Captain's Log: Brass Monkeys and Buffalo Shrimp

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Thanksgiving aboard Stinkpot—a treasured time with good friends….

In case you're just joining us, when last I posted here, Stinkpot was waiting out weather in Hertford, NC with M/Y Vector tied up nearby, enjoying some cruiser camaraderie and catching up. At just before 9AM, Sunday, November 24th, Stinkpot cast off from Hertford, NC and stood by while Vector did the same with minor difficulty. Recent winds had reduced the water depth under her, and she was wallowing in mud on the bottom. Some adept helmsmanship saw her off the dock just in time for our scheduled 9AM bridge opening (the bridge hours this time of year begin at 10, but Sean made arrangements the night before to secure us a slightly earlier departure).

Both vessels pushed down the Perquimans River to a reasonably calm Albemarle Sound. Once in the open water of the sound, I pointed Stinkpot to a wide open area so I could recalibrate our heading sensor in the hope of getting our autopilot functioning again. I am pleased to report that, while it took a couple tries, the operation was a success, and for the first time since we have owned the boat, the autopilot is now 100% functional.

While it did “work” before, it never worked correctly. It would not follow a course, it would only hold a heading, and the reported heading was always “off” by a variable and often-considerable margin. I surmised that might be because the heading sensor, which is essentially a magnetic compass, was too near the autopilot's hydraulic pump (and its magnetic field). I put off repairing this situation for years, but I finally repositioned the sensor away from the pump while on the dock in Hertford—and now, post-calibration, it works flawlessly.

With the process complete, we got back on course for the Alligator River, made our way through the opened Alligator River  Swing Bridge and up river, dropping the hook just off Tuckahoe Point by the entrance to the Alligator-Pungo Canal with scarce remaining daylight. Vector anchored nearby soon after, though we all stayed aboard our respective vessels for the evening. Stinkpot's crew bed down early and were up with the dawn and quickly underway to use the engines to warm the boat from the overnight chill.

The anchor was up a bit after 7:30am and we were pointed into the canal with an intended stop in Belhaven. Vector weighed too within the hour and both boats were anchored in Belhaven well before sundown—Stinkpot arriving just after noon, and Vector about an hour later.

​Sean, Louise, and I dinghied ashore for an afternoon walk around town, and, later, we all reassembled in Vector’s tender and cruised ashore for dinner. Sean and Louise treated us to a fine Mexican feast at a restaurant they’ve enjoyed before, El Mariachi, and were sure we’d appreciate—and they were right.

Stinkpot, laying at anchor in Belhaven, NC

The morning of Tuesday, November 26th we weighed anchor just ahead of Vector and pointed for Bath, NC where we took up residence on the state dock. No sooner had we turned up Bath Creek, it began to rain lightly, and about the time I got the last dock line on Stinkpot, a little after 1pm, the sky opened up. It rained for a couple hours.

Unsure if the dock would support Vector's draft or mass, Sean and Louise opted to anchor nearby. When the weather finally dried up a bit, Sean and Louise made there way to the state dock in their tender, and we all had a walk around town culminating with dinner at the only place that was open—a place called the Quarterdeck. This is not a restaurant. It’s a take-out joint with undercover rooftop seating. Not amazing food, but also not disappointing from a place that is really little more than a convenience store. It was really about exactly what one might expect of such a place. The view of the creek from our perch was nothing short of wonderful, despite the soggy chill in the air, and it was an enjoyable meal with excellent company.

Got a French fry?

Following our dinner, we continued our trudge around historic Bath (Edward Teach, AKA Blackbeard, called Bath his home port) before we retired to Stinkpot and Sean and Louise made their way back to Vector after sounding the depth around the dock for possible future use.

The morning of “Thanksgiving Eve,” we were underway just before 9am with Vector not far behind, and we made way up the Pamlico River to Washington, NC. It’s a lovely small town where we enjoyed our third, wonderful Thanksgiving together in the six years we’ve known Vector’s crew—our first being in 2019 in New Orleans and last year in Sanford, FL was our second. Both Vector and Stinkpot stayed in Washington to endure an extended, unseasonal cold snap, finally getting underway Saturday, December 7, after trying and failing (for nearly 90 minutes) to get a blackwater (waste tank) pump-out from the city marina’s frozen hardware. Vector, too, was hoping to pump out, but, after waiting some time and the marina telling them it probably wouldn’t work, they, too got underway. The entire fleet, separated by about 3 miles, made its way to the docks at R.E. Mayo Seafood for an overnight with very limited dock power. This, being a possible/likely last evening with the band together, we gathered for a short walk and enjoyed an ice cream dessert aboard Vector before turning in. It was another chilly night, dropping in the low-to-mid 20s.

Stinkpot got underway Sunday morning at first light. Slid onto the Bay River with building wind and seas around us, and by the time we made the Neuse River, we were being thrashed by tightly-spaced 2 foot seas with the occasion 3-4 footer. It was "spicy" enough that, when we came around the Neuse River Shoal off Piney Point, I made the decision to put us into Broad Creek to anchor, as our speed and progress was being hampered by the sea state (video below). We conveyed this experience to Vector; they also deigned to get underway in the later morning. When they made the same turn they reported that a sailboat, similar in size to Stinkpot, was nearby taking spray, and sent a video. It looked slightly tamer than what we had been in. A little further on, they reported that it seemed the seas had lightened up. We gave it another few minutes, and then weighed anchor getting once again underway.

We nosed out of the creek to see a nearly flat-calm Neuse River. The delta between what it was when we bailed to roughly two hours later could not have been more stark. We had a perfect crossing to Adams Creek where we were intending to anchor for the night, and then grab fuel and a pump out first thing in the morning at Sea Gate Marina. We often try to space our fuel stops such that we can take advantage of the regional fuel deals that are often a little too far apart, and northern North Carolina has a dearth of them. We were approaching the “running on fumes” status, but no worse than other times. As we were nearing our intended anchorage, I noted that the engines were falling out of sync. I was continually readjusting the sync. Then the port engine quit. It became clear what was going on.

Running low on fuel can mean that the sludge that accumulates in diesel tanks can be pulled into the fuel lines and plug up the fuel filter. This is likely what happened. With Stacey at the helm, I opened the deck plate and switched the port engine to draw off the starboard tank, and it roared to life. Sure of the situation now, I shut the engine back off, and we cruised a little further on, intending to grab the fuel first and then go to anchor, but because we were running against a tidal current, I changed my mind. I figured that, if we anchored now and got fuel in the morning, we’d have a favoring current to take us to the fuel dock, instead of risking our remaining “clean” fuel supply climbing a hill on one engine.

At about 3:30pm I pulled us out of the channel, and we set the anchor, enjoying my version of Arroz con Pollo before turning in for the night. I was awake well before first light, and put the coffee on to wait for the turn of the tide and, ultimately, the current. It was chilly aboard, but not untenable, but warming the boat would have to wait since I didn’t want to risk our diesel supply to crank up the generator. Finally at 8:46am, after we had been waked by two large sportfisher boats on plane, I decided we’d waited long enough. The current was very slowly going our way, and we were cold.

I raised the anchor without starting the engine, and, as soon as it was up I ran to the helm and got us underway with only the starboard engine. Within a matter of minutes we were making 6 knots with the current loaning us over a knot. As we approached the marina, I started the port engine and we docked on the fuel dock with both engines purring. We fueled up, eschewing pump out for want of a reasonable price. We then pulled Stinkpot onto the nearby “transient dock,” as requested by the marina staff, while I changed our fuel filters.

As soon as the filter change was complete, we got underway, running the ICW route from there to Morehead City, through Bogue Sound, and anchored at the Swansboro downtown anchorage “by the bridge,” as there was a large catamaran occupying our usual spot. We enjoyed leftovers aboard and prepared for an early morning run to get through the Onslow Beach Bridge and related construction before work for the day started at 8am.

Swansboro sunset

Tuesday morning, December 10th, we awoke around 5am and weighed anchor at 6am in complete darkness, wearing our foul-weather gear and running in the intermittent rain on the flybridge as using our lower helm in the darkness is fraught—Stinkpot’s previous owner graced her windscreen with a limousine tint, which is great during the day, but very limiting in the darkness. Fortunately, the temperature was agreeable. We arrived at Onslow Beach Bridge at 7:25am and were ushered through immediately with a waiting sailboat, which we then passed after the bridge following a brief radio exchange. About four nautical miles later, we spotted Vector anchored in Mile Hammock Bay and exchanged messages for several minutes about the boats nearby and some clueless maneuvers that had been witnessed.

We were about a mile and a half ahead of them when we noted, first on AIS, then via a terse radio exchange with an almost-certainly clueless sailboater in a narrow, shallow channel, that they, too, had gotten underway. We were all Wrightsville Beach bound, but only one of our boats would end up spending the night.

When I realized that we, completely unimpeded-by-upcoming-drawbridges (Stinkpot doesn’t require either Figure-Eight Island or Wrightsville Beach Bridges to open), were going to make it to Wrightsville Beach just after noon, I started looking ahead. NOAA current and tide data revealed that, should we keep going, we would have a favoring current all the way down the ICW to Snows Cut, through the cut, and up the Cape Fear River to Wilmington (our stopping point for a while), with a likely arrival time before sunset at 5pm. The weather forecast was for BIG winds for days, so a stop in Wrightsville Beach could mean being pinned down between there or Carolina Beach until the winds let up. We discussed this information between ourselves and decided pressing on was what we should do. We messaged Vector that our proposed meetup in Wrightsville Beach would have to wait for another time since we had laid in a course for Wilmington due to the luck of the currents—and while I’m sure they would’ve enjoyed getting together as much as we, they agreed that we should take the weather/tide window while it was still open—so that’s exactly what we did. Wrightsville Beach fell behind us, as did Carolina Beach, Snows Cut, and we made our way up the Cape Fear River to the town and the very marina where we purchased Stinkpot. This “homecoming” marks the first time she’s been back here since that day, December 23, 2018, when we cast off lines the first time as her new crew.

We made contact with the Port City Marina dockmaster, Lanier, and received our slip assignment. Since we did arrive before the close of business, he was able to meet us on the dock upon our arrival, but was waylaid by a fuel dock transaction, so we were already fully tied up and connected to dock power before he met us dockside. Contracts and conveying of filthy lucre, it was agreed, would wait for the next morning, and we settled in. For dinner, we naturally returned to our favorite watering hole, The Copper Penny, and both enjoyed their BBQ cheeseburgers as well as an order of Buffalo shrimp (my new favorite way to eat shrimp). We walked a bit around town to admire how it had changed before returning to the boat, but we ultimately did and enjoyed a pleasant night’s sleep in our new, for now, home.

Wednesday morning came, and brought with it the expected (promised?) weather. Rain, wind, WIND, rain.

Texts we had exchanged with Vector of Dave and Stacey hamming it up in a warm, inviting pub over delectable fare had worked its magic, and suddenly we learned that Vector was Wilmington bound—at least for a little while. Weather that makes little Stinkpot quiver in fear is nearly nothing for the 55-tons of steel vessel that is Vector, so with a south wind blowing steady at 20 MPH and gusting to an excess of 40 MPH, Vector arrived in Wilmington at the height of the storm and was shown to the dock by the wind on her beam. Stacey and I greeted her to grab lines and follow orders, but mother nature did the heavy lifting. The reunited tribe assembled at the nearby and very good Marina Grill to hoist a glass and enjoy epicurean pursuits. Vector will be here for a likely week or so, though her ultimate departure date may well be dictated by weather. Sean and Louise are keen to get further south on an offshore run, but offshore weather windows are currently closed. If, after a week in Wilmington, there is still no window, I’m sure they will cast off and begin an ICW run south from here, but that’s fodder for their blog (which also contains a very detailed recounting of our time in Washington, NC over Thanksgiving).

Stinkpot, for now, is at rest until at least early February, while I will be very much busy with boat shows, performances, holidays, and other land-based itinerant pursuits; Stinkpot’s crew will also be actively seeking her replacement and her next crew during this time, and it’s possible the baton-pass could happen fittingly in the very marina where we took it up. With that knowledge and the future it portends at the moment, Stacey and I bid you all warm wishes for the holiday season, however you celebrate it, and a very happy New Year.

Happy holidays from the crew of Stinkpot!