Charleston to Beaufort, NC

Jim arrived Friday afternoon and Martin gave him a tour of Blossom and the low down on her systems. We used our pre-departure and departure checklists Saturday morning and feel like we’ve just about gotten them pinned down. Martin did great leaving the dock and getting us out to sea. Jim showed me how to single-up the dock lines so I can manage when I’m alone and have no one on the dock helping me untie the boat.  It’s pretty straight forward.

Leaving Charleston

I started writing this post while cruising off the coast of Myrtle Beach. We left Charleston about 9:30am.  What a different experience!  The waves were about 3 feet with the wind at 17 knots.  It felt completely different from our flat passage up here. We were pitching (the bow of the boat bouncing up and down) quite bit.  Even with my scopolamine patch I was a bit queasy at the outset. I hope I get my sea legs like I did with Lucky. It took a week or two of feeling “malaise” before my head adjusted. I have my fingers crossed.

We’re also running with the AC for this passage. It makes a huge a difference to be able to lounge around the boat and be cool.  All of Saturday it was too bumpy to go out on the deck. No hula hooping this time!  But the salon was much less bouncy and I was able to do a little bit of my hand applique when I wasn’t on watch.

Current project

Sunset at Sea

Conditions were much better when I woke up for my 6am shift. The wind had calmed to 8 knots and we had gentle swells on the beam with much more mellow pitching.  It was a pretty sunrise with rain showers off in the distance.  We used the same 3 hour shift schedule last night. I definitely have the best shift times, being able to sleep from midnight to 6 and then see the sun rise J

 Sunrise at sea

As we neared Beaufort we were escorted in by a family of dolphins. It looked like the adults were spotted and the smaller kids were solid gray. They stayed with us for quite a while.

Dolphins on the bow

We're staying at the Beaufort City Docks tonight. We got in around noon.  It was crazy busy with holiday festivities and there were boats everywhere. Martin is learning fast and under tricky circumstances!  Once again, he did a great job docking.

Blossom in Beaufort

Blossom is running well with just a couple issues. The engine room is still too hot, even with the added ventilation duct. The duct was designed to help circulate more air.  We’re running slower (having passed our 100 hrs on the engine) at about 1850 rpm, maintaining about 8 knots and the engine room reads 131 degrees.  Granted, the sensor is in a hot spot but still…  

At dock, we've encountered another issue with our AC tripping the shore power supply. Martin and Jim are currently working on this. Jim is incredibly knowledgeable of boats, especially Nordhavns, and their various systems.  He's been a big help trouble-shooting and answering questions that Martin has about various systems on the boat.  He's also very familiar with cruising the east coast which makes planning our route so easy!

Tomorrow we’ll start traveling on the inside. This means slower speeds, less autopilot and more driving for Martin.  Our new goal is to reach Atlantic Yacht Basin on Tuesday. We're thinking about keeping Blossom there when we aren't aboard so it's nice to have a chance to scope it out.  If the dometic folks will come to Atlantic, we hope they'll be able to put the new harness on the second chiller and help us trouble shoot the AC pressure loss. If not, we'll head for Norfolk to get the work done. Once our AC issues are taken care of we'll be free to take our time and enjoy the Chesapeake on the way up to Baltimore.

This evening we're all going out to Jim's favorite restaurant on the ICW - I can't wait!