Friday, I had been ashore at Oriental, NC for the Ol’ Front Porch Music Festival. The fest is just amazing. A small town in rural North Carolina with a population of less than a thousand, puts on two day free music festival every October. What began as jam sessions on the porch of the Ol’ Store was resurrected as a festival in the early 2000s. Music happens on the main stage at Riverfront Park and on select porches all over town. Somehow, they manage to bring in a wide variety of music; bluegrass, gospel, country, rock, folk, and more. A few years ago at the festival, I discovered Damn Tall Buildings, a folk-bluegrass band from Brooklyn, New York. They are exceptional musicians and songwriters. I also got the chance to see Christie Lenee, the 2019 Acoustic Guitarist of the Year. She plays finger-style guitar and writes thoughtful, ethereal songs.

This time, I only wandered around town a little because it was really hot that day. The couple choices I had made from the website weren’t as enjoyable as I had hoped, so I went back to Riverfront Park and found some shade to sit in. I had seen Farayi, an amazing singer songwriter based in Boston on the main stage earlier. Caleb Caudle was coming up. He’s a North Carolina songwriter who cut his teeth in the punk scene, but has settled into a solid place on the bluegrass end of Americana music. I really came to see Robbie Fulks, a 90s Alt Country hero that I’ve been listening to for quite a long time. He was the headliner for Friday night.

After Caleb Caudle’s wonderful set, I took a walk over to the river and checked on Mollynogger. She was about a couple hundred yards back to the west, out in the river, and was doing fine. I then went over to the Prime Time Pamlico booth for some black beans and rice. Prime Time is a sponsor of activities and events for the 50+ crowd in the county. I had had their beans and rice three years ago when I was here. Just like before, it was an inexpensive splurge and a delicious plant-based option.

Robbie Fulks played a set with just him on guitar and a fiddle player. His latest album is called Bluegrass Vacation and he leaned into that fresh music. He was born in Pennsylvania and raised in North Carolina and Virginia. After a short stint at Columbia University, he ended up in Chicago during the Alt Country heyday of the 1990s. Besides the new stuff, of course, he snuck in some older songs too. Fulks had a strong family background in Appalachian music and has an uncanny knack for twisting Country Music tropes with his natural humor in songs like “Tear Only Run One Way,” “She Took A Lot of Pills (and Died),” “Let’s Kill Saturday Night,” and “I Told Her Lies.”

After his set he invited people - “if anyone still buys physical music” - to stop by his merch table. I was intrigued by his mention of a songbook. When I made it to the table, I teased that I had hoped to hear his song “Roots Rock Weirdos” but he demurred that the song had too many words to remember. We chatted and I asked if he remembered Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Michigan. I had remembered that Elderly was a favorite guitar store of the 90s Midwest Alt Country crowd.

“Hell yeah, I remember Elderly,” he exclaimed.

“Well, when I was in Junior High, I took guitar lessons at their original location in a basement store in East Lansing,” I told him.

I tried to buy a Bluegrass Vacation t shirt and the songbook, but his phone could not read the chip on my card. After a couple tries, I let the other people go ahead of me. I wandered around nearby, but I could not get enough cell signal to secure any other options for payment. I told him I was stuck and that I would just order online later, but he wanted to try one more time.

Still no luck.

Then he said, “Well, pick one of the two and I’ll just give it to you.”

I was flummoxed. To have such a personal encounter with someone I’d been listening to for years was one thing, but such generous kindness was more than enough to fog my brain. I just stood there for a second.

“Well, I really wanted the songbook,” I stammered, “gosh, thank you so much.”

“See, my luggage will be just a bit lighter on the trip home,” he said with a smile. I think the fiddle player standing behind him was as surprised as I was.

I stuffed the book into my backpack, shouldered it and the bag chair I’d been lounging in, and headed back to the dinghy. My head was kind of spinning. Later, going though the book – it’s a treasure. It not only contains the words and chords to forty of Fulk’s songs, each song has suggested chord voicings, picking patterns, and commentary. At the back of the book is a section with a vignette for each song describing the inspiration, the time frame, what album it is on, who had played on the track, and other music trivia facts.

I walked past the venerable Bean Coffee Shop, the Oriental harbor, and around the corner where the Inland Waterway Provisions Company stands. All the way at the end of Water Street was the Oriental Dinghy Dock. I loaded up, pushed off, and shipped the oars.

I rowed out past the Oriental Village Marina, through the harbor, around the jetty, and into the river. The wind had picked up a bit and I could see that the river was choppier than it had been. Certainly, I’d been through worse anyway.

I had just rounded the jetty and sighted Molly to head her way, when there was a metallic jangle sound and the left oar slipped. Looking down toward the sound, the oarlock had come apart so that the oar was no longer attached. That’s interesting, I thought.

The oarlocks that I had installed on new oars about two weeks before had a bolt above and below the oar pulling two “C” shaped brackets into a hug. The nut on the top bolt had come off but the bottom bolt had held. I tested the oar and if I stroked carefully, I could lean it into the bottom of the bracket and carry on. It was way less efficient but I could make some way. With the increase in the wind, the river had become pretty choppy. My little pram dinghy handles beautifully in part because of the camber. There is a nice “ship-like” curve to the pram. The bow and transom each rise above the deepest part which is about two thirds back toward the transom. However, in the chop of the Neuse that night, we were hobby-horsing along with the bow dipping and rising dramatically in the waves. I was struggling a little. I was confused at how that nut had just come loose, but I was persevering. As I rowed carefully, we galloped like a fish with an injured fin. I couldn’t stop rowing or pause for long, without losing a lot of ground. It was critical that the jetty kept getting further away and the boat got closer. I wasn’t too concerned yet but I was really having to work at it.

And then the other oarlock fell apart.

It was almost inexplicable that any oarlock would just fall apart. To have two come apart on the same trip, the same night, was simply the height of bad luck. What was happening?!? My mind began to jump and run with offbeat possibilities. Did someone sabotage me? I even checked for leaks, then checked my backpack and chair, but everything else seemed OK.

We were losing ground back toward the jetty. That would not be a smooth landing as there was no spot on the outside; just waves crashing against the rocks of the rip rap. I tested the other oar, but the bottom bolt had come loose on that one. There was just no way to lean on that oar in the same way. As I drifted toward the rocks, my oars were unusable.

I stowed one oar and turned around to kneel in the boat looking forward. My only chance was to act like I was in a kayak, but without a double paddle just an oar. I dug deep with the oar to the left, swung it to the right switching hands, and dug a deep stroke on the right. The pram’s bow waggled back and forth as we went. Rather than crawling in a straight line, we were crab-walking and hobby horsing along in the clumsiest way possible. Once I banged the oar on the pram’s gunwale as I switched sides and my next stroke was delayed by just a moment. I could feel our forward motion evaporate. I went back to my long, deep strokes and concentrated carefully as I switched sides. We slowly lolled our way toward the mother ship. Deep dig. Careful swing to the other side. Deep dig. Careful swing. Deep dig.

For the longest time, I did not think we were getting any closer to Molly. It was dusky and while rolling through the waves and digging at the water with one oar, the distance was hard to judge. Also, I am not a young man anymore. It hurts to say so, but I have never been ‘fit’ exactly and the river was testing me; sapping my strength and draining my resolve. Kneeling with my knees on the plywood bottom of the boat was not ideal. I don’t ever sit that way. The strenuous rowing was affecting my arms and shoulders of course, but my quadriceps were beginning to ache. When I bent into each deep stroke it was my arms, my back, and my core working, but the action, the fulcrum, ended in the front of my thighs. I was panting and stroking and panting and pulling and my mouth was so dry. It was probably more dangerous than I thought at the time, but I could not stop moving, could not stop to think. Deep Dig. Careful swing. Deep dig.

Water was splashing over the bow and dampening my clothes but my feet were soaked. The knealing also put pressure on my toes which were bent over inside my shoes. Deep Dig. Careful Swing. Deep Dig.

Finally, Mollynogger seemed to be closer than before. I could see her dancing patiently in the waves. All I wanted was to be able to reach out and grab her rail. I wanted to stop pulling at the waves. I wanted to rest. And I desperately.needed.a.drink.of.water. Deep dig. Careful swing. Deep dig.

Suddenly, Molly seemed to be only ten feet away. I paused to look at my home in the fading light. In the next moment, we were much further away again. I went back to digging at the waves, got back to ten feet. I spit trying in vain to clear my dry mouth. Digging and digging. Five feet. Deep Dig. Deep Dig.

Dig.

I reached for the gunwale and managed to touch her. I held on for dear life, dropped the oar into the pram, and pulled us, hand over hand, toward the ladder.

Finally. I knew we were going to be all right.

It was a struggle to tie the painter to a stanchion. The pram and the boat were bouncing in the waves, but did not dance together. I had to hang on with one hand and try to set up a bowline with the other. Finally, I managed to hold on to the loop with two hands while finishing the knot and we were actually attached.

I sat down in the dinghy for a moment. The next obstacle was the ladder, so I stood cautiously. As we bounced just out of sync, climbing aboard was going to be like switching horses in the middle of a stampede. Before that though each oar needed to be put aboard Molly; then the bag and the chair.

Finally, with a hand on each side of the lifeline gate, I stepped one foot onto the thwart and the other into the ladder. My legs shook with exhaustion and I struggled to gain the strength to make the next small steps up onto the boat. One shaky step, then another, then an uncomfortable twist and I sat down on the cabin top.

I had made it. All the way. My lungs gulped selfishly at the air even though the work had ended. As I sat, my thighs were whimpering and my shoulders were numb.

After a few moments, as my heart rate slowed, I stood cautiously on the side deck and grabbed the backpack and the chair to toss them loosely into the cockpit. And then made my own way aft. Luckily, after all that action, somehow I still had the key in the pocket of my shorts. The padlock fell open and I pushed the companionway back. With some difficuly, I lifted the dropboard out of the way and made my way down below. Molly is a bachelor pad right now, adequately clean but lived in. Still, the cabin just then was a sight for sore eyes and an exhausted body. I tore off my sweaty shirt, grabbed a water out of the fridge, and flopped into the port settee. What a night.

I hadn’t eaten anything since the black beans and rice that afternoon, but this pirate was going to hit the bunk. I was done.

My luck did not improve much the next day. Overnight the forecast for Saturday had changed. It was likely to rain before the music fest was through. The wind was going to be stronger and steady as well. But I took too long deciding if I was going to go ashore again and the wind made my decision for me. As I mentioned, the outside anchorage is exposed to all the wind and waves of the Neuse River. It was soon too rocky for me to haul the anchor and escape. From mid afternoon Saturday until about 2:00 AM Sunday morning, Mollynogger was hobby horsing almost as much as the pram had the night before. Sleep is not really possible with the boat moving that much. Further, I was basically on Anchor Watch to make sure that the anchor was holding and we were all OK.

I finally slept into late Sunday morning. The weather had moderated and the forecast was the first thing I checked. There was a window to escape, but the wind was going to return by evening. Coffee was brewed quickly and I hauled the anchor. We motored a couple hours to the east and found a spot to hide in Broad Creek. I was going to sleep well that night.

Ironically, there was a gale warning last night and I am back in Broad Creek again.

… but that’s getting way ahead of my story. More sailing, next time.

The time had come for me to leave Washington, NC. The last of the three months I had paid for was almost up and Mollynogger’s hull had just been cleaned by Josh of Castaway Dive Service. There was likely a little wiggle room for me to bargain for a couple days and better weather, but I was compelled to go. Mid morning on that last September Wednesday, I untied the lines with the help of Keith and Marianne, Donald, Donald’s friend Bob (I think), and Steve. It wasn’t perfect, but my planned maneuver was largely successful. Donald and Bob, the Navy contingent, seemed to approve.

The spot where Molly had been tied up was not necessarily tight or difficult but it required some planning. She was facing the shore along a face dock with two boats relatively close fore and aft. We needed to get off the dock, clear the other boats, and turn around almost 180 degrees to head out into the river. I had lead a spring line from the outside stern cleat, to the dock, and back aboard. On my signal, the crew untied the last couple dock lines and pushed Molly’s bow away. After the bowsprit was past David’s trawler ahead, I put her in forward and we began to pull on the spring line. I didn’t let out quite enough line and as Molly began her turn, the dinghy was brushing the dock pylons. But with a little more slack and Molly gurgling forward at idle speed, we pulled the spring line taut and her bow began to arc out toward the river. Once I could aim her toward clear water, I let the spring line go and pulled it off the pylon and back aboard. We were off.

The wind was on our nose, of course, as we headed down the Pamlico River.

And that’s when we had our first little drama. I was on alert because I smelled something hot. It had been literally three months since I had been underway with Molly, and I wasn’t used to her sounds and smells. I had to wonder if it was my imagination or something real. Twice in the first five miles, I stopped, dropped the anchor, and checked on the engine. I’m not a very confident diesel mechanic but the engine was not running hot, and the oil was fine. The reservoir seemed to have more fluid in it than I remember and it was spitting some fluid that managed to hit the side of the engine. Hence, the hot smell. I jury-rigged a hose to direct the overflow into the bilge. All else seemed normal.

Keith had texted me to ask how it was going. I gave a brief description of my steam trouble and he reminded me to check that the radiator cap was not leaking. I made a mental note and decided to keep moving.

I motored down the Pamlico to where the ICW cuts across at Goose Creek. I had picked out an anchorage just inside the creek, but once I arrived there were too many houses close by. I continued on to the next anchorage on the chart and what an auspicious choice that turned out to be.

The sun was setting as I ghosted into Campbell Creek. Pink and yellow colors began to wash over the horizon and a large pod of dolphins was feeding. I seemed to have been surrounded by a buffet. Scattered about as I dropped the anchor, a fin would surface, and after a gasp of air, the rounded back of a dolphin would roll underwater again. It was hard to count them because they were scattered around the creek and never surfaced at the same time, but there must have been at least eight dolphins greeting me as I anchored. After making some supper, I spent time in the cockpit watching the sky darken and the stars emerge. It doesn’t get any better.

The forecast had called for better wind along my route the next afternoon, so I slept in a little. I checked the engine and its fluids. I removed the radiator cap and restored it with deliberate care. I hauled the anchor and gurgled back out into the ICW. A guy in a kayak didn’t seem to answer when I had called “Good Morning” to him, so that’s on his karma not mine. The R. E. Mayo Seafood Company docks have always intrigued me but it was too early to stop. Just past their big offshore boats and facility is the Gale Creek anchorage where I had spent the night three months before on the way up to Washington.

Mollynogger and I finally made it into the Bay River. We were back in more open water, but the wind was still on our nose. My haulout was scheduled for two weeks hence … and … the Ol’ Front Porch Music Festival was about to happen in Oriental. So, we turned down the Bay River rather than up. But that was the plan. A sailboat and a tug pushing a barge passed us on our way toward the Neuse River.

The Bay and Neuse Rivers join the Pamlico Sound almost together and there is always a lot of wind and water. I picked a spot where Molly could safely drift around, dropped her into neutral, and went forward to raise the main. Back at the helm, I set the sheet and we began to sail. After organizing the lines in the cockpit, I unfurled the genoa. We had just enough room to sail close-hauled down the edge of the Bay River and into the Neuse. Molly hitched her skirts and was snorting as she ran toward the wind.

As we entered the Neuse, we fell off into a beam reach across the wind. Molly and I were both elated and relished in sailing again. It was some of the best sailing we had done together yet. We charged across the waves, keeping the bow pointed tightly parallel across the northern shore of the river. The sky was clear except for the occasional big puffy clouds. The water was a deep blue grey with little bits of white cap scattered across the wide river. I’ve never had an anemometer before. I knew that the scattered white caps meant a nice moderate wind. Molly’s anemometer told me our breeze was holding consistently just below 15 knots. It was glorious sailing.

I had a couple weeks before I was scheduled to haulout at Hurricane Boatyard. My plan was to stop in at Oriental for a couple days to enjoy the Ol’ Front Porch Music Festival. I had been there a few years ago. It is amazing that a village of less than a thousand residents can organize and hold a two day free music festival every year. And they do it very well.

Oriental is also a Mecca for sailors. They say that there are more circumnavigators there per square mile than anywhere in the country. As I got closer my sailor brain was churning. It was a damn fine day for sailing and the wind direction was entirely in my favor. To this vagabond sailor, you just don’t motor into Oriental unless you absolutely have to. Once I could see the Smith Creek light pylon, I knew that I could sail right in and anchor without turning the engine back on.

I checked my surroundings and there was another sailboat close behind me. I turned Molly up into the wind to let them by as I furled the genoa. We spun around and pointed the bow toward the Oriental jetty. Now there is an inside anchorage and a couple free docks all the way into the harbor. Past experience told me that the anchorage was always crowded. And since I was still getting used to Molly, who is eight feet longer and almost three times as heavy as Ruth Ann was, I didn’t want to try to maneuver into the harbor, but especially not try to work my way back out.

I watched the depth sounder and the chartplotter as we ghosted into the outside anchorage. We probably could have gotten a little closer but I had been here a couple times and had some knowledge of the bottom and the depths. I chose a spot, sailed a little inside of it, and then turned Molly up into the wind. After uncleating the mainsheet, I walked briskly to the bow to drop the anchor. The main was flogging free in the wind as the 65 pound Mantus spade anchor bit the muddy bottom and we had arrived. The sun dipped below the trees ashore as I dropped the main and zipped it up in the beautiful stack pack that Allison had made. I tidied up the lines, covered the chartplotter and the compass, and then made myself a drink.

I had been watching the forecast for Oriental. The previous week, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop there, but the weather had softened in my favor. The outside anchorage was wide open to the wind and waves of the wide Neuse River, but I had a couple days reprieve in the weather or so it seemed.

I’m going to back track just a bit from the last post.

I had spent a couple nights in Slade Creek off the Pungo River before heading up to Havens Wharf Marina in Washington, North Carolina. There I had arranged for a dock through a connection with friends so that I could leave Mollynogger in a safe spot while I flew back to Michigan for a week.

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I motored my way up the Pamlico River and just before the same water turns into the Tar River, Keith, the dockmaster and his wife, Marianne were waiting to help me tie up Mollynogger at a long face dock on the east side of the marina. Havens Wharf is a lovely little marina near the end of the Washington waterfront. In fact, three or four years ago when I was in town aboard Ruth Ann I had noticed the place as I walked around town. After tying up and introducing myself, Keith recruited me right away for Trivia Night at the Two Rivers Alehouse. We almost won it all that night and I’ve been a regular at Thursday Trivia ever since.

Keith and Marianne are friends with Gaylen and Allison who sold Mollynogger to me. They are also musicians, plus Keith is a Karaoke DJ every Friday down the road at the El Loco Social Bistro. We were hitting the Down On Main Restaurant for their Thursday Boiled Shrimp almost every week. Just before Keith and I head over to Trivia Night, Marianne goes to the Beaufort County Traditional Music Association Jam at the historic Turnage Theatre; joining us at Two Rivers afterward. I had been playing music with them and Marianne had invited me to the BCTMA jam. Luckily for me, there was a Saturday morning jam as well. I could expand my music brain and play with a bunch of fine folks on Saturdays while maintaining my trivia addiction on Thursdays.

Steve and Lisa were another couple at the marina who knew Allison and Gaylen. There were a bunch of good people there and we had all kinds of community stuff like potlucks, a pig roast on the Fourth, Tuesday night grilling at the marina pavilion, and lots of drinking. Whew. I don’t have a drinking problem other than my metabolism is so slow that I seem to gain all the weight for everyone else involved. Then again it is a great way to make close friends quickly. In fact, Spencer and Dina are down the dock on Blue Skies. One Friday over a couple beers at the pavilion in late June, Spencer told me that we were going to his house the next morning – 35 miles away – to pick up an air conditioning unit that he had in his garage. He knew I was going to need it on Mollynogger. We even stopped on the way back to get the correct vent hose and then set the whole thing up on my boat. It was 100 degrees on the Fourth of July which would have been brutal if it weren’t for that borrowed AC unit.

My niece blessed me with the nickname Bubba over twenty years ago when she was 5 or 6 years old. That eventually morphed into Bubba the Pirate. Gaylen and Allison play music as The Sail Bums. We each try to promote the other on our social media. So, they introduced me to their friends in Washington as “Bubba the Pirate.” It has been surreal, as a yankee, to hang out with a marina full of people with various Southern drawls who were all calling me “Bubba.”

Cheers to all my other Washington friends as well: Will and Norma; David and Misty; Claudio and Cindy; Corey and Rebecca and Diego; Robbie; Annie; Jerry; Ashley and Sarah at the Two Rivers Alehouse; and all the Trad Music musicians; especially Linda, the leader; and Rob, one of the “fiddle tune nerds.”

Washington is a great little town that is quite nice to vagabond cruisers. The city waterfront includes many boat slips, showers, laundry, etc. and is a couple blocks closer to downtown than Havens Wharf. There are several good restaurants, an active Arts Council, an historic downtown, and many historical houses around. I spent almost a month here with Ruth Ann mostly because boats can tie up at the waterfront 48 hours at a time for free. That does not include any hookups but water is available nearby and both Ruth Ann and Mollynogger can survive on solar panels anyway. I anchored out in what I call the “lagoon” for several days and whenever I needed groceries or anything I’d tie up on the waterfront for a couple days and run my errands.

There was a West Marine store here as well, but sadly it is closing with their current restructuring. I almost got hired there the last time I was in town, but the person who I was going to replace decided to stay. Happily, I didn’t get stuck here or I never would have gotten Mollynogger.

I’ve done a couple open mic nights here and played with marina folks on the dock or at the pavilion several times. Along with the music and the trivia, I’ve been trying to get through my project list on the boat. I wired a light in the head; cleaned and refreshed a bunch of woodwork on deck; installed a composting head, installed a new compass, fixed the compass cover on Molly’s binnacle at the helm, and much more.

The most interesting project was also a West Marine story. Molly’s anchor chain had a stretch of flaky rust and some of the links were stretched a little; that happens on older chain. That rust and stretching caused the chain to skip on the gypsy of the windlass and made raising the anchor difficult. I discovered that shipping 320 pounds of chain was quite expensive, but I could get it shipped to a West Marine store at no charge. The trouble was that the Washington store had already been scrubbed from the ship-to-store list because of the impending closure. Still shipping to the store was going to save me almost $500. The nearest store remaining open was in New Bern, about 40 miles away. For a little over a hundred dollars I rented a Uhaul truck for the day.

It was a strange day to walk over to the Carolina Avenue 76 and pick up a truck to drive. I hadn’t been behind the wheel of a land vehicle for more than four months. I grabbed a coffee and a bagel on the way out of town and trucked down to New Bern. The manager there had just transferred from another store that was closing and was a bit emotional when I asked how everyone was doing. Nevertheless, they were quite happy that I had come to pick up the barrel of chain so soon after it had arrived. Luckily, they had a little forklift to put the barrel on a pallet into my truck. I had meant to get some rope to tie the barrel down, but I just headed back right away and made it OK.

After trekking back to Washington, I set myself up in the parking lot. My new chain was a galvanized steel chain. That galvanize coating can get “sanded” off dragging it across surfaces like cement. The main part of the lot was gravel. I decided that if I carried as much chain as I could, as far as I could, the gravel would be gentler than the paved areas. I tipped the barrel over to hang it out the back of the truck to mark the chain so that I could keep track of how much I let out when anchoring. I gingerly stretched the chain out into the gravel and then looped the rest of the 200 feet of chain thirty feet at a time. I had purchased marking ribbons when I had picked up the chain. And after checking what the previous owners had done to mark the old chain, I was able to use ribbon markers which are cheaper but are really designed to be used in the braid of rope. The genius idea that the Sail Bums had used was to put a couple stitches in each ribbon to hold them on a link of chain.

Then I had to get the chain back into the barrel to get it out the dock to Molly. The dock floors are cement at Havens Wharf, so I didn’t want to drag the chain as it would scrape off my galvanizing and likely leave marks on the dock. I had rented a two wheel dolly along with the truck, so after gingerly carrying the chain back to the barrel, I rolled it down the dock. Donald from sv Destiny came along and helped me schlep the chain onto the boat. The chain was getting caught down below, so I had to pile the chain on deck before sorting that out. After investigating, Molly’s bow is just tight enough on the inside that the chain was getting caught and bunched up rather than falling freely. I will soon install a baffle with some plywood and fiberglass below the chain hawse to keep the chain moving down.

I had intended to take the old chain to a scrap yard while I had the Uhaul truck, but Keith put the word out along the waterfront. We ended up giving the chain to someone who needed it. There was really only about thirty feet out of two hundred that was significantly rusty. It felt good to help someone out rather than just scrapping the chain. So all is good in the universe.

I’m at the end of my time here in Washington. I had a couple boats at Torresen Marina in Muskegon each for a summer season, but this feels like the longest I have ever been at a dock in a marina because I’m here full time. I’m not just sailing on the weekends and random weeknights and I don’t have a job to distract me from the boat. Still, I haven’t left the dock here either. With my dinghy on the foredeck, the AC unit taking up space in the cabin, the scattering of tools, and the flow of projects, it is not so simple to take off for an afternoon. The very opposite of the summers in Muskegon where I was escaping work to jump on a boat that I kept ready for sailing.

It will be bittersweet to leave all my friends here; new friends that feel like old friends. I’ll likely be back at some point, but my plan has always been to wander. I need to get back to that for my heart to get back to where it longs to be. I will be stopping at a boatyard for a quick haulout to refresh Molly’s bottom paint and do some minor maintenance. After that we will be heading south, probably with a stop in Northern Florida before heading back to the Pendarvis Cove near Stuart and likely a jump to the Bahamas this winter. After that anything could happen.

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As Mollynogger lolled in the anchorage off of Front Street downtown, the Beaufort Docks were teeming with fancy boats. I cannot imagine how many dollars worth of gleaming, high dollar fishing boats lined the docks. And boats were in Atlantic Beach and Morehead City too as all the marinas swelled beyond capacity.

As I mentioned, Vic and I had done a reunion cruise of sorts but on the previous trip his mom, Cheryl, had been with us as well. I had promised to take her out sailing once Mollynogger and I were in town. If I recall, there was some weather coming in a few days. We were going to go out on Sunday before the weather, and planned to slip out after the fishing fleet left and return before they all came roaring back for the weigh-in deadline.

After welcoming her aboard and prepping Molly, I started the engine and went forward to raise the anchor. Almost right away I had noticed an odd ticking noise in the engine’s idle. I was hoping it would go away once the engine was warm. We started moving out of the cramped anchorage and motored past Front Street. I grew more and more uncomfortable with the ticking sound. Once we were clear of the anchorage, I asked Cheryl to steer while I checked the engine.

I scrambled down the companionway and unbolted the stairs to lift them out of the way. I grabbed a flashlight and opened the engine hatch just enough to see inside. Right there in front of me a little spurt of exhaust was escaping around one of the injectors. That was not good at all. I won’t cast any aspersions, but there I was trying to take another member of the same family out sailing and was foiled yet again by the engine.

We turned around and I re-anchored in almost the same spot by Front Street. Cheryl and I had a nice chat, a snack and sampled some bourbon. It was a very pleasant afternoon, but not exactly what I had planned. Victor and a friend cruised out in his skiff a little later to collect Cheryl. He was nice enough to take some of my trash as well.

In the previous post, I described how my brain froze the last time Molly’s engine wouldn’t start. I had been away from boats for two years and my tenuous confidence as a diesel mechanic was at its nadir. I slept on my injector problem while my brain chased several scenarios. In the morning, I set about to pull the injector; the basic first step. Two nuts hold a collar which holds the injector down on top of the engine’s head. As soon as I had the first nut about halfway off, I knew the problem. The collar was cracked in half. With a broken collar, there was no pressure holding the injector in place. I posted a couple pictures to the Perkins 4.108 groups on Facebook asking for advice and finished my coffee.

I remembered that Gaylen, the previous owner, had left me a spare set of injectors. I knew right where they were under the V berth and went to grab them. Another issue I had discovered unbolting the injector collar was that one of the nuts was so rusted to the stud that the stud unscrewed from the head with the nut. Installing the new injector, that stud seemed to bottom out before the nut was tight. The torque on those nuts must have been uneven and that uneven pressure would have definitely caused the break. I put new studs on my mental list and put a couple stainless steel washers between the collar and the nut. Without a torque wrench, I snugged the nuts by feel and reassembled the fuel rail. After bleeding the fuel system, I turned the key and the engine came to life again. No tick! It was such a feeling of accomplishment to prove to myself yet again that I was reasonably self sufficient. I’ve never felt I was any good under the hood of a car, but I’m getting more and more confident over an old diesel engine.

That afternoon, I walked up to the Piggly Wiggly to get some provisions. On the way back, I stopped at Barbour Supply to get some kind of caulk for Molly’s portlights. After talking to the counter man, I broke one of my cardinal rules. I don’t like using silicone on my boats, but it was basically my only option within walking distance. And supposedly the State of North Carolina buys it by the case for the windows on their ferries.

Between Barbour Supply and the dock, I made a short detour and walked over past the Hammock House built around 1700 and thought to be one of the oldest houses in North Carolina. My main reason for going was that there is also a tradition that the pirate, Blackbeard, stayed in the house in the eighteenth century while it was serving as an inn. It is now a private home without regular tours as far as I can tell. I took a quick selfie from the street and walked on to the dock.

The next day, I got up early, made breakfast, and prepared for leaving town. The engine came to life again and began a comfortable purr, so I went forward to raise the anchor. Taylor Creek is a quite pleasant, if slightly crowded, anchorage. The current is not bad and the wind is constrained from several directions. Molly and I made our way past the Beaufort Docks just as Cheryl and I had done two days before. This time, however, I turned to starboard and went the back way behind Radio Island and into Town Creek. I was anchored there with Ruth Ann a couple times and it was fun to pass through some familiar waters.

I was headed north without a firm destination, but I was looking for a lonely spot of water to decompress. Town Creek spills into Gallants Channel which took us out toward Core Creek; a part of the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW). Core Creek was connected to Adams Creek up north when the ICW was cut through. That passage runs up to the Neuse River and I thought I might head over to a spot I had heard was nice and quiet.

I rolled out the genoa as I got into Core Creek and started motorsailing. With an eye on the wind and on Molly’s speed over the ground, I eventually decided to kill the engine. There it was again. Nothing but that quiet gurgling of the water running past the hull. I had a catamaran ahead of me who seemed surprisingly slow under sail. Of course, when I caught them to pass, it was in a narrow section of the creek right before the bridge where NC101 crosses to connect Havelock and Beaufort. Molly coasted by them without causing too much heartache. They might have been chagrined but they waved.

As the ICW enters the waters of Adams Creek on the north end of the passage, the way opens up with much wider water. I was still sailing and having fun even as I watched some ominous clouds off to the west. Off to my starboard was a wide but shallow anchorage where the Jonaquin and Cedar Creeks come together and wash into Adams Creek. I had previously anchored there aboard Ruth Ann, but Mollynogger’s keel is a foot deeper than hers was. Curiously, I started to remember the Coast Guard broadcasts from the week before. I think the floating log hazard was right here in Cedar Creek.

A powerboat that had been traveling along with the catamaran and I, turned into the anchorage. It seemed pretty early to me even with the clouds looming. However, just as I had passed the anchorage the radio crackled with a Coast Guard weather warning. I looked again and could see how fast the clouds were rolling across the sky, so I turned Molly around and headed back toward Cedar Creek. As we backtracked to the south, I furled the jib and secured the sheets.

Ahead of the anchorage, I was scanning on my chartplotter. The whole area was flecked with red marks to show that the depths were below my danger setting. Molly draws four and half feet of water and I use six feet as my depth limit. Normally, that makes piloting quite easy. I just stay out of the red flecked space on the chart. However, when I needed to duck into some skinny water to prepare for a squall it was not so helpful. There was a lumpy organic shape of safe water just beyond a channel marker but I wanted to cut the corner as the clouds and wind loomed closer. A line to the southeast appeared to have deep enough water despite the red flecks on the chart. If I cut toward the marker, and stayed along that thin line, we’d probably make it. When I’m either dragging the keel on the bottom or the sand is being stirred up into a thick cloud, the depth gauge displays three dashes rather than a number. I saw dashes more than once on my way into Cedar Creek.

I was releasing the safety strap on the anchor and pushing it off the bowsprit when the first downdrafts of the squall hit us. I took a measure of comfort when I felt the anchor grab and the chain snugged up. The sixty five pound Rocna is a trusty beast when it’s down and set. Quick math in my head ciphered that ninety feet of chain would be a little more than ten to one scope, well able to hold against whatever was about to hit us. I set the snubber and returned aft. After securing some loose items like the cockpit cushions, I headed down below to ride it out.

The squall was intense but brief; nowhere near as bad as some that I’ve been in. I just haven’t yet been through much aboard Mollynogger. You might remember that twice I went down to Carolina Beach from Wrightsville to ride out a storm on a mooring. Riding out a squall with Molly at anchor was still fairly new to me, but we did fine. She is more than twice the weight of Ruth Ann and feels very safe when the excrement hits the oscillating air circulator.

The air is always still right after a squall, so I climbed back into the cockpit. After a couple long breaths of that fresh air, I began to realize that I still had plenty of daylight left. After checking the chart and the time the sun would set, I knew that I could get to the South River as I had planned just before dark. All I had to do was make ready.

I started the engine again, raised the anchor, and warily traced that line back out into the channel and deeper water. Once back in Adams Creek, the channel leaned to the west before entering the wider waters of the Neuse River. Width is one thing, but depth is quite another. The South River lies on the other side of the Garbacon Shoal, an expanse of shallow water along the southern shore of the Neuse. We were on a schedule now so I motored along without bothering to set a sail. The river was still riled up from the passing of the squall, so we bounced along and the mast waggled from side to side. The channel light marking the edge of the shoal was about three miles ahead on a track just east of north.

After clawing our way to the light, I steered Molly to the southeast to motor about four miles down to the somewhat tricky entrance of the South River. We had tracked the hard chine of a triangular course up to the light and back down. At the river entrance, the chart was clear but the way was tight. A small shoal crept into the southside of the channel and right after the first turn to starboard, a buoy danced in the waves to mark a wreck on the bottom of the narrow channel. Molly charged along as I steered her clear of the obstacles and we made it into the smaller river in no time. After our double turn to starboard had taken us behind a point of land and into the smaller river, the waters ahead were much calmer.

With four or five anchorages marked along the next couple miles, we had some choices. The first was too close to the main river in a wide open space. I steered Molly toward the second possibility but it was a small spot near a creek with several houses nearby, so we kept going. I was aiming at two spots close together down the way. Big Creek drains into the South River. These were not overly creative names but I could see more trees than houses, so things were looking up.

As we approached Big Creek, I could see some construction and dredging was going on. The anchorage up the creek would be protected from the wind but there were several houses within sight. I didn’t want to wrestle my way past a couple barges just to get closer to civilization. I opted for the other spot almost a mile from the houses. That was just what I had been craving.

The sun was just touching the tops of the trees to the west of Molly as I slowed her to a crawl and watched our depth. When we were in about ten feet of water, I put the engine in neutral and walked forward to drop the anchor. It was just getting dusky when I backed down on the anchor to set it firmly and marked the spot on my anchor alarm. I could just make out a small beach along the nearby shore. I hit the solenoid switch to kill the engine and my world was silent again. The trees along the shore had melted from various shades of dark green into a single fuzzy topped, dark shape on the horizon. The river was about a half mile wide and I could not see any evidence of human occupation on the other shore. That was just what I had been craving.

I made a light supper and enjoyed some of the bourbon that Cheryl had left us. Molly soon rocked me into a stupor and I slept like a man who had finally made it home. In the morning, I slept in and then made a large leisurely breakfast. Afterward, I made some effort to scrub the decks and tidy up the boat. I sat in the sun and read. And later took a bucket shower in the cockpit. The houses were far enough away that I knew they could just see the sliver of Molly’s hull against the lush green forest, but I also knew they would only be able to see me if they got out some binoculars. I didn’t have to worry too much about clothes or modesty. That was just what I had been craving.

After five glorious days swinging on anchor in the wilds of the South River, I was running low on provisions. I needed to stop in at Oriental, NC anyway. I always keep a stock of dried mushrooms in my pantry and they were nearly gone. I had read about a store in Oriental that would accept UPS packages for cruisers. Before leaving Beaufort, I had confirmed that they still offered that service and ordered some mushrooms from Minnesota. An email had come a couple days before that the package had been delivered, so I got myself and Molly organized to move again.

Sadly, the wind was on our nose as we backtracked to the west and crossed the Neuse River to get to Oriental. When I was there with Ruth Ann a few years ago, we could sneak under the bridge into Greens Creek and got tucked away in a very protected little anchorage. Unfortunately, Mollynogger’s mast is eight or nine feet taller than Ruth Ann’s keeping me from getting to that quiet spot. There is also a couple free docks in the town harbor there but I had seen how crowded it can get on the inside. I was not going to attempt to get into the harbor yet. Molly is a much bigger boat than my previous one and I had only been sailing her a little more than a month.

After reaching the Smith Creek Channel Light and turning in toward Oriental, I began my analysis. There is an anchorage right in the entrance of the harbor, but I knew from experience it is usually crowded. Luckily, there is also an anchorage just outside the jetty. After confirming that many boats were already in the closer anchorage, I steered us off the channel and anchored in eight feet of water on the outside. I would need to watch the weather as we were only sheltered from the wind in a small arc to the northwest. Any wind out of a broad range from southwest to northeast would hit us uninhibited.

In the morning, I rowed to the town dinghy dock and set to wandering. I needed to check in at the Inland Waterway Provision Company for some boat parts but I can no longer recall which or for what. After hiking up to the tiny but well stocked Piggly Wiggly, on the way back I stopped in at the Nautical Wheelers store for my package. Nautical Wheelers is one of those amazing places typical of small, remote towns. They carry an amazing array of things; mostly leaning toward the well-to-do of both residents and travelers. They have Carolina souvenirs, cigars, wine, and local gourmet items. They carry clothing from souvenir t shirts and trucker caps to fancy blouses and lounge wear, and even some expensive footwear. Out on the lawn is a huge selection of different styles and colors of Adirondack chairs and other patio accessories in polywood. They even list a “polywood specialist” on the staff page of their website.

The store is in a big old southern house on Bridge Street with a big ol’ Southern porch on three sides. I set my bags down near the door and stepped inside. A chime echoed through the store and a nice lady asked if she could help me before I could even see her. I explained that I was there to pick up a package.

“It shouldn’t be heavy,” I said as she beckoned me to follow her down a hallway. It was a box of dried mushrooms after all. Two pounds of dried mushrooms that would last me several weeks of cooking, but two pounds, even in a large box, that wouldn’t slow down the nice lady helping me. I reached to carry the box anyway and we headed back toward the counter.

I had expected to pay some nominal fee for the privilege of having them collect my package. She had followed me toward the front room and I turned to ask how much I owed her. She was very confused and cocked her head. I could almost here “bless your heart” drifting as a whisper among the hats and shirts and oval “ONC” stickers.

“I don’t think there is any charge,” she finally managed to say.

“Well, thank you. That’s great.” I said. “But I will also take some of this,” as I placed a two pound bag of Carolina Gold Brown Rice on the counter before her.

“Wonderful,” she exclaimed returning to some comfort zone of retail exchange.

I thanked her again and exited the house to collect my other bags on the porch.

It was a short walk back over to the town dinghy dock adjacent to the Oriental Harbor Village Marina. Balter, the dinghy, waited patiently for me and tugged against the painter and the cable locking the oars into the dinghy, and the dinghy to the dock. I unlocked and stowed the cable, loaded up, and shoved off to row back out to Mollynogger.

I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned the dinghy name yet. It is not all that important but I’m compelled to enter it into the record. “Mollynogger” is an old sailor word for someone who frequents the company of loose or immoral women. To “Balter” is to dance or tread clumsily. I can only imagine that a mollynogger, sober or especially not, would most often be baltering along in his pursuits. Hence, I have named the dinghy Balter to be the tender to Mollynogger.

Oriental is not that far from Beaufort over land and Victor was going to come up for lunch. We had also discussed him taking Mollynogger’s spinnaker pole. I have discovered that the pole laying along Molly’s side deck which seemed huge is actually regulation size for her. However, at sixteen feet long and four inches in diameter at the center, I was never going to deploy the pole. I don’t have a spinnaker and won’t likely ever have one. Further, I would never be reaching with a spinnaker and would never need the pole to be able to clear the forestay. The most I would use a pole for would be to hold the genoa out to the side going downwind. This would only require what is called a whisker pole. Such a pole is usually adjustable for different lengths and is much smaller. It was going to be interesting trying to row to shore with that giant spinnaker pole, but Victor and I had a plan. He had a wooden boom on his boat that needed to be replaced and the giant spinnaker pole was almost just the right size.

Well, you know what they say about “best laid plans” and all. The morning of the day Victor was going to head my way, there was a change in the forecast including a small craft advisory for the waters around me. Being anchored outside the jetty, and basically out in the main river, I was going to be exposed to the brunt of that weather. Moreover, the winds were forecast out of the southwest where I had no protection. Any strong wind would have six miles of open water to build up the waves before they got to me. I had to bail and called Victor to cancel our plans.

I had hauled the anchor by midmorning and we headed down the Neuse to the Bay River. The Bay comes down from beyond Bayboro and is a much smaller river. The ICW actually turns up that river briefly and then cuts across the peninsula and behind Goose Creek Island to get to the Pamlico River. Molly and I followed that route and anchored in the somewhat appropriately named Gale Creek, just past the Bay River. We were in a little wide spot in the creek where it was quiet. There were three or four houses; a couple of them quite nice for such a remote spot. As the sun went down, we had run far enough out of the Neuse River that the storm never reached us. That was fine with me.

In the morning, I was on the move again as I had space on a dock waiting for me in a couple days. Our family is flung all around the country and into Europe. After we lost Dad in October last year, we had coordinated everyone’s calendar to be able to meet up and have a weekend of family fellowship. Mom and Dad are together in the cemetery in Cadillac, Michigan next to Dad’s parents. I had needed to find a secure place to leave Mollynogger while I traveled. As luck would have it my friends, Gaylen and Allison, who I had purchased the boat from, had a friend who was the dockmaster of a small marina in Washington, North Carolina. Washington is one of my favorite spots as I had been there with Ruth Ann for a three weeks or so a few years back. But I had a day to kill before my scheduled arrival and I was really close to a spot with some personal history.

I continued on Gale Creek past the RE Mayo Docks, a place that has always intrigued me but I’ve never had time to stop. Through the peninsula and into the Pamilco River, Washington lay to the northwest but I steered Molly the other way. We were back in waters with some room, so I rolled out the genoa again and we motorsailed down the Pamlico River and turned up into the Pungo River. The second big creek off to starboard, just past Sandy Point, was Slade Creek. Back in 2015, I was crewing for Alex Dorsey aboard his Eleanor, a Westsail 42, when we were flanked by an unexpectedly strong squall and had to run for cover off the Pungo. We had found some refuge in Slade Creek. I still don’t know how we made it there in one piece. The boat was healed over significantly under bare poles (no sails were up for you landlubbers). A baby water spout nearly raked the bow as we scurried toward the creek. Most of the way we had very little visibility in the horizontal rain. Alex was staring at the chartplotter and I was trying to watch ahead. I had feared seeing the trees loom out of the rain just as we crunched onto the beach, but Alex got us into the creek “flying on instruments.” Once we had entered, there were enough trees around that it was like someone had switched off the storm. The wind was gone. The rain fell down rather than across. And there was a spectacular sunset through the trees as if Mother Nature was begging our forgiveness. We spent the night there on our way to Charleston and I was going to go back there now just to say that I done so. Alex is back in Panama and I sent him a photo on Whatsapp.

There were a couple houses near the mouth of Slade Creek, but we continued on a bit deeper and around a bend. I dropped the anchor in a spot that felt familiar but after so long I really don’t know where Eleanor had stopped that previous day. I relished that I was in another lonely spot with no other humans nearby. I actually spent two nights there and only saw a fisherman go by once. It was wonderful. That was just what I had been craving.

On Thursday, June 25, I got up early and had the engine on and the anchor up by 7:00 o’clock. Molly and I had a date in Washington. Of course, the wind was on our nose, so we motored up the Pamilco, past Bath which was one of Blackbeard’s hideaways, and on into Washington. There’s a railroad swing bridge on the south side of what I call the lagoon. The locals don’t know what I’m talking about but there is a wide, shallow spot across the river from downtown Washington where I had anchored Ruth Ann. I call it a lagoon. This day we motored on past the historic city and looked for the marina at Havens Wharf. I had called Keith, the dockmaster, when I was a couple hours away. I checked in with him again as Molly got near. The marina is all the way at the other end of the downtown waterfront. Keith and his wife Marianne were waiting to catch our lines as I ghosted up toward the dock between a house boat and a fishing trawler. Thankfully, Keith had made it plenty easy on me. We were up against a long face dock on the side of the marina.

I spent the Fourth of July with a bunch of new friends. There was another couple at the dock who were also friends of Molly’s previous owners. Steve and Lisa on Liberty are literally right across the dock from me. Everyone was welcoming and friendly including and especially Spencer and his wife Dina who have lent me an AC unit. It was 101 degrees on the Fourth which would have been brutal without their generous help.

A few days later, I flew back to Michigan from Greenville, the closest commercial airport and the next town over. It was a special weekend with most of the family. We stayed in an AirBNB in Ludington which has plenty of family history as well and a beach on Lake Michigan. On Saturday afternoon, several of us made the trip over to Cadillac and spent some time at the cemetery followed by a tour around the town where Dad had grown up and he and Mom had later built a house to retire in. Sunday was a beach day and hanging out with the clan.

After a week in Michigan, I returned to Mollynogger. I was only going to spend one month in Washington but ended up signing up for a couple more. I’ve been working on some boat projects while I have shorepower and enjoying the people and the town of Washington. There’s been Trivia Night every Thursday at the Two Rivers Alehouse, the Beaufort County Traditional Music Association Saturday jam, an open mic I won’t tell you about, and lots of time with good people. But soon I’ll be leaving again to restart the wandering that I’ve been meaning to do. I’ll have another post about my time here, but the timing of these posts is auspicious. I’ve been distracted by all kinds of activity here in Washington and by my boat projects, but I’m finally catching up the blog just before I’m to start traveling again and have more stories to tell. Please follow along. I’m writing for myself as a kind of therapy but I really enjoy people following along and I welcome your comments and questions.

Enjoy your day. Be happy and make some other people happy too.

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I was hanging around in Banks Channel, Wrightsville Beach, and reveling in the fact that I had finally been out on the ocean again. A good sailor keeps an eye on the weather. I was close enough to shore and to civilization, that all the weather apps on my phone were available. Suddenly, there was a storm system coming the following week with some pretty heavy winds. I needed to remain in town for a bit longer to coordinate with a boatyard pal, Victor. I had helped Vic move his boat a few years ago and to celebrate he was going to help me, on a reunion cruise of sorts, jump offshore to Beaufort from the Masonboro Inlet. To avoid the windy storm coming, I had made a second reservation down at Carolina Beach.

As luck would have it, I convinced Mike, another pal from my boatyard days, to come down and have breakfast. We found the venerable Sawmill Restaurant on Carolina Beach Road and sunk into a booth for a good breakfast and a long conversation. Mike, Anthony, and I would indulge a bit in the boatyard after dark and imagine that we were the amateur security patrol for the dozens of boats in the yard. Going way back to my old blog, Mike was also instrumental in helping me survive the night I spent sleeping on a sinking boat. That story is here.

The windy storm forecast petered out by the time the day had arrived but I had a nice time back on a mooring in Carolina Beach. Ironically, Mollynogger had spent a good deal of time there before me. Eventually, I wandered back up to Banks Channel where it’s free to anchor. I managed to meet up with Mike again. He drove around looking for a place he thought he remembered, but we ended up at a BBQ place. This yankee, who is usually plant-based, had a fried catfish sandwich with coleslaw and fried okra on the side. I have never claimed to be perfectly plant-based and I will “go along to get along” whenever it is conducive to catching up with an old friend. Besides, that was a damn good catfish sandwich, better than average coleslaw, and I love okra!

Vic and I finally coordinated our schedules and decided the day to sail was that coming Wednesday. His mother (and his dog, too) had been on the trip we had done before on his boat, but Cheryl couldn’t make this trip. Nevertheless, she gave Vic a ride down from Beaufort, so we all had a chat at the public dock and then loaded up the dinghy; a couple guys, a knapsack, and some beer.

Victor and I can often have long philosophical discussions and that night was no exception. Halfway through solving the world’s problems, I had to remind us both that we were getting up early in the morning. The trip from Masonboro Inlet to the Beaufort Inlet was a little more than sixty miles. With about fourteen hours of available daylight that time of year, we needed to start moving as soon as the sun came up to reach Beaufort in daylight. I set my alarm for 05:30 and we crawled into our bunks. The V berth can get a little stuffy when it’s warm, so I slept up there and let Vic crash on a berth in the main cabin where there was a little breeze. Luckily, there hadn’t been many bugs in the air nearby and we could leave all the hatches open.

My alarm went off but I hit the snooze.

In a short minute, Vic yelled from the main cabin “Are you getting up?”

“Oh, all right,” I grunted.

We each rolled out of bed and I made some coffee. Breakfast was going to be after we got out on the ocean. After tidying up, and securing things for sailing, we checked the fluids on Mollynogger’s Perkins diesel. Vic is an engineer and very thorough. He decided to check the Racor fuel filter. It didn’t look great, so we changed it out for new. With all that settled we crawled into the cockpit to start the engine.

As the engine rumbled, I went forward to start raising the anchor. With about half the chain shipped, the engine’s idle changed slightly, and a few moments later the Perkins coughed and stopped.

“Did you do that?” I called back from the bow.

“No!”

To be honest, my brain froze. I couldn’t wait to get sailing again. I couldn’t wait to get out of the touristy towns I’d been stuck in for three weeks. And I couldn’t wait to take a boat friend out sailing on my new boat.

… but the engine wouldn’t start.

Victor took over and started troubleshooting. Luckily, as my brain caught up with him, he was doing exactly what I would have been doing if my brain had been engaged. The Perkins is a basic diesel engine and a diesel engine needs three things: fuel, air, and compression. We thought perhaps some air had gotten into the fuel line when we changed the fuel filter. So we bled the injectors and tried starting it with the auxiliary fuel pump running, without it again, standing on one foot while running the pump, etc. We tried anything and everything, and could not find any diesel joy.

If I recall, I ended up making breakfast right there at anchor as we thought about what we could do to start the engine. Blueberry pancakes, more coffee, and plenty of head scratching.

Finally, we decided to check the engine intake. The Perkins is old school and does not have an air filter. There is a metal mesh breather fitting on the intake underneath a mushroom looking cover. Vic had been looking for some kind of filter housing and though I knew its location, my brain was just now catching up. He stuck his finger under the bell and it came back greasy and black. Not good but new evidence. I set to work loosening the hose clamp and got inside to find that the mesh was coated with a heavy layer of oily black grease and cat hair from Admiral Pickles, the former Commodore of Mollynogger. I cleaned the mesh with a bit of diesel from the old fuel filter. We put it all back together, crossed our fingers, and finally turned the key again.

The engine roared back to life.

In the meantime, I had finally gotten desperate enough to text Gaylen and Allison, the previous owners to ask for troubleshooting advice. We had found the air intake moments later and I texted back that we were in business.

We had spent three hours getting the damn engine to run. It might have occurred to a good sailor to re-evaluate starting off for Beaufort with the diminished daylight hours remaining. But … yeah … no.

We were both excited to sail and hadn’t consider waiting.

The wind was a little light for the rest of the morning. We motorsailed for a while but sooner than I anticipated, we were able to turn off the engine and let the sails take over. That never gets old. The beautiful sounds of just wind and waves can be such a contrast to the roaring machine sound of the diesel. With winds between 9 and 12 knots out of the southeast, we were reaching along pointed almost directly at the Beaufort Inlet sea buoys many miles away. The challenge was the steering. The wind was pushing the waves up under Mollynogger’s starboard stern quarter. With each wave, her stern would rise and she’d shake her hip off to port. Without steering strongly against that shimmy, Molly’s heading would radically shift off to starboard, the genoa would then go slack and Molly would try to round up even further. It was a bit of a workout, but it was glorious sailing. Mother Nature was being relatively gentle with us.

We sailed all afternoon long toward Beaufort. Another boat accompanied us on a similar track. We had passed them after leaving Masonboro Inlet, but she later deployed a spinnaker and slowly crept past us. I had made some sloppy joe type mix with lentils and TVP the night before and had nearly thrown it out, but it was much better after the flavors had steeped together overnight. Later on, Victor craved the Spaghetti-Os that he had seen in the galley. Our cruise was mostly a luxurious romp on the ocean with each of us taking turns at the helm.

The chartplotter display had a bit of a lag which made holding a course more difficult than it needed to be. Victor had started following only the binnacle compass despite the air bubble under the dome. It was definitely easier to hold a steady course that way.

We were ten miles or so from the inlet when the sun had gone down and the sky and sea became equally black. Night sailing was not exactly what Victor had signed up for but I have always relished it. There were plenty of lights on shore, but not much in the way of visual references. The Beaufort sea buoys were still too far away to have anything to aim at. We had to rely on the chartplotter once more.

The same wind and waves had Molly doing the same dance as her stern lifted and she sashayed to starboard. Now, however, it was more mental work as the bowsprit waggled ahead of us with nothing but blackness before it. I was loving it and Victor was earning his nighttime sealegs.

The Coast Guard kept broadcasting a notice about a log floating in a channel somewhere. They sternly warned mariners to keep an eye out and mentioned the creek and the county where the log was a danger to navigation. I had no idea what county we were about to enter and wouldn’t have recognized a North Carolina county name anyway. We soldiered on through the night darkened sea.

Finally, I was able to make out the wink of a buoy light ahead of us. We were sailing ENE and would arrive at the inlet on a track almost perpendicular to the channel. At that moment, I only had to keep an eye on the distant light of the buoy with nothing but night sky behind it. On arrival we would turn sharply to port and head in toward Beaufort. Now that it was dark, our plan was to get out of the ocean and just far enough in the inlet to anchor across from Radio Island. After some rest and the return of daylight, we could get into the Beaufort Channel and around into the anchorage across from Front Street downtown.

After we had made the turn, we just needed to follow the channel markers of the inlet to get in. However, with all the lights of Beaufort, and Morehead City off to the Southwest, it was hard to decide which lights were the lights of the channel. I had thought that after turning toward the shore the action of the wind and waves would ease. That was definitely not the case. Further, as we approached the coast and the water got shallower, the waves were stacking up. We were still on a bit of an angle before the wind and Molly’s shimmy had gotten a little wild. The waves were taller and sharper. So when a wave came under the stern, we had a stronger hip shift to port and a longer ride down a bigger wave. I was really working to keep her on track; fighting the helm while struggling to recognize the marker lights and stay between them.

“I’m closing the ports,” Victor exclaimed suddenly! And he bounded down below to dog the portlights.

We smiled about it later but closing the ports was essential on our sleigh ride into the inlet.

Perilously, there was a flashing white light ahead that I couldn’t understand. I racked my brain to remember light patterns. Boats like Molly, plus ships, tugs pushing or towing a barge, vessels that are fishing or trolling or dredging or simply at anchor all display different lights for safety and recognition. Was I looking at a tow, a dredging operation, or what? I was still steering hard to stay in the channel while I tried to decipher what the hell that white light could be.

The Beaufort Inlet Channel swings to port at Fort Macon. We just needed to get off the ocean and around that corner to the inside. In addition to the flashing white light and the lights of town, there was a couple range lights for ships to steer by and the lighted buoys for the channel into town. The plethora of lights conspired against my confidence, but we managed to make the turn and started to look for the anchorage. As we turned farther to the west and got near Radio Island, it became obvious that the flashing white light was on a building. It was frustrating to think that a light on a building could cause a mariner such confusion. It was a fairly precise, regular flash, but I suppose it could have been some kind of electrical short or a maintenance problem. Regardless, I think it was dangerous.

As I turned off the channel to enter the anchorage to port, Victor spotted a boat with no lights anchored where we were headed. The white hull was barely visible in the moonlight. The moon had been in its third quarter two nights before so we had about half a moon. I steered well clear of the other boat. When we were far out of the channel, I watched the depth sounder until Molly was in about 10 feet of water and we dropped the anchor. We were quite relieved to be at a peaceful anchorage by then.

I don’t remember eating anything once the anchor was down. We must have had a beer, but I remember having to clean up the cabin. I had thought that things around the cabin were secure. Whatever mild negligence of mine, the floor was covered. Captain James Corbett of Salem, Massachusetts once told me “You’ll remember all your sins at sea.” Those words were ringing in my ears. It had been a long day and steering against the wave action was some work. I can’t speak for Vic, but I slept like that floating log.

In the morning a power yacht of a particularly sleek, modern design had anchored fairly close behind us. We raised the anchor and made our way into town. As we passed the yacht, her name, Contraband, was quite familiar. I couldn’t remember where I had seen her before, but I knew I had. Just a couple weeks later, while looking for something else I had found a picture of the Contraband from when I had been at the St. Johns Yacht Harbor outside of Charleston in December of 2022.

With the anchor down in Taylor Creek, I got settled in and Victor packed his bag. I rowed him ashore and he got a ride home. It was an amazing sight to see dozens of million dollar fishing boats lining the quay. It was the Big Rock Fishing Tournament week and there were many, many really fancy fishing boats in town.

Yep. Another touristy town, but there I was on my way north with no particular destination in mind.

Life was good. Still is.

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I’ve been feeling oddly disconnected lately. In late July, my sister and brother and I, and their families, got together in Michigan for a long weekend. The family is flung, literally around the globe. It was family fellowship mostly prompted by finally being able to schedule nearly everyone in the direct family to meet in Michigan at the cemetery in Cadillac where Mom and Dad have been interred.

My sweet sister and her husband are still in Michigan. And so are a special aunt and uncle and a few cousins. But something is feels different to me. I have never really considered that I had a “home.” I’ve always felt somewhat rootless after the family moved several times while I was young. I have places where I’ve spent some time that I consider to be “neighborhoods” but nothing like a home. Lately I kind of feel like I’ve been set adrift. Drifting in a kind of way that I’ve always wanted to anyway. 

Nevertheless, I’ve been struggling a little bit. I’ve not had much motivation. Mollynogger and I have been voluntarily stuck in Washington, North Carolina. Originally, I needed a secure place to leave the boat while I flew home to Michigan. I found a dock in a really cool town through a connection with friends. There are great people here and I’ve been trying to use my time to also catch up on some boat projects. But this is not sailing life that I wanted. I have spent more time in a marina the last couple months right here in Washington then I have ever spent in my life. Molly and I were meant to be moving, exploring, wandering … just messing about. 

I will need to spend a week or two in a boatyard to refresh Molly’s bottom paint and work on a thruhull or two. I will also try to get some new anchor chain as well. Then I’ll be free. 

I suppose some of this is also Imposter Syndrome. I am about to begin the life that I have always wanted, on a boat like I have always needed. Right at that moment, on that cusp, is when the self-sabotage can begin. A certain kind of fear kicks in, the fear of actually being responsible for doing what I said all along that I would do. I’m fighting that right now. It will work out fine in the end, but August has been a heavy month. In addition to having just seen their headstone, Mom and Dad’s anniversary was August 4th and Mom’s birthday is the 31st. It’s a weird place to be.

It’s also really fucking weird to be 62 years old and getting Social Security checks. As I’ve said I am doing what I have always wanted to do but how the hell did it take this long to get here. Nevertheless I am blessed (in an agnostic atheistic kind of way). I am self-contained, self-actualized, and just happy to be here. I just need to sort this stuff out and get on with it. 

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I had been in Banks Channel at Wrightsville Beach itching to go sailing. Somehow, however, when I grabbed my tools and things off of Ruth Ann in Fort Pierce, my tether did not make the trip. I could not connect myself to Mollynogger for going offshore. I’m not necessarily big on tethers and PFDs all the time, but I absolutely do use them at night or when the weather is rough. For sure, going offshore for the first time on an unfamiliar boat qualified as a tether-worthy enterprise for me.

I had spent recent days getting used to my new boat and doing little projects. And I visited a new dentist twice that week. The new life was the same as the old life I had left about two years ago. To get to the grocery store, I had to row a quarter mile to the Wrightsville Beach public dock, then walk two miles, shop, and walk back to the dinghy to row again. It felt so good to be moving. My boatyard pal, Anthony, came over on his boat, Liberatus, for a visit in the channel. It was good to catch up and hang out with an old friend. The wind was too strong to fly his drone that day, but he came back later and buzzed Molly from shore to get some very cool pics and video.

The locals could get wild in the channel on a normal weekend and Memorial Day was approaching. I needed to get out before the holiday so I had made a reservation for a mooring ball down at Carolina Beach. The channel there is a dead end and with fancy houses and cramped marinas along the way, it is a No Wake Zone for the entire length. Carolina Beach is touristy like Wrightsville Beach but a little more blue collar. It wouldn’t be quiet per se, but the waters would be calmer and that was a long way toward a more peaceful weekend.

Along with my mooring ball rental at the Carolina Beach Municipal Marina, I got a free pump out there. However, I was keen for adventure and thought I would try to get far enough offshore to empty my tank on my own. I got Molly ready, gurgled down the channel, and out into the inlet. When I got outside the jetties, I was surprised how strong the waves were. There was a storm system far offshore and its effects were reaching Onslow Bay more strongly than I had anticipated. Molly and I were jumping off waves, careening down into troughs, and getting tossed back up in the air again and again. If I had tried to leave the helm, she wouldn’t have held a course for long. In addition, if I had actually got down into the cabin to lift a floorboard, open a valve, and then reach for the switch to turn on the macerator, I would have been thrown around the cabin; surely to injure myself as well. I made it a little over a half mile offshore and turned around.

With my tail between my legs, l made my way down the Intracoastal Waterway to Carolina Beach. When I caught the Harbormaster on his lunch, he suggested that I grab a mooring and then he would call when I could come down for the pump out. It took a couple tries, but I grabbed the mooring pennant without incident and had a beer while I waited for the call.

When the Harbormaster was ready, I dropped the ball and motored down to the marina proper. The pump out dock is straight in from the channel in a wide space, but I crept in slowly to tie up. It was my first time docking her all alone. Mollynogger is almost three times the weight of Ruth Ann and I was still learning how she behaved, got up to speed, and how far she would coast. I emptied my very full blackwater tank, filled the fresh water tank, and jogged up the dock to get rid of some trash and recyclables. With a two blade prop, her stern will walk a bit at low speed. As we backed out of the dock, I left her in reverse just a bit too long and we did a short twist in the harbor to spin around and head back out. It was little clumsy but no problems.

Back at the mooring field, I snatched the pennant on the first try and we settled in for the long weekend. Next on the list was laundry. There are two dinghy docks there, one right near the mooring field and another all the way down at the marina docks. The laundromat is beyond the marina in town so I rowed down to the marina docks. It was a half mile in the dinghy but I enjoy rowing more than walking. The length of the trip was the same, only the mode of travel was different.

My friend, Al, and crew came down to visit on the weekend. I had met Al online as we each owned a Bayfield 29 at the time. A few years ago, we got his sv Pumpkin and my Ruth Ann side by side in Banks Channel for a mini Bayfield rendezvous. Al and Keith came aboard the Mollynogger for a beer and a chat (his beer, I had not gone ashore for provisions yet). Pumpkin was rafted up to Molly for the time which caught the attention of the harbormaster. Larry stopped by to check on us but we reassured him that it was only temporary. We had also had lunch at the Stoked Restaurant and Al gave me a ride to the grocery store (thanks!). It is good to know people on the coast.

Overall, it was a quiet weekend and I enjoyed the convenience of the mooring. I had ordered a tether to pickup when I got back to Wrightsville Beach. I was going back because anchoring in Banks Channel is free while the mooring ball, though reasonable, costs money.

West Marine is almost exactly across the road from my new dentist. As luck would have it, I was headed back to the dentist again, so I picked up the tether that afternoon. Both were just far enough away that it didn’t make sense to walk. I made efficient work of an Uber by getting a ride into the dentist, walking across to the store, and then Ubering back to the dock.

I was actually back at the dentist again the next day. Yes, four trips to the dentist in the space of about 21 days; and only stretched that far because the dentist had taken Memorial Day week off. Luckily, my teeth are relatively fixed for now. In addition, I no longer had any excuse not to go sailing.

I had been frozen for a time. There was a great feeling of relief to finally be back on the water. There was a lot of leftover stress from the job that I had had in Michigan. I had needed to stop and make some money, but I was also in Michigan to help my sister with our dad. And there was plenty of lethargy from the tension and grief of losing Dad. I hadn’t really let go of most of that since last fall.

The tether stared at me from the shelf where I had set it down. Mollynogger and the tether were both taunting me. Why aren’t we sailing, they each seemed to ask. I will spend my life trying to live up to a picture that a skipper took of me in 2015. And now I have a boat – is she really mine? – a boat that I need to live up to as well. Something finally stirred in me and I made ready to sail.

After starting the engine, I raised the mainsail, and then hauled the anchor. We motorsailed down the channel to the inlet and pushed through the onshore wind to get out into the sea. Masonboro Inlet is deep and fairly wide, so it was forgiving to a sailor getting used to his new vessel. Outside the jetties and off the wind slightly, I hauled out the genoa. The moment I turned off the engine, I was overwhelmed with emotions. This was the peace that I had been craving; just me, the wind, and my boat. My sea legs were coming back and I was finally right back where I belonged.

I planned to make a big loop and return to the inlet and on in to the anchorage. A very pretty ketch had left the inlet just before I got there and they seemed to be headed straight south from Masonboro. As I followed them for a time, I wondered where they might be headed. We tacked and headed off to the east leaving the ketch to wander. Rolling in the swell without a sound but for the sea rushing past Molly’s hull was such good medicine for me. It had been over two years since I had been at sea.

Heading back toward the inlet, Molly danced in the swell and we shook off the inertia that I had been trapped in. She galloped along on a beam reach and I gradually steered her broader and broader until the wind was just off her starboard aft quarter. An idea had started to sprout in my sailing brain. I’ve always had a good “wind sense.” Lazy days of sailing as a kid, just meandering around on some lake in Michigan, had given me hours and hours of sailing time. All the while, I had studied the boat, the sails, and the wind playing together. It was all coming back to me just then. The idea grew into a plan and I knew that I was going to sail all the way back into the Banks Channel Anchorage without starting Molly’s diesel engine.

Lolling through the swell by the jetties, I watched the fishing boats to make sure they were not moving. I observed the channel buoys that I could see and planned my next few moves. The sea buoys mark the way straight in from Onslow Bay, but just before the turn into Banks Channel there is a squeeze and a tiny dogleg to port. Luckily, there wasn’t much traffic and I hugged the port side of the channel. I would have been polite if another vessel was coming out but I had a clear run to the tight red buoy near the beach. I’ve been on Jack Parker Beach there on the southern tip of Wrightsville. It is disconcerting how close the buoyed channel is to the sand. There is plenty of water, it is just well closer than anywhere else I have known.

All the way into the Inlet, Green Buoy 7 and Red Buoy 8 are like a gate on an Olympic ski hill. I hugged Red 8 like a skier leaning into a turn. Just past the “gate,” I swung Molly’s bow into the channel and tightened the mainsail as the wind came around to her starboard beam. Red Buoy 10 and the Wrightsville Channel Junction Buoy marked our entrance into Banks Channel. Despite the condos along the shore, we still had enough wind to keep sailing. Bewildered powerboaters buzzed by as Molly and I strutted along at less than two knots.

Mollynogger seemed as thrilled as I to push back into the anchorage under sail alone. Peering down toward the North Banks Channel Bridge, I suspected that we had lost our place in the anchorage. The thrill of finally sailing my new boat and the soul enriching power of sailing on the ocean more than compensated for having to find a new spot to drop the hook. But it meant that I needed to start the engine to be able to tool around and find that spot.

The late afternoon sun brightened the windows of the condos blurring their unnatural presence. The wind knew we were done and nearly stopped blowing itself. I rolled in the genoa as Molly drifted in front of the Carolina Yacht Club. We had sailed the length of Banks Channel and couldn’t be happier with ourselves. As I stood below the mast and pulled down the mainsail, a fishing boat pulled up alongside to admire us. The captain introduced himself as a former Endeavor sailboat owner. He had seen me raising the main at anchor and knew that I was setting myself up for a safe and efficient trip down the channel.

“I could tell you’re my kind of sailor,” he said and wished us well.

It was only then that I finally turned the key and heard the Perkins roar to life.

I was back. I could feel it in my bones.

And we ended up anchoring very near to the very spot that we had left that afternoon.

Well, I had had my favorite Crispy Mahi Reuben sandwich at the 12A Buoy Restaurant but other than that, no joy.

I ran up I-95 and then cut over to Green Cove Springs again. Some more mail had arrived that I wanted to pick up. Then I made it all the way across Georgia and spent a night at the Sleep Inn in Hardeeville, South Carolina. Just south of Savannah, Google Maps warned me of an accident in a construction zone somewhere just after I-16. My trucker reflexes kicked in and I got off on US17 at Richmond Hill to go around the slow down. When I got to GA-204, a different memory showed up. My first In-Laws lived out on Wilmington Island and suddenly it was clear that I could go all the way around the east side of Savannah and cross over to South Carolina from downtown. The worst traffic I had was in South Carolina where I had to make a left turn into the motel in front of the traffic coming off of the highway. It was a bit surreal to drive through ground so filled with different memories. As I crossed the Savannah River, I could see the Port and was humbled by the memory of a freezing cold Christmas on the water in Savannah. That heartwarming story is over on my old blog [][] link [][].

It was a pretty easy run from Hardeeville back to Wrightsville Beach and then it was time to unload the van and put my stuff aboard Mollynogger. I already knew but then I had to show my friends the embarrassing amount of stuff that I had brought with me. Allison and Gaylen, the Sail Bums, helped me roll dock carts full of my possessions down the dock and even handed things across the water to me on the boat. In the coming days, as I stowed things on the boat I made a few trips to the dumpster with the few things that I found that I could part with. I really didn’t want boxes inside the boat as bugs love to lay eggs in the curvy layers inside the cardboard, but there was so much to unpack that my only choice was risk the boxes getting rained on or bring them inside. As I gradually “moved in” more and more boxes went to the recycling bin. Nevertheless, there was one box of things for the cabinet in the head that sat on the starboard settee for a couple weeks before I was organized enough to stow those things.

Next we had to install the shift connector on the transmission with a new gasket. When I say we, I mean of course, Gaylen. It was not only a project that he had started, he had maintained this venerable Perkins 4108 for the last six years. Most importantly, he could actually fit into the lazarette and knew the cramped twisting yoga move to get all the way down into the engine area. I had started the move while no one was around and I was not confident that I would make the squeeze. Gaylen’s ominous warning to always take your phone with you just in case you get stuck also rang in my ears.

The Sail Bums did so much for me and Molly in the process of this deal. I cannot express enough gratitude to them. One of those things was replacing the propeller. Not only did they hire a diver to clean the hull. When that diver told them that the propeller seemed a little soft – they ordered a replacement right away. And had the diver put it on just before I arrived.

Gaylen made quick work of the shift connector and we decided to test the new prop. We each stood in the cockpit on a wonderfully warm North Carolina day. We were a few blocks from the Atlantic and the salt air was crisp and bright. And when Gaylen shifted the transmission into forward, the boat pulled back on the dock lines. In reverse, the boat shifted forward in the slip and a mechanical mystery revealed itself in the afternoon sunshine. We were baffled. Pre-disassembly photos confirmed the cables were connected correctly but we could not explain the results. Gaylen needed to do some research.

It had made perfect sense for the Sail Bums to have ordered a left hand propeller. All available information indicates that the Endeavor 37 was shipped with a Perkins 4108 and a left hand transmission. Yet the brand new LH prop was not moving the boat as it should. With a little research and some trips down the lazarette into the engine space, Gaylen determined that it must be that the current transmission was right hand. They knew that the previous owner had replaced the transmission but we didn’t know any details. So the hunt began for a RH prop nearby. Gaylen found one in Charlotte, about three hours away but the guy seemed more interested in why we would want to drive three hours for a propeller than in selling it. Gaylen turned the listing over to me and for some reason, I was able to break through and set up a time to pick it up.

I had already turned in my rental van a couple days before, so after all the work they had already done for Molly and me, the Sail Bums were keen to road trip to Charlotte. It was another strange road trip for me heading west on US74 out of Wilmington and across the countryside toward Charlotte. My head was buzzing with familiarity; even of the little gas station where we made a pit stop. Luckily, the guy with the propeller was on the east side of Charlotte, so we didn’t need to get into or around the city. We met in a motel parking lot behind a Chick-fil-A, an age old Southern story.

An even better story happened after I thought to send the seller a picture of Mollynogger. “This is where the prop is going.” He was selling the prop for his father and forwarded the picture. The father recognized the Endeavor 37 immediately; that was the boat he had had in Florida! They didn’t say it explicitly, but it seems that the propeller had come off an Endeavor and was now headed to another one. This only deepened the mystery about Molly’s transmission. Why would another Endeavor have a RH prop when it seemed that LH had been standard. We might never know. The father, however, had the son ask if he could text me sometime, but never has. If I get the chance to ask about it, I surely will.

The next morning I prepped the prop and the Sail Bums again scheduled the diver. Along the way, the faucet in the galley sink had started leaking. When I jabbed at a Lowes location on my Uber app, sadly I stabbed a Lowes Foods, a Carolina grocery chain. I had spent enough time in Wilmington to wonder why the Uber driver was taking such a circuitous route, but unbeknownst to me, the Lowes Home Improvement store and Lowes Food store were each on College Road; a fair distance apart but the same road. I thought perhaps, the driver knew of some construction or other delay. And then we pulled up to a grocery store.

By then, I needed a cold drink anyway, so I thanked the driver and got out. After slaking my thirst, I got another Uber down to the Lowe’s that actually carried faucets and other plumbing bits. The Sail Bums had already purchased a new double bowl sink drain, which I bizarrely installed first. Then I had to install the faucet by crawling under the cross pipe of the new drain.

There’s a few little projects to work on aboard Molly. There are always a few little projects on an older boat.

The day finally came for me to leave the Seapath Yacht Club dock and start my adventure on my new boat. It’s sailing, so you know the universe wasn’t going to make it easy. We had decided that the Sail Bums would come out with me to anchor in Banks Channel. The fairway was tight in the yacht club and it was not the place for me to get used to a much bigger boat than I had recently piloted. Gaylen would drive us out. Allison always ran the windlass during anchoring and she would show me her process to drop and then raise the anchor. After that quick coaching, I was to take them back to the fuel dock at the yacht club.

Of course, as we pulled out into the channel a few dark clouds loomed on the horizon. There wasn’t much wind yet, so we carried on and wiggled through Motts Channel, the short way into several marinas. Out into Banks Channel behind the beach, Allison and I had dropped the anchor and all three of us were down below discussing Molly stuff when the wind hit. The squall line we had seen in the distance came down on us like a hammer. The winds kicked up with brutal strength and leaned Molly over. We closed portlights and secured whatever loose bits were nearby …

… and then Gaylen saw a mast where there wasn’t one before.

In any kind of squall, a sailor keeps a mental image of the surrounding boats in their mind. When the actual picture is suddenly different than the one you had you immediately have to determine who is moving or worse yet dragging anchor. Gaylen and I jumped to the cockpit to assess the situation and fend off any boat or dock as necessary. We quickly realized that the other boat was dragging. The ironically named “Wind Dance” ended up dragging at least a half mile down the channel during that squall. We were fine but also now wide awake.

Once the squall had passed and the wind died, Allison and I went back to the bow to haul the anchor. I was also interested in how fast I could walk from the bow back to the helm with the boat floating free. So, we yelled when the anchor was off the bottom, but Gaylen did not put her into gear until I had danced my way back to the cockpit. I have done this a few time now on my own and Molly is heavy enough that she doesn’t start moving very fast. She will very casually drift downwind, even in a brisk breeze. I have always had plenty of time to get to the helm and the engine controls even in a crowded anchorage.

With the anchor up, we wandered back to the Seapath fuel dock. I bought some diesel and took on some water. Then it was time for some hugs and shots all around to celebrate our friendship and the passing of Mollynogger’s care to me.

… and suddenly I had restarted the life I have been meant to be living.

And Ruth Ann is still not sold, but I have some good nibbles.

With coffee and bagel in hand, I got back on I-95 and continued south. For my last semi driving job, I was on some stretch of I-95 nearly every day. All this was familiar still; down through South Carolina, crossing Lake Marion, and to Yemassee. It’s silly, and also incredible, how I could remember locations and exit numbers. I knew that there was a Flying J at exit 77, a little Circle C truckstop at exit 68 which they had remodeled but was still kind of small and sad, and the Loves at exit 38 where I stopped to fill up the Budget Rental Van. I passed the Pilot at Exit 5 for Hardeeville and crossed the Savannah River into Georgia.

Georgia is also scattered with places where I’ve slept along I-95. The most interesting might be on the service road of the driveway of a paper plant. I didn’t linger with all the trivia and memories, but carried on to exit 1 where there was a Pilot Truckstop on either side of the highway. I had always favored the west side one which is technically in Kingsland over the east side one which is technically in St. Marys, Georgia. The St. Marys Pilot has a much larger parking lot, but is busier and noisier to my ears. Also, there seemed to be a lot more trouble in the far corners of that lot than in the more easily supervised Kingsland location. I got some more gas in Kingsland.

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I blasted into Florida, took the west side bypass around Jacksonville, and careened into the Orange Park Staples store. It was late midday already, but if I could print some DMV forms and get down to the courthouse in Green Cove Springs, I might have been able to continue on to Fort Pierce yet that evening. Green Cove is my virtual base, home of my mail service, and where I can get a Florida Drivers License by Domicile Declaration rather than leasing an apartment.

I printed the forms, bought a clipboard and a report cover, and cut through Jacksonville’s southwest suburbs to rush down to the Clay County Courthouse. I almost forgot to leave my Swiss Army Knife in the van, but got inside and got my Declaration of Domicile notarized at the Clerk’s office. All my efforts might have gone for naught when I learned that the DMV uses appointments – only, supposedly. And I didn’t have one. But experimenting with an unexplained “Waiting List” on their website, I discovered that I could get in if there was a lull in their scheduled business.

Literally, a different parking lot across the same side street and I was on the Waiting List and in the lobby of the DMV. In less than ten minutes, they called my name. I thought sure they were going to tell me to come back in the morning, but no. I was instructed to present myself at the window of the dedicated and enthusiastic Destiny. She did so much in twenty minutes that she has changed my impressions of DMVs everywhere for good. She caught up the expired registration on Ruth Ann, processed my drivers license, and then titled and registered Mollynogger even with the added complexity that Molly was registered in Maine, a state that doesn’t title boats. With a little help from their office procedure manuals and from another clerk, I had all my paperwork done and I was out the door well before they were even scheduled to close!

Ahead of schedule, I had to take the opportunity to wander around Green Cove Springs; it’s one of my “neighborhoods.” I passed the little Governors Creek and sure enough there was the Gadfly. One of my favorite boat names, Gadfly is captained by Doug, a strange fellow who seems to have a deal with the local sheriff. I had anchored Ruth Ann near Gadfly in the creek because there was a little park there with some docks which was much closer to groceries, hardware, and most importantly my mail service. But one day, Doug came over to tell me that the sheriff was “bothered by Ruth Ann’s Placement.” Our chat was pleasant otherwise and it was good to get to know the quiet character whose otherworldly countenance was emphasized by his unusual gait. Turns out that he had been sailing a long while, with bigger, fancier boats in more remote places but old age and a degenerative nerve condition was taxing him. He was gradually losing the feeling in his hands and feet but kept sailing.

I wasn’t sure whether the sheriff actually cared if I was there or if Doug had wanted the little creek all to himself. Nevertheless, one of my boat life rules is to avoid antagonizing the locals; especially the local sheriff. Doug had given me some good information and advice, so I’ll happily blame it on the sheriff. At the time, I just went back to the anchorage near the City Pier. The facilities are better and it’s closer to town. It was just a longer walk to get groceries or my mail.

All those thoughts about the City Pier had me remembering how good the fish tacos were at La Casita, a little Mexican family restaurant just up the hill from the pier. I had to stop there. I also wanted to see the pier and the anchorage where I had hung out previously. Florida is cracking down on anchoring again and I wanted to see if the anchorage had been cleared out or not.

Down the hill from the main drag, I passed the lush Spring Park. There is a public pool literally fed by a natural spring, a creek running down to the river, many trails with benches, a kids playground, and a couple picnic areas. Hence the town’s name, Green Cove Springs, there had been a long history of Native Americans and later White Settlers believing in the medicinal benefits of the waters of the springs. At the end of the street past the park was the pier which hosts fisherfolk nearly every day, has a nice dinghy dock for boats in the anchorage, and even 5 or 6 rental slips for boats. A few times, if my solar panels had been thwarted by the weather, I got a slip there for just $20 a night to plug in and charge my batteries.

There were fewer boats in the anchorage but there were some there still. A hopeful sign.

Back up the hill, I parked the Budget Van along a side street and went inside La Casita. After fish tacos and a Negra Modelo, with chips and salsa of course, I picked up some dried peppers and a frozen treat from their store next door. They didn’t have my favorite frozen mango bar so I picked a spicy pineapple one. It was way spicier than I expected and just not what I had in mind, so I didn’t finish it. South out of town, I headed east across FL16 to get back on I-95. More roadwork expansion tearing up the landscape and a planned bridge replacement. Some would call it progress, but some of us would call it the homogenization of the landscape.

I had made a motel reservation during supper and rolled into Fort Pierce well after dark to the Sleep Inn, right near a Loves and a Pilot where I’ve also slept many times. In the morning, I talked to my new insurance agent and got coverage established for Mollynogger. I also got together all the paperwork for Ruth Ann and typed up a Bill of Sale on my laptop. The motel’s morning desk clerk refused to charge me for just two pages. I thanked her, packed up, and headed to the boatyard to see Ruth Ann.

Along the way to the boatyard, I stopped for a ladder and a bike lock. On arrival, I had to hike around to find Ruth Ann as she had been moved at least once. Turns out she was right on the main drive around behind the office and near their workshop. It was pretty warm for this out-of-shape guy from Michigan, but there was cleaning and organizing to do. By mid afternoon, I was cooked and soaked with sweat. I locked the ladder to a jackstand and headed back to the motel for a shower.

Then there were the potential buyers. I had listed Ruth Ann on Facebook Marketplace and heard from ten people or so. Three I thought might be serious nibbles. And there was one I even joked about with Allison and Gaylen. I am a social media skeptic and clicked through to see the profile of all the people who responded to the ad. The particularly perplexing one had no profile picture and no posts, not one. But when I messaged all the respondents to tell them I was going to be in Fort Pierce for a couple days, I decided to message that person too.

“Carlos” had been bugging me on FB Messenger and I was ignoring him because his empty profile felt like a scam. He offered me $3500, then a couple days later $4000. When I didn’t respond to any of his offers, and just before I had arrived, he messaged “OK, I’ll pay your $5000.” Textbook scam to this grey bearded netizen. But after my in town message, he responded “I’ll call you in five minutes.” Twenty minutes went by and I was convinced more than ever that he was a scam.

Then he called.

He was very enthusiastic. And as a truck driver, he had some sympathy from me already. He was in Maine but would have his wife come over in the morning with the money. And maybe we could meet in North Carolina when he was on his way back home. We had several messages and a couple conversations; elaborate arrangements. I went back the next morning to do some more work on Ruth Ann. I’m a pretty patient guy. It was almost lunch before I messaged him to check in that I was back at the boatyard. No answer. Later in the afternoon, I explained that I was not leaving town but I was done at the boat. No answer. Now I was frustrated.

Literally, on my way back to the motel, I heard from one of the other serious nibbles. “John” was off the coast of Fort Pierce, working on a tug boat. He was waiting on another tug to help pull a large barge into the port. He wanted to meet up and talk about buying the boat; mentioning he could be at the boat yard at 7:30 the next morning. He hit me with a low ball figure. I called Carlos again. No answer, full mailbox. So I responded to John that the monthly yard rent was due again in a week but if he would take over the yard bill, I would take his offer. He agreed. I messaged Carlos that the boat was sold and organized to get some supper.

Right around the corner from my motel was a La Granja; one of a chain of Peruvian fast food restaurants in Florida. It was one of my regular spots in Fort Pierce. In fact, when I was driving a semi I would often stop at the Loves Truckstop next door just long enough to walk over to get some fried yuca and beans and rice. It is fantastic. They have a condiment bar where I slather the fried yuca with their garlic and rocotto pepper sauces. The wonderfully flavorful black beans come in a styrofoam tub next to mound of rice on a platter. I always dump a couple scoops of their creamy garlic onions from the same condiment bar on top of the beans. Once seated at a table, I just dump the beans and onions over the rice. It is an inexpensive feast. They also have lots of chicken, fish, steak, and pork offerings as well, but I’m a plant based guy anyway and why mess with perfection.

About 9:30 pm, on my way back to the motel, I got a message from John saying he had gotten back to the dock and wondered when we could meet. I explained that I had had a late supper and thought we were meeting at 7:30 the next morning. No answer.

I hauled my tired ass out of bed and got to the boat yard by 7:00 for my 7:30 meeting with “John.” At 8:30, I messaged to ask if there was a better time. No Answer.

I finished up my work cleaning and recovering my tools and other things from Ruth Ann. With the van packed, I stared bleakly at my phone. No answer. So, I drove out Seaway Drive which turns into the Jimmy Buffet Memorial Highway apparently (that’s new), and drove out to the South Causeway Beach where I wasted some time and watched the ladies in the sand and the boats at anchor in the inlet. After a spell, I figured the 12A Buoy was open.

The 12A Buoy is a dive bar with aspirations. They have a wonderful seafood menu literally a half a block from the commercial fishing docks. I always ate at the bar where Gene, the bartender, held court. As soon as you sat down, he would get your name and introduce you to the handful of others sitting in stools. Just his magnanimous presence made it easier for all of us to talk as we drank and ate. There were fish stories, boat adventures, and other lies, but we all seemed to have fun. Gene was not a young guy and I was afraid to ask about him. They had sold a t shirt with their logo on the front and “Hey, Gene! Where’s my damn beer?” on the back. None of the Gene Merch was on display anymore. I hung my head for a moment and hoped that he was just retired and fishing these days. The ladies that had taken over the bar duties were very nice and nearly as efficient, but I had gotten there almost as soon as they had opened and sat at the bar by myself.

I had a Crispy Mahi Reuben Sandwich; one of my favorites. I was going to have coleslaw on the side, but the wise and efficient barkeep suggested that there was coleslaw on the reuben and that slaw would be redundant. So much for the marginally healthy choice. I opted for fries which I would have done before anyway. The sandwich was as good as it had always had been and I waddled out to the van to start my trek back to Wrightsville Beach and to my new-to-me boat, sv Mollynogger.

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It’s just been two weeks and it feels like forever, but also like yesterday. I’m kind of caught and feel much like the proverbial dog who finally caught the car. What do I do now?

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I’m caught because the ridiculously corporate dental office I’d been using (I was too lazy to change) could not get me in for a procedure before I left town. This wasn’t last minute. It was over a month of wrangling. They’d sent me to an endodontist, but could not schedule doing what he recommended for months. So I did what any good vagabond sailor would do: I left town for a boat.

Luckily, I found a great dentist right here in Wilmington. I’m getting my tooth fixed next week, but that means I can’t go too far too soon.

I wanted to tell the whole story of the odyssey of acquiring sv Mollynogger. It’s a long story so I’ll serialize it here. Here being Substack! I’ve moved the blog from Blogger and Patreon because I think Substack will be a better fit for this project. Thanks for being here.

It all began when my friends Allison and Gaylen, dear friends and the Trop Rock duo Sail Bums, began talking about their hunt for a bigger boat. I watched for some time and then finally asked “Just for insanity’s sake, let me know what you’re going to ask for Mollynogger.” They made me such a bargain, I could not resist. That means that sv Ruth Ann was for sale in Florida and I was headed to North Carolina to meet Molly.

The irony, as I’ve told some of my sailing friends, is that I knew Molly very well, I’d been aboard her for suppers and even cockpit concerts, but I had never been on her while she was moving. Molly is an Endeavor 37 with the Plan B interior and has about three times Ruth Ann’s interior space. My sailing life was about to change for the better; more comfortable and arguably more safe as well.

I was about to quit my job and rejoin Ruth Ann, so many of the pieces were already in place. I just changed my destination. So here’s the beginning of that story:

After a rough start when Uber’s app first lead my driver to the former location of Budget Truck Rental, I got home Friday afternoon to load my Michigan possessions into a Sprinter van. The first thing in was the Nutshell Pram, a dinghy that I had bought in 2024 almost as soon as I got back to Michigan. Then it was a few boxes that I had staged in the breezeway and everything else that was still in the basement. Saturday morning I packed the last of my things and hit the road.

I had been missing the sunsets and palm trees, but I grew up there in Michigan. The Midwest scenery is what I grew up with. Mid Michigan is not quite far enough north for lots of pines, but the decidedly deciduous forests are majestic. I drove past familiar farms and towns as I crossed the state. I drove a truck to support my boat habit and had passed that way many times.

I used to deliver groceries in Ohio for a Michigan based trucking company, so my route was nearly a habit - I-96 across the state and under Lansing, over to US23, down to Toledo, I-75 south to OH68 which connects with US23, and down through Delaware, just north of Columbus. I stopped there at a Meijer Store where I used to deliver. I gassed up and grabbed some lunch. From there on into Columbus was a stretch of stoplights and traffic, until I jumped on the bypass and went around the east side of town to get to US33 which took me down to Athens and then over to Ravenswood, WV.

That last stretch had been one of my favorite drives when I was trucking; remote and quiet. The road wound its way through the Hocking Hills, through river valleys and over lushly forested hills; the foothills, in fact, of the Appalachians. Sadly, on this trip heavy equipment was in the process of rending the landscape, deep on each side of the road. I was jarred by the massive construction project. Ohio DOT was ripping up the forest and widening my favorite little two lane U.S. highway into a mundane limited access highway split by a median. It was heartbreaking.

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US33 crosses the Ohio River to Ravenswood, WV on my favorite bridge. I can’t explain it. The bridge is beautiful but not spectacular and tugs at my weird heart whenever I cross it. The beautiful cantilever bridge is just the right shade of light blue against the verdant forested river banks. It seems majestically out of place, yet perfectly at home. In a panic, I looked up online and to my dismay found that the bridge is scheduled to be replaced as the highway is expanded. More heartbreak.

Just outside Ravenswood is I-77, my route south. It was getting late but I enjoyed the lushly green mountains for the first half of West Virginia. After Charleston, I grabbed a bite at Kanawha City and made my way down to the Beckley Travel Plaza. I often made it this far on a first day delivering truckloads of office furniture to Charlotte or other points Southeast. The plaza had been transformed since I had been there last. The new iteration seemed to have been modeled after a chain gas station; like a Sheetz or, heaven forbid, a Bucees. I had brought a sleeping bag and a pad and I thought I would just boondock on my way, but it was cold! It got down into the 40s that night and I was trying to sleep in a big metal box that basically became a cold plate refrigerator. Sleep did not come easy and my old joints were stiff in the morning. I did not boondock again the rest of the week.

My last days in Michigan were filled with planning and packing; and especially catching up with old friends to say goodbye. Actually, they’ve all been invited to sail, so it was more “see you later” than “goodbye.” In the chaos, I hadn’t really done the math about my drive time. Even after, leaving late, I was much closer to the Sail Bums and Molly that second day than I had planned. We were set to meet in Wrightsville Beach to do the deal so that I could take the paperwork with me to Florida. That way, I could most easily register the boat on my trip to pick up my tools and other things from Ruth Ann where she sat in Fort Pierce, Florida.

I called Gaylen and Allison to see if I could meet them a day early. On Sunday, rather than Monday, we did the deal and Mollynogger was mine. I’m still getting used to all that. Nevertheless, the reason to meet early was so that I could get down to Florida, clean up Ruth Ann, get my stuff, and possibly meet with some potential buyers. After lunch with the Sail Bums, we made a video to commemorate and announce the transition, had a shot, and then I hit the road.

I really thought that I could get past Savannah, Georgia, but the chaos, the driving, and the sudden reality of getting myself back on the water began soaking the energy right out of me. Florence, South Carolina was coming up. I’d spent many nights there driving a semi in the south. At a rest stop, I made a reservation and ended my day in Florence.

The next morning, I bought some gas at a truck stop where I had slept many times and headed across the road to grab a coffee and a bagel. It would be an easy stretch to get all the way to Fort Pierce and set up for my projects there.

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