June 11-12, 2000 -- Untitled

On June 11, we decided we wanted to do as little as possible! The only thing we planned was to lower our dinghy, which we accomplished in the morning, before the heat and wind really picked up. We noticed that our Fischer-Panda generator was acting a little funny, with low voltage and low hertz. Usually, when we see low voltage, a capacitor has blown, but we usually see high hertz at that point. We figured we would check it in the morning. On June 12, we checked the capacitor bank and did not see any problems initially. We pulled out the book to verify our checks of the capacitors. The book recommended a continuity check. We also performed a second check on the microferrit rating. It's a good thing to, because one of the capacitors had continuity, but no microferrit reading, so we replaced it. There are 2 others that are reading approximately 20 microferrits under their rating, we are betting they will go shortly because the problem is persisting! After having breakfast and charging our batteries, we headed off to Hampton in search of a fax machine and West Marine. The search for a dinghy dock was a touch on the long side, but we managed to find it, thanks to the helpful people we met along the way. As we were pulling up to the dinghy dock, we saw Phase II. They anchored next to us for a night in Wrightsville Beach right before one of the thunderstorms that never hit. We got reacquainted, and after a few minutes talking we headed to check in at the Dockmaster's office. The dock office was a zoo! Everyone was frantically working on Ops Sail 2000 and Harbor Fest dock plans, so we left our fax and went in search of West Marine. According to everything we had heard, the West Marine was the first trolley stop. We looked at the trolley map and saw Queen's Way. We thought that that was where the store was. Unfortunately, it is on Queen St., almost 6 miles away. Anyway, we wandered around for a while and never found what we were looking for. We went back to the trolley stop and caught the trolley to West Marine. On our way out from there, we stopped at a little 'roach coach' for a lunch of hot dogs and fries. It was excellent. It took about 2 hours to get to and from West Marine. We stopped in the dock office, picked up our fax and headed to our dinghy. On the way there, we ran into Molly and Dan on Jolly Moon. We caught up with them for a few minutes, since we hadn't seen them since Charleston, then headed back to the boat because the news had said there would be thunderstorms in the afternoon. Once there, we dropped the forward sun awning we had put up, preparing for the winds that would accompany the thunderstorms. They never showed up. That night, after we went to bed, we heard on the VHF radio that Kiptopeake was experiencing 40 knots of wind. A few seconds later, we heard the aft sun awning making noise. This is our early indicator of building winds since it doesn't make noise under 20 knots! We had 20 knots of wind. We headed out and dropped it, and the winds were at 25. Almost since we arrived, we were facing south. With the coming of the front, we spun to face the north. Since we hadn't faced this direction previously, as a precaution against dragging anchor, we fired up the engines and watched the squall lines on radar for about an hour before powering everything down and going to sleep in the main saloon so we could hear the anchor alarm if we dragged anchor