When I got out of bed in the pre-dawn darkness, the weather was pretty bad. The temperature had really dropped and sideways rain was already slashing at the boat. We had one open-water stretch in Palmlico Sound where we had to transition between the Neuse and Pungo Rivers. I knew it was going to be pretty miserable, but was hoping the early start and the extra mileage we made the night before would mean we could be out of the worst of it and anchored by afternoon.
After topping my base layers with my fleece-lined wetsuit, I put my foul weather gear over the whole lot and headed outside for my stint at the helm. We tried for a lull in the rain, but Maryanne got pretty drenched during her few short minutes at the windlass while she retrieved our anchor.
We got a decent start, but the weather in the Neuse was even worse than I had expected. The Nuese is shallow and the short, steep chop was at just the right wavelength and height to almost stop Begonia as we slammed into each new wave face. As the wind continued to build, we did start coming to a complete halt every now and then, with our only directional control being provided by the action of the prop wash over a small section of our rudders. With worsening conditions, we eventually got to where we were only moving forward the minority of the time. It was slowly becoming apparent that not only would we not be anchored by afternoon, we would be lucky to make it to the Pungo by dark.
Had I thought about it when we were still in the protection of the anchorage, I could have set up Begonia for sailing. It would have been a horrible, wet slog with a lot of tacking, but she would have been able to make headway to windward in this. Now it was too rough and I was too clenched up from the cold to consider it safe to be going through the acrobatics of holding on while trying to unzip the mainsail bag. With a sigh, I put the helm over and turned us around.
After spending the whole morning burning a lot of fuel to go practically nowhere, with the help of the wind we were back in Adams Creek in only twenty minutes. It wasn’t until Maryanne helped me peel the layers of wet clothing off of me that I realized how cold and fatigued I had become.
I was so deflated. After coming all this way, we were finally only days from reuniting with old friends. I knew we were going to have a couple of less-than-ideal days, but I thought we would be able to grit our teeth and power through them. We had made promises. We had set dates. I felt like I had let everybody down.
Waiting out the rain and howling winds of the next day-and-a-half from inside the warmth of our heated cabin, I couldn’t help feeling like I should have tried harder. Perhaps if I had worn another layer, left earlier, or put up the sails and tacked, we could have made it around the corner into the Pungo, where the chop would no longer pound us to a halt. It was nice not to have to be out there in it like we would on an ocean crossing, but it was hard to really relax on our unplanned feet-up day, knowing that we were so close and that everybody had to scramble at the last minute to change plans on our behalf.
Day Seven and Eight (Apr 10th & 11th) - to Elizabeth City
The wind had only started to die down from the storm of the last two days, but it was on the decline, so we headed out to give what should have been Day Five another go. The rain had stopped, which helped morale a lot, but the clearing skies had removed the cloudy blanket holding in the night’s heat, so it was COLD. It was cold enough to be below the dew point in the open water, which put us in a pea-soup fog for the first half of the morning.
At Eastham Creek, we pulled off the ICW and set anchor. Overnight, the rest of the storm blew through. We woke to clear skies and a light, but cold wind.
By the time we made it through the Alligator-Pungo Canal into the Alligator River, we had shed most of our layers and the wind was almost completely gone. The wide river was so placid that we didn’t even need to seek a protected anchorage for the night. We just pulled out of the channel, waited until the depth sounder reached 2.5 (meters) and dropped anchor.
No photos from the rainy days, just these from day 8 (a much nicer day, with a bit of fog in the wider waters)
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