Still Here

 

Still in Morehead City

Lauren came for a visit. I’d like to say she volunteered, but not really. We had told her we’d come to visit her and never set a date. So, Shay told me to call and tell her we’d be down in a day or two. She had picked up something for me in Wilmington and I had picked up something for her here in Morehead. When I texted her she asked how long we would be staying. That’s how we communicate now, by text not by talk. Well, I guess that makes us normal. Anyway, I told her a week or two. Well, I was kidding, but she didn’t know it. She texted me back saying “that’s now an option now. I am working two jobs, a friend is staying with me until her room is ready, my roommate will be back soon, I am still getting settled in and classes start soon”. I started laughing… she thought I was serious and she was seriously against the idea. So… I texted her I was kidding and we would stay a night or two. She texted me back that she would come to Morehead Friday after she got off work. It would be late since she had to work, but she would be here…was she on her on for dinner or would she eat with us? I reminded her that we would come down there but she insisted on coming to us. I think she decided it would be easier for her to leave the boat, than to get us to leave her place once we were there.  Anyway we had a good visit. I fixed her blackened shrimp alfredo one night and she said it was good. I thought so too. She and I went shopping before she left and she got some more stuff. She like the coral shorts I had gotten her.

 

Lauren looks great in her new coral shorts.

 

On her way out of town she and I went to her favorite…Ruddy Duck and she had her favorite…fish tacos. She commented that she had eaten really well during this visit.  Maybe she’ll visit more often if we fed her good.



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Lauren in her "cave".

We have been working on more projects recently.

Shay extended the crane. This will make it easier to raise and lower the dinghy.

 

Engineering in progress.

Shay added a pump to remove water from the dinghy. We have had times that we have had lots of rain during the night or when we were away from the dinghy and the boat has gotten water in it. This could be a big problem, if it rained a lot and messed up the battery. So now we have a pump that will prevent the dinghy from filling up when it rains.

Shay moved the battery and fuel tanks in the dinghy. They were in the back of the dinghy and this extra weight in the back made it harder to get up on plane. He had to remove the old brackets, fill the holes, then drill new holes and attach. This did several things… got the weight in the center of the boat and opened up more floor space in the dinghy.

 After he got it moved, he decided we’d attach a cover under the seat to cover the fuel tank and life jackets. This will protect them from UV rays and make them last longer. We went to New Bern and got some Sumbrella to use for the cover. We got a dark blue and the cover looks great.

 

Making the cover.



You can see the pump in the back. The fuel tank and life jackets are under the new cover.

Shay ordered a remote control to use on the crane so he put it on and it works good.

Shay had been concerned about what we would do if our crane didn’t work. So he did lots of research and finally found an apparatus that would work. So off to West Marine to get the stuff and put it on. After it was on, we put the dinghy in the water and tried it out. Shay said it hard work to pull the dinghy up. We have it on, know it works, and hope we never have to use it again.

We had some hatches on the front that were cracked and leaked. So we took off the covers, filled the screw holes, drilled them back out and put them back on. They look good and seem to be doing great.

Filling the old holes.

Drilling new holes.

Putting the hatches back on.

We have been chasing a leak on the starboard (that’s the right for you landlubbers) side that has let water into a storage compartment for a while. It doesn’t leak every time it rains, but sometimes, so it’s been hard to find. Shay decided to find the leak with a water hose. He sprayed all the windows on the starboard side--- front, door and side. Then door itself--- top and bottom. And guess what? No leak. So he started spraying the deck itself. Finally several days of spraying and a million gallons of water he found the leak. It was the mid-ship cleat. So he removed the cleat, cleaned the goop off the cleat and deck, and then remounted the cleat. Cleaning off the goop was a major job but now its done and so far so good. He feels like he has solved that problem for good.

 

Let's hope this fixes it for good.

The latest project is more deck repair. Shay and a guy have gone around the boat and marked the places that need attention and are now in the process of drilling them out and filling them back in. Then they will paint them and that will be it.

I’m writing this the middle of September and the weather is beautiful. The temperature is cooler, the humidity is lower, and there is a great breeze all the time. Its great weather for outdoor projects like the deck work.
 

Until the last week it had been a hot humid summer, with lots of rain. Last year was a dry year, but not this one. I guess its fall y'all. 

Rainy days

 






 

 

We have a new backup anchor. We ordered a Fortress 55. Shay looked at other boats to see how they are mounted and didn’t really see one that fit our needs.  We talked about putting it in the lazerrette, but want it to be easily accessible.  So what did he do? He came up with a design for one. He made it out of starboard and it works great.

 



 

 

 

We took another trip to the Cape in mid September. It was beautiful and we had a great time as always. We saw some very unusual clouds. I called Shay out to look at them. They were funnel shaped, but as you can see in the picture, not tornado clouds. But I thought they were unusual.

 



 

 

We have been looking at other boat’s bug screens. We finally decided to try to make our own. We borrowed the heavy duty sewing machine from Bad Bunny and got to work. We got some screening from Lowe’s, some Velcro from the hardware store and some heavy nylon webbing from West Marine. We measured; cut, sewed and they look and work great. We made one for each salon door. We had bought a “Magic Mesh” screen from Wal-mart and worked some magic with scissors, webbing, and Velcro and made it work for our backdoor.

 

How is this thing supposed to fit?

Boats sure have strange angles and corners.

How am I supposed to fix this corner?

We had friends from Mount Airy to visit in mid September. Doug and Sylvia came down to spend a week in a condo at Atlantic Beach and stayed couple of nights with us. We ate lunch after they got here then took off to our favorite place…yes the Cape.

 

There were a lot of big boats in the turning basin when we passed thru.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a great trip on the way over and when we got there we put the dinghy in the water and went to shore. We went on a long long long walk. We were all tired when we got back. We had a great time at the Cape. We saw several turtles and I told Sylvia it was very difficult to get a good picture. When they come up near a boat they take a quick breath and dive, so unless you are very lucky it’s hard to get a good picture. Well. I’m not lucky, but I did get a picture of a turtle head.

 

Sylvia and Doug having coffee at the Cape. What a great place to be.

See that speck behind the dinghy? Well that is all I could get of a turtle sighting at the Cape.

Another project was working on the covers for the hatches under the daybeds in the flybridge.

 

 

 

We decided to make a last trip to Mount Airy before heading south. We stayed with Daddy for a couple of nights. I started a big crockpot of chile beans the morning we left and that’s what we had for lunch. They were good and I’m sure he will have lots to freeze for later. We met Jason, our oldest son, and ate with him one night. He knows how much I love garden tomatoes, so he brought me some heirloom tomatoes he had grown. Yummy.

 

We spent the next few days with Shay’s mom and visited family and friends. I got to see my sister Michelle three times before we left, once on Sunday afternoon, once at Chile Rojo for dinner one night and one day we went for a walk on the trail. We enjoyed our time together. We had a big family meal with most of Shay’s family at his mom’s. Jean took good care of us and fed us great meals while we were there. I told her we couldn’t stay with her, we ate too much!

 

The day we were leaving, Joey, Shay’s brother brought us some garden tomatoes. Lisa knows how much I love them so she sent some for us to take back. She even sent some green ones so I could fix Shay some fried green tomatoes. He loves them and this will be his only chance to eat them this season. Yummy again. I have missed garden “stuff” since moving to the boat. People at my and Shay’s work, my aunt, Shay’s mom and other friends and family would give us garden tomatoes, green beans, corn, peppers, cucumbers and lots of goodies.

 

Our good friends, George and Pam, drove us back down  to Morehead City and we left our car in Mount Airy. We won’t be back to use the car until Christmas so we turned in the tags and cancelled the insurance. If we’re not using the car, there’s no reason to pay for tags and insurance. Remember we are frugal.

 

So we got back to the boat late Friday night. We went to the Cape for one last visit before we leave. We had a great time and enjoyed our time with George and Pam. They headed back home on Monday and we started getting ready for our trip south.

 

The last Cape Lookout sunset we'll see for a while.

Just before sunrise.

No need for words

We had gone by the election office when we were in Mount Airy to get absentee ballots sent to Jean’s house before we left. They didn’t get there so I called and they had been returned to the office. So we had them sent here so we could vote before we left. So we could check that off our list. We made a long list of things to do and get before we left, but every time we checked something off we added 2 more. Will we get done? No way, we’ll just have to work on some things later.

 

The first weekend in October is the Seafood Festival in Morehead. We really enjoyed the “Cooking with the Chefs” last year and wanted to go this year too. We spent some time there on Saturday and went back Sunday to judge the “People’s Choice” shrimp and grits cook-off. We were judges last year in the crab cakes cook-off and had some great crab cakes. I was disappointed in both dishes. I didn’t think either one was really special, but we had to choose one so we did.

 

We spent the next week trying to finish more stuff on our list. We had originally planned to leave on Wednesday, but found out that Lauren was going back to Mount Airy on Friday for the Autumn Leaves Festival. So we checked the weather and decided we’d leave on Friday and go outside. On Thursday, we walked around the marina and told our friends good-bye till the spring. We stopped by Seaveyor and told Linda and Dwayne we’d miss them in Marathon this year. They wished us a good voyage and told us to be careful and keep in touch. We stopped by Salty Turtle and told Vic and Gigi we’d see them later, since they were traveling south. We told Ann on Incentive we’d be back in the spring and she told us to stop by McCellansville and check out a restaurant they liked. We had already told John and Dave, on Bad Bunny good-bye when they left the marina around noon today. They wanted to make sure they wouldn’t have problems with the bridge, so they left at low tide and anchored out to wait to leave that night.

 

Linda and Dwayne. Bye guys, we'll miss you!

Dave and John on Bad Bunny, heading off for their great adventure!

So long, MCYB. See you next year. Keep our slip rented so we can make lots of money while we travel.

More times in Morehead City

First of all, I’ll tell about our visit back to Mount Airy. We had a great time. We spent the first night with Shay’s mother and of course ate at Chile Rojo. We went to Daddy’s the next day. I had planned to stay with him a few days and cook for him instead of him cooking for us, like he usually does. He usually grills, has a big fish fry or we eat from the deli. This time I’m cooking for him as part of his Father’s Day.

We had a great time visiting. Michelle, Marty, Ethan, and Michael came up on Friday and we all had lunch. We had poppy seed chicken, mashed potatoes, and green peas. It was good and everyone was stuffed. Jason came to visit us one night. He won’t be able to come to Jean’s for Father’s Day, so we spent some time together at Daddy’s. Shay kept telling daddy he needed to come back to the boat with us and he kept saying he’d think about it. When we got ready to leave, Shay asked daddy what time we needed to pick him up for his visit to the boat. Well, he said he was still thinking about it and if he decided to visit, he’d come to Mount Airy instead of us coming to pick him up. I was shocked that he was even thinking about going back with us. We have been trying to get him to visit since he came down last spring. Who knows, maybe he will.

Back in Mount Airy for a few days. We got together with friends Saturday night at “you know where”. We had a big get together for Father’s Day. We had a picnic at Pilot Mountain after church. Evidently that was the place to be. The parking lot was full. People had to wait for cars to leave to get a parking place. We finally all got there and had a great time. Jenny, Shay’s sister, and all her family were there. Phil, Shay’s brother, Diana, his wife, and Zachery their son was there. That was a great treat since Zac hasn’t been to Mount Airy in a while. My sister, Michelle and her husband, Marty were there. Our son Travis, and his girlfriend, Sarah were there too. We had a great time visiting, ate too much and enjoyed being together.

Zachary and Mamaw

Haley, Zachary and Julie

Travis and Zachary celebrating Father's Day

You might be a redneck, if you hang picnic stuff in trees

Daddy called and told us he’d be down Monday morning. We were shocked and surprised. So we three headed down to the boat. Shay and Daddy installed our fish cleaning table. Now we are really to catch fish.

We made plans to head to Cape Lookout the next day. Before we left, Katrina, a girl at the marina that goes fishing a lot, gave us some freshly caught fish. Shay cleaned them and we took off.

Shay and Daddy putting on the fish cleaning tray.

How does it look?

Now let's see how it works

Daddy fished on the way over even though we had some fish already. Shay cleaned it and we had grilled fish for lunch. It was great. We all agreed you can’t have fish much fresher than that. They guys on Bad Bunny, John and Dave, came to the Cape and we took pictures of their boat in the sunset.

Daddy fishing

Daddy with his catch

Chef Shay

Bad Bunny at sunset

Let's see what we can catch at anchor. Well we didn't have much luck at all.

Daddy at Cape Lookout Lighthouse

Me and Daddy

Us at the lighthouse

We took the dinghy to the lighthouse and went for a walk. Of course, Shay found some people to talk too and we did more taking than walking. We visited Ann and George, on Incentive. Daddy stayed on Escape to fish, but a Coast Guard boat came in and anchored near us so he was afraid to fish, since he didn’t have license.

The next day we took the dinghy to the ocean side and went for a nice long walk. We talked to some fishermen and enjoyed the beauty.

We went back to Morehead City and fished on the way. It was rough and hard to fish, but Daddy caught some anyway. We brought them back and had them for lunch. We could get used to “eating off the land or ocean”. We have made 2 trips to the Cape and have caught fish on the way over and way back each time. We have definitely paid for our license.

We had a good time at the dock until time to take Daddy back home. We had a good time and hope he will come back and visit again. He did say he and his neighbor might come back for a long weekend sometime. So maybe…

Back in Mount Airy, Jean had a good country meal for us all that night. Pinto beans, slaw, mashed potatoes, Mexican cornbread… we were all stuffed. We really miss her great meals when we are away.

Being away from family and friends has been really hard, since we are both very close to our families. We lived less than half a mile from Shay’s mom and his sister. We miss being able to walk or drive over to visit with his mom. We keep in touch by phone, but it’s not the same as being there. I hope all our family and friends know we miss them and think of them daily. I remember talking to another boater when they were leaving to travel and wondering how she could leave her family and I’ve done it myself. Talking on the phone is ok but I need a hug and a smile every once in a while and I miss them.

Back to Morehead City the next day to get ready for our guests. Shay’s sister, Jenny, her husband, David, and son, Luke are coming to visit. Luke didn’t know about the trip until the day they left and he didn’t know where they were going until they got here. We had a great time with them. Luke said the boat was a lot bigger than he imagined.

Luke

David gets dinghy lessons

Luke, Jenny, David go for a ride with Luke being the captain.

Luke decided he wanted to paddle, but decided it was harder than it looked. Especially, when the wind blew him away from the docks.

Luke fishing

Luke shows his catch

Jenny and David

They clean up pretty good.

We were doing our dock walk and talking to Linda and Dwayne and saw something strange in the water. Linda got out her camera and took a picture and we still didn’t know what it was. Jenny looked it up and we think it was a sea cucumber?

Is this a sea cucumber or some new marine life form? Not sure. I got a post soon after this blog was posted that this is a sea hare. They are normally found in warm tropical water. Well, we have been having very warm weather lately.

We took the boat out for some ocean fishing. The water was rough and we really didn’t need to be out there. We headed toward Cape Lookout since we’d had good luck fishing in that area before. Luke caught a few little ones, but not much.

They left Sunday morning and we were sad to see them go and hope they will come back soon.

As soon as they left our next visitors showed up! We are having a busy time with our our visitors, but we love it. Remember, that's why we go a boat with 2 staterooms, so we could have company. They were Lauren, Travis and Sarah. They stayed a few nights and we had a good time.

Of course Travis wanted to fish. He went fishing with a girl from our marina and had pretty good luck. He and Sarah are going to spent a few days at Ocracoke so he cleaned the fish and took them to Ocracoke to grill. He said they were good.

Travis cleaning his catch.

Lauren went to Ocracoke for a day and had a good visit. She had 2 things she wanted to do. One was to replace a ring she had gotten at Ocracoke years ago and lost. She didn't find that ring but found another she liked. The second thing was to eat at The Flying Melon and get a chicken dish that she had eaten before. She did get the chicken and said it was better than before. She enjoyed her day-trip to the island. Back at Morehead, she and I went shopping, found some dresses and a cute top. Hey it looks like she had a good excursion---- new ring, great meal and new clothes. She went back to UNCW for July 4th fireworks. I miss her.

On the ferry ride to Ocracoke

Of course, she had to visit the lighthouse.

The British Cemetery on Ocracoke

My sister, Michelle and family came down to Atlantic Beach for July 4th. We went to the condo to visit while they were there and had a good time with them. We walked on the beach and had a good time just being together. We watched fireworks from the beach and could see them at Morehead City, Atlantic Beach and all along the shoreline. They were beautiful.

Me and Chelle

We got a call from Bobby and Jo Simpson, from back home asking if we were ready for fishing companions. We had been asking them when they were coming down and now was the time. Guess what they brought me? Veggies! Garden tomatoes, squash, peppers and cucumbers. I love garden tomatoes so I was happy. We were glad to see them. Too.

Jo and Bobby

Shay and Bobby

We fished off our dock but not much luck. Now don’t get me wrong. Shay didn’t fish so of course he didn’t catch anything. Jo and I both caught several fish but nothing worth keeping. Did I mention that Bobby didn’t catch anything? Oh no, wait he did. He caught us some bait so he said that counts. The next day we rode around and visited Fort Macon. We haven’t been in several years and they have made several improvements. There’s a very nice visitor center and display area.

Jo caught fish

Bobby did not catch this crab! Jo did.

See I can catch fish at the dock too.

Shay, Jo, and Bobby

We met a boy there and got to talking about him about fishing and realized we’ve seen him at MCYB fishing off our docks. We got all excited, asking him what he uses and of course we got “fishing fever”. We went to Wal-mart and bought a bunch of bait. We went back and got started fishing. No luck. Shay said we could have bought a lot of fish for that bait money. Yes, we would have, but we would have missed the fun of trying.

Bobby and Jo had only planned to spend one night and then head south to try fishing at other areas. I hope they have better luck there than we had here.

We kept talking about how hot it is but when we looked at the thermometer, it wasn’t that bad. One night while watching the news we saw the weather and it said the temp was 89 but the heat index was 100! No wonder we were so hot. It was hot! This has been a crazy hot year all over the US.

They left Tuesday morning after a great visit. We kept telling them they could stay longer but they had other fish to try and catch.

After they left, Shay got back on his to-do list. His next job was cleaning the lazarette. We took everything out and he got inside and cleaned and scrubbed so he could do some painting. That was a hot, dirty, miserable job for him.

We want to install a stereo and speakers so we can listen to music, so he’s been researching. He has literally spent days looking online at speakers and radios. Then we go to stores and look and listen, trying to find something that sounds good and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

Shay has been talking to Ted on Aloha Friday about a project Ted was getting ready to start. He needs to work on his stabilizers. He is taking the boat out of the water and doing that and some other projects while it is out. So we left on Friday heading to Solomons, Maryland. Shay, Ted, and Dave, Ted’s brother-in-law spent a hot and humid Saturday, taking the stabilizers off and replacing the seals. Ted had estimated 3 hours to do the job and it took from 9 am until about 2:30. That’s about right. Things take 2 or 3 times longer to do, than people estimate. We enjoyed visiting with Ted and Nancy and hope to see them soon on the way south. Shay and I had a good dock walk around the marinas in the area. We still enjoy looking other boats.

This is the tool they use to remove the stablizer. Looks weird.

Next we headed north to Baltimore to visit Ken, Margaret, Auggie, and Biscuit on Rocking B. Margaret had been busy doing her thing. She had been cleaning, meal planning, shopping and tour planning. She did a great job.

She had home-made crab cakes that were better than the ones we had in Solomons. We have heard that Maryland is famous for their crab cakes, but we think Margaret should be famous for hers. We had great steaks and grilled veggies and Italian sausage and peppers and onions. We were stuffed all the time.

We took a dinghy ride around the harbor and it was great. We talked about doing a bike and/or walking tour, but it was too stinking hot, so we took a car tour. Margaret lived in Baltimore for years and showed us lots of sights.

Shay and Ken worked on a few minor projects while Margaret and I downloaded more music to our hard drive. We can cruise and listen to music for years. Now, we really do need to get the stereo and speakers installed. We also got some more movies from them. Hey, we didn’t come empty handed; Margaret got a zillion books for her Kindle from us. She did make the mistake of saying she’d never have to buy another book in front of Ken. Maybe he’ll forget she said it.

Beautiful rainbow in Baltimore

Margaret said Ken had really missed having Shay around to talk to. She said he’d be talking to some other boaters and start discussing something in great detail and their eyes would just glaze over. We used to kid them about always talking about generators, alternations, solar and other boat stuff. I don’t think they would ever run out of stuff to talk about. Remember, they are “brothers separated at birth”, or so Margaret says.

Our view from Rocking B

Guess who else was in Baltimore, right behind Rocking B? Richard and Connie, on Sea Salt. They had planned to head up to Maine, but changed their mind and are hanging out in Baltimore for a while.

Richard and Connie

Margaret and Ken

We all went to breakfast our last morning there. We will miss our good friends, but hope to travel with them again this fall.

Back to Morehead City for more projects. He spent more time researching radios and speakers and finally got some ordered. Have I mentioned how hard it is to do anything on a boat?  Well, if not let me tell you now. It’s a pain in the… How in the world are we supposed to get speaker wires ran from the salon to the flybridge, bedroom and back deck? It ain’t easy. He’s been opening covers and looking into cubbies looking for a way. Again, it ain’t easy.

Removing the ceiling tiles so he can put up speakers.

Now he's drilling holes in our bedroom ceiling so he can put up speakers.

He had to run wiring for speakers and radio.

Finally, putting in the radio.

Robin and Jim are here at MCYB on Adventures. They are friends of Ted and Nancy and we met them in Marathon. They had some bottom work done and are staying here for a few days. Let me explain, bottom work to the boat not them. We had them over for dinner one night and enjoyed hearing about their boating experiences. They have been living on their boat several years. Robin is not like most boat women. She knows everything about her boat, she pilots her boat, and she does lots of boat work. Not like me, I’m more of a gopher.

We had Dwayne and Linda over for dinner one night. We enjoyed spending time with them. We also had the guys from Bad Bunny, John and Dave over one night. They said it was nice to have someone cook for them.

Since we now have a great stero system, Shay has spend hours and hours organizing our music. We have lots he has collected over the years. He has music from Travis, people he worked with and the music we got from Ken and Margaret. We had lots of duplicates and he worked really hard getting it straightened out...we think. We downloaded some music onto Linda's Ipod. She said she loved it. We told her we have lots more. 

Our friends George and Pam came down for another weekend trip. We love having them visit. We took a trip to Cape Lookout and spent the night. We had a great time. We fished on the way over and Pam went fishing for the first time and caught the biggest fish that has been caught on our boat.

Pam and George

Captain George

Pam fishing

Pam and her catch. Doesn't she look happy?

I got really mad at Shay...he let it go. It was hugh and would have been enough for all 4 of us to eat. I told him I did not like "catch and release". He said then I should have volunteered to clean it.

When we got there we went for a dinghy ride and took a nice walk on the ocean side of the island. there was no one else there. We had the whole place to ourselves. We went wading and the water felt great. We had a great meal. Pasta salad, tossed salad, grilled smoked sausage with grilled peppers and onions. Then we had cheesecake for dessert. We were all stuffed. We had a great meal, great company, and a great location.

We downloaded tons of music to George's phone and then tons of music and books to a newly purchased external hard drive. Hope they enjoy the music on their way home. I am sitting here listening to some of our music as I work on the blog. It's so nice.