Cruising with Sandy & Chuck on Summer Wind: 11/11/2015

November 11, 2015: As we traveled from Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina, we waited for two swing bridges with a lot of our fellow cruisers, including a young couple from NY in our “sister ship”, a slightly younger version of our boat, and Telephone Booth Catamaran.

Our younger sister ship

Telephone Booth Catamaran

Surf City Bridge

Figure 8 Island Bridge

We spent a night at the Carolina Beach (north) anchorage, and on Thursday, November 12, we were up again with the fishermen, before daylight.

Carolina Beach Anchorage (north) in the early morning

Snows Cut

Wake from another boat, in the early morning

We had to make the current through Snows Cut and the Cape Fear River, and we did, mostly. Snows Cut is a favorite place for fishing, for the fish-crazy North Carolinians. It, like the Cape Fear River, has a very strong current. After 16 days, we completed our transit of North Carolina and entered South Carolina, only to turn up the Calabash River to anchor. That put us back in North Carolina again! Fortunately, we really like NC.

Sunset on the Calabash River

I spoke with my mom on the phone and she mentioned that Calabash, NC was famous for good seafood, so we were excited to visit the town. I think its heyday was back in the 60’s, (“Good Night, Mrs. Calabash!”) but there are still a ton of seafood restaurants there, and very nice people. It also has an amazingly large number of thrift (second hand) stores.

The next day, Friday, November 13, our friend, June Davison, drove down from Wilmington, NC, and spent the day with us. It was wonderful to see her and she was such a great sport, schlepping through the second hand stores with us, (I was looking for a bread pan and didn’t find any, but I later found the disposable aluminum ones in a dollar store), going to lunch with us, (where the three of us laughed for a good hour), and then taking us to the grocery store so we could provision.

June

June and Chuck

Crab Pot Xmas Tree – something never seen in CT

Mr. Sunshine

Chuck and I had tied up at a fishing fleet dock, since it was the closest one and our dinghy engine had just quit on us. The gentleman in charge graciously allowed us to stay there for the day. Before we left, we bought a few pounds of shrimp from his crew. Then we started back, and the dinghy engine quit again. Luckily a couple of recreational fishermen in a small power boat agreed to tow us back to Summer Wind. We offered them a little cash in return for their time and trouble. At first they wanted to refuse, but when we helped them understand that we had gotten between them and the beers that they deserved after a long day of fishing, they saw things our way.

And we were in good company. Two of the other boats in the anchorage also had dinghy engine trouble the night before. One gentleman ferried his family and friends and two dogs back and forth, to and from shore and boat all evening. Then when he was alone and it was getting dark, his dinghy engine quit and he had to row back to his boat.

Another young guy, unfortunately, went out in his dinghy without his oars. This very resourceful guy tried re-starting his engine for a long time before he resorted to paddling with his boat shoes. That was not particularly effective, so he had his wife walk up to the bow of their boat, and hurl one of the dinghy oars javelin-style as far as she could toward shore, where it drifted close enough to him that he was able to shoe-paddle over and get it. He rowed back, against the current, with the one oar, like a paddle boarder - in a rubber dinghy. I guess they didn’t want to bother trying to get the second oar to him.

Other than watching other peoples’ misfortune, our evening activity was cooking! That night we made pralines with some of our purloined pecans. Easy and wonderful!

Pralines, in progress – molten syrup and toasted pecans

Pralines, finished

On subsequent evenings we made “Shrimp and Grits” and “Shrimp Scampi” with the Calabash shrimp. The shrimp were fairly small and each one had 2 veins, front and back. I looked online, and it said to clean (devein) both, so I did, which was tedious. I kept saying to Chuck, “Never again, I’m never doing this again!” Even with him helping it took a long time, but both dishes came out great. I later learned from a woman from Georgia that I didn’t really need to do both, just the regular vein in the back. So it really is, “Never Again”. Thank goodness!