I've Been Around

May 21 was a great day on the loop, The morning started with successful experience of pulling up to the full dock and then maneuvering my way out of the space.  This was a marina with some very big and very expensive boats.  And where do they put the big expensive boats, right in the thruway to the fuel dock, talk about somebody being nervous about maneuvering his new boat in tight spaces for only the second time. But I made it through without bouncing off any of them.

After I left the fuel dock and made my way out of the marina, I was heading up the ICW (Intra Coastal Waterway) when I got a call on the radio from the S/V Azure (a "buddy boat" I traveled with the day before -more on them in another post) telling me that they got information from Little River Marina we would be fine if we wanted to go outside (sail on the "BIG" water).  Do you want to join us?  Oh boy do I, could this day get any better!!!!  So that's what we did, we had an occasional "lumpy" ride and four and a half hours later we arrive at the Cape fear inlet.  We avoided some areas of the ICW where shoaling has made it shallow at low tide.  But, we really didn't gain any time because on May 22 I ran with three sailboats that I had run with from Charleston on the 20th.  But we were on the BIG water!!!!!!!!

So about the title, I've been around.  According to the Eric Stone song, You Ain't Been Around if You Ain't Been Aground, well I guess I have been around.  As I was pulling into the Carolina State Park Marina on the evening of the 21st I ran aground.  I wasn't watching the chart close enough and didn't notice that there was a dredged channel to enter Snowshoe Pass and all of the sudden I stopped moving.  The shallow alarm had been sounding, but so had the AIS alarm (which I was ignoring).  So Lesson Plan was trying to warn me, but I was ignoring her (I apologized to her profusely later that night).  After thinking about what Rob Wyatt talked about when we saw a boat run aground in Key West, I did a little maneuvering and I got her turned around and headed back to the channel.

I finished off the day with a successful docking maneuver.  "clapping hands here"

Lessons learned:
1. Going Outside doesn't necessarily save you time, but as long as it is only a moderate chop (2-4 ft waves) it's GREAT to be out there.

2. I learn how to set-up the AIS that night so the alarm isn't sounding for boats that are 10 miles away.
I should explain that the AIS calculates the speed, distance and course of boats around you and warns you if there is a risk of collision.  You can set the filters to where it will only show boats within a selected range, so it ignores boats that are far away.

3. On a somewhat related note ALWAYS PAY ATTENTION TO THE SHALLOW ALARM.

4. If you run aground be patient and you may be able to maneuver your way out, but PAY ATTENTION TO THE SHALLOW ALARM and you may not run aground in the first place.

Photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ar4UTvyBEgTYhKIeWTIxUwjvbftBBA