Our stay in Manteo was enjoyable, but by Monday we were ready to go. We returned the rental car on Sunday afternoon and walked back to the marina. It was Mother’s Day so I cooked chicken marsalla for my First Mate, which we served with rice and a salad on board Once Around. After dinner we readied everything for an early departure on Monday.
Unfortunately, the weather was a little off the forecast, (imagine that!) and 20-30 knot winds caused the Coast Guard to issue a “Small Craft Use Caution” warning for the Albemarle Sound. Those of you who followed our Loop blog might recall it was on Albemarle two years ago where Carrie was thrown against a helm seat and broke her thumb! The Coast Guard warning was due to expire at 11 AM, so we played it safe and waited to see if the wind and waves actually would settle down as predicted in the afternoon.
It appeared good to go by 10:30 AM, so we cast off the lines and started to pull away from the dock at Manteo.
Cling, cling, cling…as soon as I put the port transmission in gear, another new boat noise…and NOT a good one. I pulled back to the dock immediately. This was perhaps our shortest day’s cruise ever…we travelled about fifteen feet!
After the initial shock wore off, we realized (translate that as “hoped”) that the metallic clinking we heard could not possibly be the transmission. How could it so suddenly go bad, when we had no problems coming into Manteo a few days earlier? The new noise was not one we could have missed.
Four hours later, Matt, the local diver,
This would be Matt...
verified that we had sucked up a crab pot in our running gear. Now with the thousands of crab pots I have dodged in this boat, I was due to finally hit one, but how the hell it remained silent coming into the dock a few days prior is still a mystery. In any case, Matt had to take bolt cutters to the rebar cage trap that had become lodged under the boat in order to get it free. Luckily, other than sheering off the rope cutters that are supposed to cut the trap lines before the trap gets into your propellers, there was no apparent damage. We took a picture of the mangled crab trap after we got it up on the dock:
I'm not sure what Vanna White here is smiling about...
The Admiral saved a small piece of rebar from the trap. She placed it in a basket in our stateroom that also contains a piece of Canadian rock which she had saved as a reminder of my not so wonderful experience with a couple of rocks in Georgian Bay. I think she’s accumulating evidence in the basket for use at my court martial…
Anyway, by the time this was all sorted out it was too late to leave Manteo, so we settled in for a final night there. This morning the wind had almost completely died down and we had a nice ride to Coinjock Marina. We could have easily gone further than the 42 miles we travelled today, but the restaurant here is famous for its prime rib. No kidding, you don’t need reservations for dinner, but you do need to make a reservation if you intend to order the prime rib…which we did. I’ll let you know if it was worth the build-up…
Coinjock Marina Restaurant
Doug and Judy from Moonstruck II are only a day or two behind us. They need to have some electronics work done so we are planning on going only another 36 miles tomorrow and waiting for them at the Atlantic Marine Boatyard. If things work out I may have the yard do a bit of maintenance on Once Around as long as we are hanging out there for a few days.
We're here and doing fine!
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