One Week Left In The Yard - I Hope!

Escaping the boat yard - at Fort Macon, Atlantic Beach, NC

One week left in the yard - I hope! For a short haul out (6 weeks now) we sure do take our time. I think we can blame Sim for this...he is happy as Larry pottering on with boat jobs. Our whole boat has turned into a work shop. Aside from the mess and chaos, I don't mind either. The yard here is very comfortable....surrounded by tall pine trees, and a pretty river...I can see why people get stuck here. I love just stepping off the boat, driving about in the courtesy car, good Internet, electricity and hot running water. The yard is busy too with all sorts people from different walks of life working on their boats.

Work crawls along, it always seems to take longer than expected. Little hiccups here and there slow us down. Like scratching the paint in the hole the rudder goes up, so down it comes with a five day delay as we build up the paint again. The anti fouling paint which we ordered off site (as I wanted to go with a 'green' that isn't sold here) has turned into a bit of a fiasco...first the company forgot to send out the five gallons that we ordered. Then Fed-ex dropped four of them (can you imagine the mess) at one of their depots. Then the company only sends us two gallons back. So we chase them up, get them sent out only for Fed ex to drop them again. By now three weeks have elapsed. The remaining paint finally arrived on Tuesday afternoon. But of course it has been raining ever since.

Sim working on the windlass 

So now we wait for the rain to stop. Everything is damp and soggy. The last of the engine hoses are going back on and the motor for the windlass will be going back together soon. We 'whacked' the galvanised chain for an inordinate amount of time but finally all the links are free.  And the chain has been painted at 5 meters intervals so we tell how much chain we are letting out when we anchor.

We hired a car again through Enterprise over the weekend. Their $9.99 a day deal is hard to pass up. It's nice just for a couple of days to have the freedom of being mobile and not confined to the yard except for two hour stints in the courtesy car. We did a little stocking up for our journey to....wherever we end up. And took the car out for a drive over to the outer banks - where we didn't see much as it was grey and drizzly. But back out through Morehead City to Atlantic Beach the sun peaked through and we enjoyed a short walk around Fort Macon and its surrounding beaches and sand dunes. It really is such a pretty area. Halloween passed us by with a small cruiser get-together BBQ that evening.  For now we plough on with all the iddy, biddy jobs and one last coat of anti foulinng and hope  to be out of here in about a weeks time.

Out and about on a Sunday afternoon

Pumpkin anyone? - a church giving them out for free

Its common to see houses decked out for Halloween

Driving through a place called Sea Level - not much going on there.

One of the many churches in North Carolina - coincidentally our radio on board cant pickup any thing other then religious radio stations.

Provision store near the Outter Banks

America east coast has incredible beaches.

 Atlantic Beach 

The beaches stretch for miles and miles

I still cant resist a good beach walk

Sim on the other hand whose knees are playing up prefers to sit and watch

But he does make it over the sand dunes