Moon Song

Little Alligator River, N35 56 W76 01
November 6. We met a great couple with a Westsail 32! Alan and Laura Grayson on the W32 Moon Song. Alan is from the south Island of New Zealand. Laura has a dazzling smile that could capture a man’s heart at 50 paces.

Like us, Alan and Laura sold all their land bound stuff and set off to see the world on their Westsail. They’ve had Moon Song for 6 years and did a lot of custom modifications. We had great fun inspecting each other’s boats and picking up ideas. I love the way they made chart storage in the V-berth. Alan loves the sitting navigator’s station we have in Tarwathie.


Alan and Laura’s immediate destination is Bermuda. Sounds great to me. Good luck Moon Song.

We left Elizabeth City around 900. I would have liked to stay yet another day but we were already one day over the two day limit for free docks. We passed the Coast Guard station and the blimp factory and the Fugi blimp. The blimp hanger is 180 feet tall, and big enough for three football fields to fit in side. There are ruins of yet another hanger twice as big that burned down. The Rose Buddies said that hanger was the biggest wooden building in the world at one time. I can imagine the local volunteer firemen staring at that on the day it burned.


Today is very nice for sailing except that after noon we came to a leg dead into the wind. We sailed that for 4 hours making very slow progress. Then, to get to the anchorage before dark we doused the sails and started the engine.

Something went wrong within 10 minutes of motoring. We were making less than 0.4 knots at maximum cruising throttle! We must have snagged a crab pot. I looked over the side and can see nothing. We put her in reverse to clear the foul. That helped, and now we’re making 3 knots into the wind. Still 1 knot less than normal for this RPM. I’ll have to go swimming at the anchorage to inspect the propeller and the bottom. Water temperature is 60 degrees. Brisk but not impossible.

It took nearly three hours to motor in to our anchorage. By the time we got here and changed course beam to the wind, the motoring speed had returned to normal. We’ll see tomorrow if I have the will power to go swimming to inspect the bottom.

We ran aground just after passing through channel markers. We didn’t make any errors. According to two charts and one GPS, we should have been clear of shoals. Nevertheless, we ran aground. The thump thump as the keel hit bottom at every wave trough was awful. Fortunately we were able to back out with little trouble. It’s a reminder though of how easy it is. Bottom conditions change.