Voyage 2008: Chapter 3

17 Dec 2008, Homeward bound, 34 05.96 N/ 077 55.09 W

At 0530 we bid a sad farewell to our holiday flat and loaded the poor Fiat with four people and 7 pieces of luggage. We were in a full car. We got to the Lufthansa counter and they offered an earlier flight to Frankfurt. Why not? So we said our sad goodbyes to Moony and then headed for the gate. Two hours later we were in Frankfurt. Eleven hours later we were in Washington DC. Flights were on time; booze was free; nice people sitting next to us. We will not tell you the bonehead thing Bob did at Customs. We stayed in Washington a couple of days and then headed with the 'babies' to Wilmington. BTW, Levi is hanging in there with no new problems.

5 Jan 2009, Transiting the Masonboro Sea Buoy, 34 02.53 N/ 077 53.47 W

The boat has been sitting for a couple of months and she was begging to go somewhere. We invited Jim and Karen on around the inlet cruise to Masonboro inlet and back. For a week the forecast was calling for light SW winds; gues what? They were right. We left Carolina Beach harbor around 1100 ET and headed north up the ICW. As it was a weekday, there were very few boats on the water. Not bad! After a couple of hours we made a right and headed out the Inlet. We reached the "RW A" sea buoy at 1400 *we drove very slowly) made a U turn and then headed back.

Jim took the helm on the way back. Funny the boat didn't yawl as much. Must be the wind. We decided to raise the rpm from 2000 to 2700 so that we could fight the horrendous headwind at 10 kts apparent. As we entered the harbor, Bob took the helm and amazingly we didn't hit anything. Paul and Dave were waiting for us at the dock and made our dockage a piece of cake. Nice ride and the bottom thanked us for it.