N 34 56.009 W 76 38.720
I woke up at 0500, with too much excitement about getting underway again, finaly. It didn't matter that it was just a half mile down the canal to me - El Tigre was going south again on the ICW
The kids all woke up later, at 0700-0800. It was cold, in the 30s, with overcast and drizzle. A strong Nor'Easter storm had been forecast for the next two days...
Eugene and I left Peter to babysit his brothers on the boat at 0800, taking the van over to our storage locker in Newport, then to Wal-Mart and Lowe's in Moorehead. We returned to the boat by 1030 and loaded our purchases and the last of our gear onto El Tigre from the van.
We left the dock at 1100, and idled our way out of the marina. The wind was already picking up as we headed down the canal, and with tide falling we were making 6 knots at low power !
We were headed for the Core Creek Lodge, at the Core Creek bridge, just down the ICW canal from Sea Gate Marina. It was a short ride down to Core Creek Lodge, and we turned around into the wind and current for our aproach to the dock there. I made the aproach very slowly. Just as we reach the dock and Eugene Jr. was ready to jump ashore we ran out of water. Hard aground. It took a few minutes to work the stern into the current and bust free. We spent about 15 minutes trying to make one more aproach and find deeper water along the dock, with no luck. Eugene Jr. and I decided to head back up the ICW to anchor out at Cedar Creek and wait out the storm before Thanksgiving.
We made it to an anchorage off to the east of the ICW on Adams Creek about 1400 hrs. We dropped a hook and sat there for a while before we decided to move further north, up to Cedar Creek itself. There's a wreck there, a mast sticking out of the water, and the only place to drag away to is down the ICW.
We pulled our anchor and dropped again just inside of the range lights at 1500. Another boat sailed by, and shared local knowledge with me of Cedar Creek. He motored further in, showing me there was some deep water all around the creek there, and suggested I moved further in. We hauled anchor and went a little further in, but leaving enough room to have clear drag down the ICW if things went bad on us.
Another sail boat pulled in at 1600, anchoring further out from us. We hailed them on VHF after they settled in to tlet them know we had transportation in the area if they needed supply.
Eugene Jr had already decided to go for a dinghy ride. There was a fleet of fishing boats at docks further up the creek, and he decided to go investigate. He managed to tie up to a dock and found the manager of the operation, Ken. He gave Eugene Jr. a ride back down to Seagate, and by 1700 Eugene was motoring the dinghy back out to El Tigre at anchor...
The wind continued to build through the evening as we ate our dinner and watched an evening movie. I had two anchors out, with a good bit of line, and watched the GPS carefully as we swung on the wind. No anchor drag ...
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(c)Copyright 2006 by Eugene Kashpureff