Moved  from our anchorage at Elizabeth City up the Pasquotank River to the Dismal Swamp Canal Visitor Center.  We enjoy the Dismal Swamp canal route, although it is shallow and quite narrow.  It is peaceful, and less travelled.

The route least traveled

There are two routes you can take once you leave the Alligator River headed to Norfolk.  One route is through the Dismal Swamp (green) and the other is through Coinjock and the Currituck Sound (blue).  Both routes have different views but the Dismal Swamp route does have an extra lock to pass through and is probably slower.   We are at Elizabeth City, the red arrow.

Looking at the AIS map it appears that 95% of the traffic is going the Coinjock route, yep you guessed it we are on the Dismal Swamp route.  That's ok it will mean less boats passing us by.

Note: Blue and green lines are not on actual route.  Put them to the side so you can see all the purple boat indicators which are on the actual route.

Finally sailing

It has been awhile since the Doyle sails have gone up, we believed they were still under the sail covers.  The last couple of days gave us winds that let us put the sails up and turn the motors off, very enjoyable.  The sails are not new and have some dirty spots but they seemed to get the boat moving very nicely.  Charm seemed to perform rather nicely in the winds and the boat speeds were good.  A new gennaker or code zero would just make it that much faster and nicer. (It's only money !!)

Water Maker

The longest most frustrating part of the water maker episode was waiting the two weeks for it to clear customs in FedEx.  The second was waiting the week for it to ship through the FedEx system.  Once it arrived at the marina the install went fairly smooth.

We installed it in the forward starboard location, under the vee berth, a very common location.  We debated about the location for the control panel but in the end located right inside the door under the vee berth.  Hooked up all the water system, plumbed the new parts to the existing systems, and wired the two pumps to our electrical.

On 5/17 it started with a couple of operator errors and ran for an hour with out issues.  Today we hooked it up to the fresh water tank and ran it for 2 1/2 hours.  Kris was able to run a load of wash at the same time and our batteries are only at 95%.  The water is not very salty so it does not require a lot of pressure thus only 20 amps to make 13 gallons per minute.  Normally it should take 40 amps for the same water flow.

Oh well it is nice not worrying if we have enough water and when do we have to go to the docks to fill up.  Now we just sit and make our own.

vee berth orginal

vee berth with water maker

water maker pump and filters

gauge and fresh water filter

Boat, Bugs, Birds

It has been nice anchoring out and kind of getting that feel of cruising vs. tied up at the dock.  Being able to wash down the boat every other day and keeping it clean is a nice feature that the dock provides.  You might say "why do you need to wash down the boat every other day" and I would say the amount of bugs that land, die, and leave green spots is a lot.  Being able to stay on top of it was nice feature.  

The other morning we woke to the tap tap, scratch scratch noise and after awhile realized it was birds walking around the deck eating the bugs.  Now if the birds also did a wipe down/cleaning that would solve all the problems but there are still bug marks that have to be cleaned up.  Oh well that is life.

Going Dinghy

When you are cruising your dinghy is your method for getting to and from the boat.  While the boat has been at the docks the dinghy was not needed.  That changed as we left Morehead City.  

Just before we left we found the carburetor was not working so had to order a new one.  The new one showed up at New Bern and did the job, the engine ran well.  Then the engine kept shutting down because we were not getting water flowing through the engine to keep it cool.  OK -  order a new impeller kit and that showed up at Washington today. 

 

Before repair - Where are the impeller fins?

Like they say - Well there's your problem.  New on top, old in pieces on bottom of photo

Now have cooling water going through the engine, and the engine starts on the first pull.

Found out that the old impeller was really not doing the job.  Took the dinghy out for a test run and had no issues other than it is fast.  Not an issue we can't deal with. 

Cool new Shades

When we replaced the plexiglass on the salon windows we went from tinted to clear.  We knew that sooner or later we would have to add some additional shading but we wanted to have as much light as possible.  The other day Kris ordered some 70% shade factor fabric and today we went ahead and made/installed them.

Using old magazine pages we taped pages together to form a template/pattern to then cut out the material in the shape and size needed.  

Template

Finished shade

We have only attached them with Velcro in a couple of places, it is held in place with the boat's sun visor as well.  Inside we figured the new shades will reduce the heat and glare more than reduce the light.  From the outside it gives a cleaner look with out the break in the white in the sun visor.  So now we be looking more cool :)

Old look

New Cool Shades

New Engine Controls

It has been a long road to get here, a lot of it has been bumpy as well.  In the end it made sense to replace the old engine instruments at the helm and go with new ones from AC DC Marine.  AC DC makes display setup for different boats and we have ones that has gauges for tach, oil pressure and water temp.  We went with the white color vs. the older ones that were black.  Now we will not have ANY issues with the engines.

Old instruments

Installing new ones

Wow, nice job Kris

Kris is even selling the old engine displays on eBay to recover some of the spent money for the new ones.