at the Xquisite center it seemed we had our weather window, we had a plan to go straight to Southport, and planned to leave at high tide the next day.

Home for 3 weeks

Max wanted to get home to be at a friend's HS graduation so he flew home a day earlier than us. We followed the day after allowing for some time to prep the boat to be left and ensure the service team had a clear understanding of our list of items to get addressed. The Xquisite team was kind enough to drop us off airport and we made it home without any issues. We had enjoyed our brief stay but had to get back to real life. Amy still had skating stuff going on, my Scout Troop was getting ready for summer camp, and the HS Trap team that I coach had regionals coming up. Not to mention Max still had 3 weeks left in his Junior year of HS and we had a family wedding to attend before we could head back to the Bahamas to start using our new toy.

As usual we made the most of those three weeks. One weekend we took the Tug over to Put-in-Bay as they were doing tours of the Benson Ford house. Neat story this was a cargo ship that Henry Ford used to use from time to time and had fitted out rather nicely. Eventually it got sold and someone bought it cut it up keeping the bridge decks and sleep quarters then dropped it on their lot at Put-in-Bay turning it into a second home. When you go by the island it's hard to miss from the water and we never knew much about it. Turns out they open it up a few times a year for tours so we made the trek over to check it out. It's about what one would expect an old well appointed ship to look like. They have kept it remarkably the same as I'm sure it was back in the day. Frankly I'm not really sure about the practicality of living on it and having to haul all ones groceries up 2-3 flights of stairs or even just working on it to keep things running but its neat to see that someone enjoys it and still actively uses it. Another cool thing while we were there one of the locals that was volunteering as a tour guide of the home had just got back from space. Turns out he signed up for the Blue Origin

space flight program and had just completed his flight the week prior. It was pretty neat to hear about his experience.

The next week I took our Trap team to states. The kids shot really well earning the team 3rd place in the state and a couple of the kids even placed in the top 3 in other areas like skeet and sporting clays. Max got a personal best hitting 195/200 targets. We had a couple more Scout meetings. Max completed his Junior year and was now home calling himself a Senior (I'm just not ready for that), and then it was time for the family wedding. The wedding was a lot of fun. It was the smallest I've been to in a long time but after attending I'm not sure I would recommend it any other way. The couple did not have to spend all night saying hi to their guests, most the guests knew each other, and it seems like the couple got to actually enjoy their party! 

The next day we planned to fly back to Freeport to bring the boat back to the US. We really were doing it without much of a plan of where we might end up and unfortunately we were once again on a schedule to get it somewhere before we needed to be back for the next event which happened to be a wedding shower (another family wedding), States for our Trap team, and then a week of summer camp. What were we thinking buying a boat this year? Oh well I'm still looking forward to the adventure!

Look we can clean up reasonably well :)