At Benton and Ann Blalock's Home

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's) 

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 29 - April 29, 2017

We left our Topsail Bridge anchorage headed for Benton and Ann Blalock's home in Newport, N.C., near Swansboro. Benton had responded to my inquiry on C-Brats whether anybody within 300 miles north of Charleston might be able to help me pull the boat out of the water for an outboard service. Benton said he lived on the ICW, had a trailer for a CD25, and would be glad to help, and we gratefully accepted! We had intended to arrive on Sunday, April 30, but we had covered a few more miles than anticipated on a couple of days, and it looked like we would arrive on Saturday, April 29, so we had intended to go to Hammock Beach State Park so we would not get there too early. Benton read that in the last installment of this blog, and called to say it would not be a problem for us to arrive on Saturday, and we should meet him at a certain beach in Swansboro, where he and Ann would be having a beach day with their son Colin and his family.

Daydream in Wet Slip

We had left ourselves a very short distance to travel from Topsail Island Bridge, and we arrived in the early afternoon. Benton had hot dogs and margaritas ready for us! We anchored and had a lovely afternoon with Benton and Ann, Colin and Colin's wife Ryan, and their two kids Rivers and Quinn.  Baxter loved the beach and being off leash, and he made friends with a family up the beach! We then motored to the Blalock home about 8 miles north of Swansboro, where we put Daydream in a "wet slip." A wet slip is a concept entirely unknown in the Pacific Northwest, where a boat is floating between two parallel sets of three pilings, each of which has a line to be tied to the boat. With the wind and current, this was quite a challenge, but we got it accomplished! It was then quite a challenge to get from the boat to the pier, but Benton had a "gangplank" that we precariously put from the boat to the pier, and managed to get off the boat without falling in the water!

Colin and Ryan Blalock

Benton and Ann Blaylock

Benton has the "man cave" of all "man caves" in his garage! He has a restaurant style exhaust hood over a couple of grills and a smoker, plus a whole lot more, Before dinner, the Blalocks introduced us to a North Carolina specialty, boiled peanuts, or as we heard it, "bold peanuts"! We had a fantastic dinner of grilled pork tenderloins with potatoes and kale salad. Colin is a master of the grill, and the tenderloins were perfectly seasoned and grilled to perfection! This was simply a social day and evening that Benton and I ended by breaking out my bottle of St. Augustine Distillery bourbon!  Patty and i had both showered before dinner, and it was amazing to have a hot shower after being on Daydream without a shower since Charleston! We retired to our bedroom with a real double bed, not a vee-berth, and were soon enjoying pleasant dreams!

DAY 30 - April 30, 2017

This was mostly a day of relaxation as well. Benton is known as "Gramps" to Rivers and Quinn, and they love coming to visit! Gramps and the kids fished off the pier, and the boys each caught a fish!. They loved it! After Colin and his family headed back to their home in Raleigh, we took Daydream out of the wet slip, again a rather challenging enterprise. Benton took his truck and trailer to a nearby ramp, and Ann rode with me on Daydream to guide me to the ramp from the water side. We got the boat on the trailer fairly easily, and took it back to the Blalocks' driveway.

Mightyvac Fluid Extractir

I had ordered a Mightyvac Fluid Extractor to pump the oil ("oil" and "all" sound somewhat the same, but we could make out difference!) out of the Honda BF150, which we had Amazon deliver to the Blalocks' home - we LOVE  Amazon Prime's guaranteed two day delivery! Everything went very smoothly. This is going to be a wonder tool to have.  It was considerably larger than we had imagined however, so carrying it on the boat will be a bit of a challenge. It works by putting a tube down where the dipstick normally is, and it sucks the oil out by creating a negative pressure in the extractor body with the hand operated pump. Once a siphon is started, it is not necessory to pump any more. it makes oil changes a whole lot less messy!. We were unable to remove the oil filter with any Benton's tools, so we decided to wait until Monday to get a proper filter removal tool.  It took an impact driver to get the screws out of the lower unit, but we managed to do that, and we drained the lower unit. This stuff runs like molasses, and we let it run as long as we had patience, but decided to resume our work in the morning, when we had a proper oil filter removal toll as well as a pump to put the new lower unit lube in the outboard, We put everything away, and called it quits for the day!

Day 31 -May 1, 2017

After a terrific breakfast of pancakes and bacon, we headed out to get a proper oil filter removal tool. We found it at the Advanced Auto Parts Store. I also bought a manual impact driver, the kind you whack with a hammer, just in case! When we returned, we finished our remaining tasks - change the oil filter, add the new oil, add lube to the lower unit, change the fuel-water separator, and test everything for leaks. All was good! Benton had a spare lower unit lube pump, which is now my pump!

While we were shopping for tools to finish the outboard service, Patty and Ann went to "She-Lowes "to re-provision Daydream. "He-Lowes" is the home improvement store, while "She-Lowes "is a supermarket. I don't know how many places there are She-Lowes, These stores were right next to each other, and share the Lowes look and feel, but with different products!

After we cleaned up, we headed to the Saltwater Restaurant in Swansboro. This restaurant overlooks the ICW, and we could see just where we had come from. Although it has steaks and chicken, this restaurant really features fresh locally caught seafood, and it was very good! 

Day 32 - May 2, 2017

It was AIS (ass in seat) 8:30 a.m., and we made it! I pumped up the kayak with the accessory electric pump, and put all the bags of groceries from Patty's and Ann's shopping trip,  Our destination was the free docks at Oriental, N.C. We made very good time and were quite comfortable. But once Adams Creek flowed into the Nuese River, we got our fillings knocked out!

We headed for Oriental and the free docks there. Since it was a weekday, early in the week, we thought our chances would be fairly good, and we were not wrong!  Still, we only got our spot because of our shallow draft! Bigger boats simply could not float in two feet of water! This is the first free dock we have managed to snag since we started theGreat Loop! We also had our first "docktail hour" with other Loopers here.  We had thought that this would be quite common on the Great Loop, but so far, it has not been - tonight was our first! The other Loopers headed off to town to get pizza, but we had wild caught salmon and a salad on board. We talked with other Loopers about Pamlico!

Tomorrow we will probably attempt to cross Pamlico Sound, one of two open water crossings in North Carolina, the other being Albermarle. Both have a reputation for being snarly, but tomorrow should be great for travelling east!