Woke up early again today, and got a nice picture of Empty Nest before sunrise. We wanted to get an early start because we were not sure about the conditions at sea nor what the anchorage would look like at our destination. But things did not go that smoothly today.
As we left our marina, naively thinking we had gotten off to a great start this morning, I took a picture of the horizon before sunrise.
As we approached the Cape Fear inlet, the engine display started beeping, and an error message popped up. As we were about to drive in the ocean for 8 hours, staying mostly 16 miles offshore, we decided that we had better figure out what's going on before proceeding.
So, we turned around and went back to our marina. I called our mechanic, and he referred me to the MAN engine specialist in Ft. Lauderdale. On our way back to the marina, I bitterly took a picture of the sunrise, thinking about how much more I would have enjoyed taking the picture if we had been able to continue on the trip this morning.
When we got back to the marina, I got on facetime with the MAN specialist, and we walked through a bunch of menus on the display, ran a bunch of tests, revving up the engines out of gear, and he concluded that I had a faulty sensor, and that it was safe to travel. I called our mechanic who agreed with that assessment.
We had 3 options. One, go as planned. Two, don't go. And not sure what the next step would be. And three, go, but take the ICW instead of the ocean. This particular stretch of ICW is quite tricky and even hazardous. We decided to take note of all the inlets on the way to our chosen one, in case we had to abort, and chose option one. We left the marina again and headed for the ocean. At that point, we were 2 hours later than our original departure - just enough time to arrive at the Georgetown inlet and have about 30 minutes before dark.
The trip was uneventful. We did have 4-5 foot waves, but since the seas were following, and as Empty Nest has very good stabilizers, it really wasn't bad.
When we arrived, we set the anchor, and due to the heavy current and prevalent winds, I decided to set an anchor alarm. This is a very useful feature. Once set, the alarm sounds if the boat (actually if my phone) exits the secure radius that I set up in the app. Here's a screenshot of the app after setting the anchor. A false alarm in the middle of the night would be disconcerting. But a real alarm would be worse! The only confusing part about this screen is the "Boat speed .8 kts". My guess is that I was walking on the boat when I took the screenshot.
We managed to get all settled in just as the sun was setting, giving us another beautiful view. Only one other boat shared the anchorage with us, the sailboat on the right of this picture.
We had leftovers from Fishy Fish Cafe for dinner and then kicked back to watch Michigan's first basketball game. An exhibition match. Starlink is amazing. We're anchored out in the middle of nowhere and watching Michigan basketball. Love technology!
Reflecting on our trip so far, we've come a long way from Annapolis. Tomorrow we'll go to Charleston, and we plan on spending 2-3 days there. At the moment, our plan is to anchor. The marinas are all full and way overpriced. We also enjoy anchoring more because we don't have to deal with lines and fenders or docking. We've scoped out two anchorages, and we'll try to arrive before they fill up. Going for another early start tomorrow. Here's our path so far.
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