The title sounds worse than it is.  Well, maybe.  We have had a recent intermittent problem with the Generator.  It would run for about an hour and then shut off.  No real reason that we could determine.  We changed the fuel filters figuring maybe some gunk got caught in the the fuel.  Wayne saw an advertisement in one of the guidebooks we have for the Jarrett Bay Boat Yard.  The full page ad said they were a authorized service company for Onan Generators.  Maybe they can find the problem.  We called this morning and they said if we could get there early afternoon they would check it out for us.  Yippee.

Luckily, this boat yard is on the way so it really isn’t a side trip after all.  Just an unscheduled stop.  We threw our lines in anticipation of another short day and hoping no more tanks would be blocking the roads.  😉

Casper’s is right off the ICW so it was easy to get back on.  As if it were a “pull off” at a truck stop.  Very convenient.  The Dock Master came down and helped us with our lines as we cast off.  He was very kind in offering advise and we followed his lead.

Early morning boats heading out…

 

The shore line looks pretty much like the shore line in South Carolina.  Don’t tell anyone, though.  I don’t know how touchy the North Carolinians are about this subject.

 

This morning’s bridge is over 65 feet tall.  No need to wait.  No way it would be able to open either.  It is a fixed bridge.  There are sail boats that might struggle during high tides with even these tall heights.  Around many of these bridges are fishermen.  We go slow so that we won’t rock them out of their little dinghies.  Don’t look now… More land gobblers!!

 

I thought you might like to see what the chart plotter shows us for this morning’s drive up the coast.  It looks like the ICW is sandwiched between the mainland and a bunch of small little islands or marsh plots.

This is what we actually see at a falling tide.  Yep, little islands of a sort.  They are almost like pearls all strung together along this area.

 

When I was driving I was amazed that the chart plotter showed a similar bunch of marsh areas.

 

When I looked over to where they were supposed to be, I saw this:

This just tells me… don’t get too close to the blobs on the chart plotter because that land is just under the water.  We could get grounded for sure there!!  I don’t even see a bird walking.  Maybe this is where the dredgers dump the sand and whatnot when they clear the ICW channel.  What they take off the bottom of the channel has to go somewhere.  Hmmm.

Today’s travels takes us into the Morehead –  Beaufort, NC area.  The Port of Morehead City is right along the path we are going to take.  We go around the corner and north into Adam’s Creek canal.  It looks like it would be very congested with commercial boats, tugs, and the like with little ole’ us in the middle of it all.

We did see all the big heavy equipment for moving cargo on and off barges.

pssstttt…. you see that white tall fishing boat?  They got pulled over by the Port Authority ( the little boat nearby ) for driving too fast in a “no wake zone”.

 

 

I don’t know what all the barges and stuff are.  They just look “Port-ish”.  What you would expect when folks are hauling stuff to and fro.  We didn’t have any trouble at all.  No commercial traffic running us over.  No little sail boats getting in the way.  The port authority folks were keeping a real good eye on all the traffic.  whew!!  easy peasy!

You could own a piece of this very exciting and busy waterway.  Of course, it looks like it would flood over with every tide.  But you could say you own land and sea!

 

As we left the port area, here is a random boat just anchored out.  We figured he could, so why not?  I didn’t see anyone aboard.  Maybe they were napping.

Just coming out of the boat yard we saw this boat.  Hopefully, they had a successful visit.

We did have some issues with docking alongside the floating dock.  The current is really bad there and the wind wasn’t helping.  After 2 tries Wayne asked for another place.  We didn’t want to get too close to the $1million dollar boat that was docked.  The captain of that boat came out and stared at us while we struggled.  No pressure!

The dock master was able to get us into their basin.  This is a working boat yard and not really a marina.  We were amazed, though, that even before we successfully docked, a service technician was right there waiting to talk to Wayne about the issue.  Within an hour, the technician diagnosed the problem.  An emergency shutoff switch.  It got hot, thought there as a problem, and shut itself off.  Fascinating!!  The technician went to a local parts house and returned post-haste.  Within a total of 3 hours, the problem was troubleshot, identified, and fixed.  That is awesome!!  We were very impressed.  We left the generator running for more than an hour and had no problems.

I did have an evening shot from the last marina.