Home and On the Water Again!! It's great to be moving along.... Aug 9-15

We arrived back in Wilmington a couple hours behind schedule due to a late plane in Philadelphia.  But that was our only airline delay on all our flights around the country over the last six weeks....so no complaints.  It is so nice to be home!!!
Sum Escape looks good with the new wax job!  Note the brown water in the Cape Fear River...more on that later.

It is HOT, HOT, HOT in NC in August for sure!!  No anchoring out in our future until the weather changes into the Fall.  But that is OK, there are lots of cool places to explore with electrical hook ups for that all important air conditioning.
Bennett Brothers did a pretty good job on everything while we were gone. I did have them redo a few spots of detailing where I was not happy with the buffing, but they were there in literally minutes to redo it.  They also taught me how to clear the air conditioner sea strainer inlet from the topside with a water hose.  This was due to an air conditioner shut down due to low water flow and the strainer was perfectly clean. The 90 degree elbow coming into the bottom of the strainer gets clogged with sediment.  The technician even suggested how I could build a "T" in the line to be able to hook up a hose to clear it in the future if need be. So it's on the list but I think it will be a while before I do it...we should just stay in cleaner water! 
It took us a couple days to re-provision and take care of administrative tasks like bill paying, etc but we got moving on Friday August 12, our 38th wedding anniversary.  We went about 60 miles to Surf City, NC

We stayed at a small family run marina, the Topsail Island Marina which just re-opened in May. 

 

It was literally only a three block walk to a great beach, lots of restaurants, etc.  No real amenities at the marina, but easy on and off the ICW and well protected with nice floating docks and the friendliest service one could ask for.  It is a good stop between Southport and Beaufort and we will likely do it again on our trip south. 
We went to the "best" seafood house in town, Daddy Mac's Beach Grille, for our anniversary dinner.  Well, let's just say best for Surf City is not the same as our expectation.  Here we are on the deck after dinner.

Food was very good, but the crowds cause the wait staff to "hurry" patrons through their dinner so the restaurant can turn tables.  Plus things just felt greasy and grimy and it seemed like the place could use a good cleaning.  But hey, it was all about the company and we had a wonderful evening.  It is hard to believe we met 43 years ago on this very date!  Seems like yesterday......
Saturday and Sunday mornings we took nice beach walks at sunrise to avoid the heat of the day and enjoy the beautiful sunrise.  It is a great walking beach with an endless shoreline to explore.  It was a very nice place to stay three days.
The view from Buddy's where we had a cocktail before our anniversary dinner.



 Some photos from our sunrise walks.

 

 The fishing pier is a "pay to use" facility so we passed on a  walk out there.

 

 

On Saturday morning I topped off the transmission oil as Bennett Brothers must have under filled them a bit when servicing them.  They need to be checked when idling in neutral which they must not have done to check them, so they each took a quart or so.  On Sunday I changed the genset impeller as it had been about 250 hours or more since last change.  Yep, there were some blades missing (which I retrieved out of the heat exchanger) so it was a good thing to do as we will be running the genset continuously when moving for the air conditioning.  88-90 degrees with a feels like temperature near 100 necessitates this!
So Monday we cast off the lines at sunrise and headed for our next stop, Beaufort, Homer Smith Marina.  Remember it is BO fort, not BEW fort like the SC town with the same spelling!  Note I am driving from the lower helm with the genset and air conditioning running!!

Our starboard engine acted up again...it has been an intermittent problem since last year so we are scheduled with the CAT technician for Wed morning.  The RPMs fluctuate by 50-70 RPM's up and down (including idle speed) without any change in throttle setting.  Hopefully it is acting up so he can find the issue.  The last two times someone looked at it, the problem was not presenting itself....

Along the way we passed through the Camp Lejuene firing range.  The ICW is occasionally closed to traffic while live firing exercises are performed.  No such issues today....

 



 

Monday afternoon we arrived just in time for the 1 o'clock opening of the Gallant Channel bridge.  The marina is immediately past the bridge and has brand new Bellingham floating docks, it's still in the process of expanding and is only a three block walk to the heart of Beaufort (although you do have to cross a busy road to do so). One bonus is there are no currents to deal with here like there are at the city docks and the price is quite good as well.
The town is really cool.  Lots of old homes, we saw some dating back to 1709!

Lots of shops to explore.  Lots of restaurants too but none we wanted to go to were open on Mondays. So we got some shrimp from the marina owner (it is a working fish operation, Homer Smith Seafood, too) and grilled them.  They were a bit disappointing, probably because I ran out of propane halfway through cooking and they got a bit mushy and overcooked as I had to restart with a fresh bottle of propane.  Oh well, at least it was cool inside to escape the heat advisory that was posted (feels like temps in the low 100's).
We took a walk after dinner and then had a sunset boat scrubbing party....that sounds better than boat washing chore.  :>)   Sunset as we are washing the boat.  The new bridge under construction will replace the drawbridge we came through earlier in the day.  Thanks for following our blog.