Pulling in for a pit-stop

It was to be a short day, only 30 miles. We were under way by 08:00 and again at the mouth of a canal which connected Goose Creek to Gale Creek, then in to Bay River down to Neuse River.

A calm day on Bay River

It was a calm day on the water. Fellow Canadian's on Jacob's Ladder and At Last would eventually catch up to us near Oriental. The three of us were to anchor together, but we informed them of our change of plans to hold up at Sailcraft Services to have our keel assessed and repaired if needed. Oriental is a small town, so we tentatively made plans to get together for dinner the next day.

Alan at Sailcraft directed us into their narrow, shallow channel."Favour the red side", he said. "Leave 80-100' between Green #5 when you turn to port and you should be good". The depth sounder read; 6' > 5'10" > 5'8" > 5'6" > 5'4". I was waiting to hit bottom any time as our draft is 5'9". I guess our depth sounder needs to be calibrated...we didn't touch - that we could feel. The channel to the travel lift (big square framed crane with slings that lifts your boat out of the water and onto the hard) had boats on both sides and barely enough room to make the turn into the travel lift. Sailcraft personnel was

BoomDeYada being hauled out

there to help catch our lines and immediately start the assessment of our leaky bilge. George came aboard to assess the leak and came to the same conclusion that the keel was definitely leaking. We received approval from the insurance company to proceed and BoomDeYada was hauled out and placed on the hard. My project management skills came in handy arranging approvals from insurance and communicating to Sailcraft our urgency to get the work done and get us under way again. Alan was awesome at directing his skilled tradesmen all the way along the process.

We would spend the next 7-10 days here...others would say it will take months to get the work completed. It was becoming more and more obvious that the keel had some issues...

This crack is along the seem of the lead keel and the fibreglass

Moisture dripping from a crack at the join of the keel and hull