Mahi Mahi – Sunday May 18th : Belhaven to Tuckahoe Point Anchorage North Carolina

On Sunday May 18th, we departed Belhaven for a short ride of 34 miles to an anchorage called Tuckahoe Point.

Prior to departing Belhaven, Deena & I used the complementary marina Golf Cart, to get some more groceries from the Food Lion about 1.5 miles away.

Back to today’s Voyage. We chose the Tuckahoe Point Anchorage location, because it is just before a big section of open water called Albemarle Sound. The forecast said that Sunday was gunna be really windy, while Monday “should be pretty calm for crossing the Sound.

See the wind forcast below (Sunday vs Monday). Look at the Green/Orange wind speed/gust on Sunday (15/22mph) vs the Blue/Green wind speed/ gusts on Monday(7/13mph).

We had a wonderful peaceful ride to Tuckahoe, because we had an incredibly long strait section of water with trees on both sides. Good thing because the wind was starting to whip up, out in the bigger open water.

During today’s cruise, we saw a very malnourished guy fishin’ along the river.

We arrived at Tuckahoe Point about 3pm. Tuckahoe is a somewhat open area, just off of the ICW, but not open like Abermarle Sound. The wind was fairly strong, but we got anchored pretty quickly/smoothly.

After a short swim and safe landing drinks, Jerry & I called our Miller Marina buds – John Nelson & Al Oleszko. We talked boating for a while & made plans for the coming home drinks, and said farewell.

About an hour after our call with John & Al, and after several Frank Sinatra songs (One for my Baby, and another for the Road). Then the action for the day occurred.

Jerry noticed that we were dragging the anchor, probably drifting about 25-50ft in an open area of about 600-900ft. So we had plenty of area to drag. But Jerry doesn’t really like the plow anchor, has had issues with its holding power in certain soils, and the wind was supposed to remain high until after midnight. So we decided to pull up the anchor and reset in 25-30mph winds.

Well, during the anchor reset process and a couple good gusts of wind later, the chain rode, 100ft of braided line & the anchor – decided to leave the boat and go to Davie Jones Locker forever 😲.

When we began the anchor resetting, we thought that it was going to be a quick/ easy reset, so we did not have our headsets on. The wind was so loud, that we could not hear each other.

With Mike at the helm & Jerry at the windlass, Deena had to frantically get the headsets turned on and get 1 headset to each of us (headset photo for advertising only – taken after the excitement 😃)

Mike held the boat in position, while Jerry & Deena attached the backup Large Danford anchor with 150ft of line to the bollard. They amazingly had the backup anchor ready to go within 5 minutes. Unfortunately, we lost 55ft of chain & a 45lb stainless steel plow anchor.

10-15 minutes later we were again safely anchored in almost the exact same spot as we started. It was great teamwork to quickly recover from what could have been a bad situation.

Kudo’s to Captain Luck for having a backup anchor, and to being able to reattach it to the boat so quickly (thanks to Captain Nelson, for the anchor swap in 2018).

Upon further inspection, Jerry found the anchor line had broken at a previously strained area that he had known about. The line had been thru many years of high wind anchoring conditions, but on this date said bye bye.

About 8pm, the wind died down to a completly, “On Golden Pond” type of calm. If we had had known that the wind was going to calm down so quickly, we probably would not even have attempted to reset the anchor. The forecast had not predicted calm until after midnight.

As with all of our days on the water, thru all of our boating lives, the Lord always seems to protect us and keep us safe.

And then he blessed us with a beautiful sunset over the serene water, to end the exciting day.