Monday, June 18, 2012

   I'm up at 5:30. The winds are very calm. Good time to straighten out my sta_sail. I raise it spool it in and all goes smoothly. I eat breakfast and go over my charts. I am feeling better now, as opposed to the way I felt last night. I am about to go into the Alligator / Pongo River Canal. The Canal is about 20 miles long. I figure about 4 hours to get past that. After that I will head for Belhaven, NC.
   So I travel through the canal. Sceanery is OK. The trip is bascially uneventful until I am passing the 125 mile marker. There are markers along the ICW every 5  miles. The GPS's and Charts also have these marks on them. Anyway I am passing this marker and decide that I want to take a picture of it. Since I am using my Iphone, and it does not have a telephoto lens, I decide to get a little closer to it. Now it stands about 30 feet off the bank and I am about 15 feet off the sign. I do not feel anything out of the ordinary about what I am doing. So I ride by it, snap my picture, and at that point my autopilot decides it is going to head for the shore. Seeing  this I jump over to the wheel, disengage the  autopilot, and turn the wheel. At the point the bow lurches up, the mast swings to starboard, and the boat slides off to port. I think that the engine does not sound right so I lower the throttle, check the speed, then increase the throttle, the speed increases. All OK. I must of hit a tree stump in the canal, and went up on it, and then slid off.
    I continue on to Belhaven and anchor about a quarter of a mile behind a long breakwater. I decide to get some fuel and water if available. So I motor over to a marina, about a half mile, and inquire about diesel fuel. they tell me that they don't carry  fuel at this marina, but there is another marina about another half mile away which carrys fuel, but may be out. So I motor over with my dinghy, and luckally they have some. So now I decide that I want to boast up my cat food supplies, just in case I get marroned somewhere I am covered. So I motor into the town dinghy dock and inquire as to how far the Food Lyon  super market is. I am told only about 1/4 mile. So I start walking along their main street and stop in a sandwich shop and inquire again.  they tell me that you just go down to the red stop light, make a right, and then it is only a quarter mile down the road. So I start walking. The red light winds up to be about a mile down the road. After the turn, the supermarket is about a half mile down on the right. Long walk. Anyway I am in the pet food aisle, and as I am picking out my cans of cat food a man comes driving up the aisle in one of those handicap electric carts. He tries to grap a box of kitty liter, which weighed about 25 pounds and couldn't lift it. I seeing this , I grab the box and put in his cart. He thanks me and continues on. I completely forget about that until a few aisles over I run into to him again. I ask him "Did you drive here?" He answers "Yes". Great, I tell him that I had just sailed into the Harbor, and that I found it a long walk from there to here. then I asked him if he could give me a ride to the city docks when he finished. He said yes. Great. It pays to be assertive. Back at the boat I had dinner, and then to sleep.