Ships Log 8/2/2011

 Day two of our little adventure was to start early, like 7 AM. At about 0640 I spotted Bob walking down the dock, gear in hand. I still had not had any coffee and wanted a shower. That was OK because Paul had to bring the car back to the Water Way and walk back, pretty neat service, a loaned car with a motel room.
Once Paul got back we breakfasted on coffee and muffins. I stalled a bit packing things away hoping that the wind might die down a bit. I was concerned that as we turned to starboard the wind might push us into other boats especially given the poor haul speed that we where able to achieve.
By about 0800 we cast off Dudley's dock and headed for the channel of the ICW. Our goal was to catch the current and make some distance on our own before Roy meet us for the final tow back to the Boat Yard at Hampstead. Our able navigator(s) check the charts for our first mark. The helmsman steered a straight and steady course. At the same time we kept a close eye on the yet untested depth meter. The meter beeped a few times, we were not sure what the shallow alarm was set for but when it read 4.?? feet and our forward motion stopped we knew it was pretty accurate. A Bristol 27 draws 4.0 feet!
We tried backing off, heeling the boat over to reduce our draft and Bob then Paul jumped in to try to push us off, the boat displaces 6600 lb. That's like pushing a couple of '58 Caddy's out of a 4' snow drift without shoveling first. The good news is the tide was rising, the bad news is that our window with the current was getting shorter by the moment. Then along came a couple of commercial fishermen in about a 20' skiff.
As hard as he tried his flat bottom boat was on match for the current. After 2 or 3 attempts the fisherman wanted to get to "fishing". I asked for one more try, we tried to heel the boat a bit, gave it all the power we had and ever so slowly we moved off the high spot. We waved good by, shouted thank-you' but neglected to get their names or haul numbers.
It was now a little after 0900, with the current the mighty Yanmar 1GM10 was pushing southward at about 3- 3.5 kn. Some time after 1000 we spotted Roy steaming in our direction.

Bob hooked-up the towline to the bridle that he had rigged with one of our dock lines.  The trip was pretty uneventful, we got bounced a few times by folks who failed to slow for the boat in tow and passed  real close to a push tug who made a real effort to give us as much room as possible by almost going out of the channel to his starboard. He told Roy "take all the room that you need", what a guy! Uneventful until we got to the Topsail bridge and the tender would not open even 5 minutes early, Roy slowed way down and we got to the bridge at almost exactly 1400.
I had not mentioned speed before but a Bristol 27 has a haul speed of maybe 5.5 - 6 kn. Roy had us up to a little over 7 at one point. We had a stern wake like you might see on a fast downhill spinnaker run. Carl Alberg must have had a big smile that afternoon.
When we got part way thru I saw a couple of large powerboats waiting for us to make our way thru the narrow opening, again thanks folks.

Think that this might explain our slow speed?

At this point we had about 20 - 30 minutes to the Boat Yard. I call Gerald the owner of the Yard to advise him of our position. By the time we got out front and Roy "cut" us loose the travellift was about ready to haul us out. Within 2 hours the boat was pressure washed, brought up the hill and blocked and ready for the next step, bottom paint.