Sun 21 Nov – Left Duck Creek Marina at 12:30 pm. Winds calm, sunny, 73 degrees, motored down the Neuse River to Adams Creek where I anchor just inside the mouth after 4 ½ hours. Lunch – 2 packs of cheese crackers, Dinner – Lasagna skillfully prepared by my honey and warmed up on the alcohol stove, green beans, and peaches.
Mon 22 Nov – Left Adams Creek at 7:30 am and arrived at Swansboro, NC at 2:30 pm. The weather was cold and continued to worsen throughout the day. The marina that I’ve stayed at in previous trips no longer takes transient boaters, so the only option I knew was to anchored in front of the Swansboro Bridge (I guess you could call it Swansboro Harbor). This was the first time I was able to try, for real, my new anchor windless (a motor and capstan to raise and lower the anchor without having to run to the bow and run back to the cockpit) it worked although I was not completely happy with its action… seemed to be hesitant. As I was setting my anchor a guy came over in his fishing boat and asked if my anchor was set good, I said yes and he said OK if you need any help just call me. Who the hell was this I wondered, he took his boat back to one of the houses that bordered the harbor. The nautical welcome wagon? Or on city council? Later that night the wind blew like a dragon, easily gusts to 20 – 25 knots. Maybe he just had seen other boats have trouble before, well my anchor held strong all night long. But with the wind howling my wind generator should have been making power and it wasn’t. That needed to be fixed so that on sunless & cloudy days the wind would charge the batteries. Across from me was a really nice dock with a single boat tied up (had room for 20 – 25 boats). I wondered about it and found out that it was a town dock and the slips are reasonably priced. I called Swansboro Rec Department first thing Tuesday morning and reserved a slip so I could fix some things that were not working. Breakfast – 3 egg cheese omelet & cup of tea, Lunch – 2 packs of PBJ crackers, Dinner – freeze dried chili mac.
Tue 23 Nov – Swansboro Church Street Dock, fixed the wind generator, just a wire not pushed far enough into its new connector. Searched all over town for someone who sold AA batteries (computer mouse was dead, spot light dead too) luckily Lizzy was working in Swansboro and she could bring me batteries after work. Took the lay day to put everything away and organize things. Breakfast – 2 cups of tea, Lunch – Dinty Moore Beef Stew, Dinner – Chili.