At Sunset Beach, NC, there is a pontoon bridge across the ICW. It floats and the middle section is like a barge with a bridge tender. There was nothing tender about the state worker running this bridge. We arrived at the bridge around 2 pm thinking we had four more hours of running time to the marina that was three and a half hours away. Wrong.
We arrived at 2:04, precisely, to find the bridge tender unresponsive on the radio. After about five minutes he tersely announced: "We open on the hour". So we circled in the ICW for 56 minutes. When he opened the bridge, we could see a cable strung across the opening that we were to go through. Mr. Tender wouldn's answer my request for info about what was going to happen to the cable as I approached. He did drop it, but I was thinking about how stupid I'd feel if I ran the boat over the cable, got stuck, and had no explanation for what I was thinking. Best I could think of was to turn the controls over the Greg, but he was wise to me.
As a result, we only made it another hour and a half to our stop.
The temperature had dropped to freezing. The marina's idea for preventing the water lines to freeze was to leave them spraying on the dock. Which became a dock/rink. We wound up having to leave at dawn however. Because I went to the parking lot and shoveled up lots of sand and dirt to put on the ice of the docks so I could walk.
Probably a mess when it melted.
The marina manager probably hasn't walked "two blocks" for many a year. He told us that there was a pizza place two blocks up the road. Greg and I bundled up and walked two mile long blocks up the road to find that any restaurant must be another "two blocks". We couldn't see any comercial place.
Greg was cool, though. I noticed three cars with Dominoes Deliver signs wizzing past us. We started to walk back. Then he had a great idea. He flagged a little truck down to ask directions to the restaurants in the area. He picked Ceasar and Julio driving a 1990 S-10. And they didn't speak English. Greg conjured up enough of his 10th grade Spanish to determine that the pizza place was "two blocks" down the road. We demurred.
God bless them....the spanish guys turned the corner and then pulled off the road just ahead of us. They tried to make room for 480 pounds of extra guys in a two person vehicle. They were going to drive us there! We thanked them and walked back to the boat.
We didn't know how to get the phone number for a local pizza place. Greg called second mate Vicki at home, to get on line, and determine a local place for us. Greg ordered pizza after finessing the lack of a house number with the order taker. We had a hot dinner of pizza in minutes.
For the third night in a row, we had no trouble falling asleep.
On Sunday, January 31, we charged off good and early. Unfortunately, as we reached Southport, NC, just south of Wilmington and only 30 miles from where we started, the engine started to overheat. We found a mechanic, incredibly, who would come down on a Sunday midday to see if he could get us going again. After a few adjustments, a false start and a second visit from the mechanic, we bagged the day. Greg called his very good friend Kenny to come and get us. At this point, we are two and a half hours from home by car.
Kenny called after about four hours embarrassed to say he'd be another hour. Gladys gave him bad directions and he had to double back. Following Gladys' instructions, he wound up at the entry ramp for a ferry that would carry him across the Cape Fear river to our location. But it wasn't going to do so for another couple of hours! Gladys is the voice of the built in the GPS in his smokin' Dodge Charger. He had to drive 30 miles north, cross a bridge and 30 miles south to catch up to us.
Kenny is a saint. And his car can go 0 to 60 really fast. Or as Greg commented on the way home: "it goes from 0 to 60 to 55 to 60 to 55 to 60 really fast".
Joe
Joey I swear you are a wonderful story teller! Great pictures of the boat, it looks really nice in the water.
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