Oriental Boat Show and SeaLight Takes a Hit

Oriental, North Carolina – 2 kilometres walked, 1 mile in dinghy

We awoke to rain and cold so fired up the diesel heater and put coffee water to boil on the gas stove to bring up the temperature in the boat. Since the boat show didn’t start until noon, I worked on taxes for a while and we had a great chat with Magnus who was on his second day of his two week school break, traveling around Europe. It seemed he’d visited the Ryanair website and booked flights everywhere they go, as his itinerary included stops in France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. I was sad to break up his enjoyment of croissants, smelly cheese and cheap wine with questions about missing tax slips.

The Oriental boat show was excellent, particularly because the rain had stopped and the sun came out for the noon opening. At the nautical flea market we picked up a few small boat spares, but more importantly a replacement set of Raymarine electronics including a wind instrument, tri-data, and an E80 chartplotter, all in working condition, and exact replacements for our existing system, which still functions fine but is getting dated. We wandered through the vendor market, spoke to a few people and looked through the exhibits, attended a short seminar on extending the life of your boat canvas, then went to the in-water boats for sale at the Oriental Marina and toured two trawlers, and tugboat, and a beautiful 2004 Antares 44’ catamaran for the low, low price of nearly six hundred grand US. We also made one last coffee stop at The Bean, which was busier today with the boat show crowd.

As we were returning to SeaLight we were flagged down by a sailboat at anchor. We’d seen this boat before several times along the way south and in the Bahamas but hadn’t ever spoken to the owners. They told us that a couple hours before, the sailboat anchored ahead of us had let loose and crashed into the starboard side of our boat then re-anchored in the same spot. We thanked them then went to inspect our boat and found a series of deep scratches and scrapes along the side, no note, and there looked to be nobody aboard the perpetrator boat. We fumed for a while, discussing what to do. We hoped the owners would stop by and explain what had happened then we could discuss next steps. But there was no sign of them…until dark when I noticed somebody in the enclosed cockpit and a dog on deck. We did not see a dinghy on the boat so we didn’t know how they were getting back and forth to shore – perhaps another of the occupants had the dinghy out somewhere. In the end we decided to stop by in the morning before we left, and if they were not yet up then we’d leave a note with our contact details.

From this experience we take away yet another lesson. It’s a good idea to deploy fenders on both sides of our boat when in an anchorage, just in case a boat lets loose and hits us – then there is the hope that a loose boat will rub up against these instead of our previously beautiful hull. This is the third time now that this has happened to us, and fortunately there was no damage the first two times. And yes, we are slow learners.

After a delicious meal of chicken quesadillas we had nice long online chat with our friend Angela then called it a night. Actually, it was just me who called it a night – Ana stayed on the call with her for at least another hour as I watched half a movie on the laptop in the cozy vberth then dropped off to sleep.