Dowery Creey Marina near Belhaven

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

035-31.980 N
076-32.040 W

Yesterday we pulled into the Dowery Creek marina where we managed to scrape the paint off of two places on the boat due to the incompetence of the staff. When were pulling in we had 15-20 kts of wind on from the port-stern, which meant that we had a wind pushing us sideways and towards the dock. You have to tie up to pilings here, so that made this tricky. However, there shouldn't have been any problems, had the staff known what they were doing.

As we pulled in I had Sue drop the spring line over a piling to keep us from sliding forward into the dock due to the wind. I had us stopped via the engine, so this wasn't a big issue. The wind was also blowing us sideways into the boat next to us, so I was holding us off the other boat while Sue got the port stern line attached to a piling. All seemed well until I looked forward and saw that the bow was being pushed onto the finger pier between the boats and the staff was doing nothing to keep the bow off of it. One of the women staff was just standing there while the other one just held the bow line in her hand!

Sue had handed a bow line to the staff after getting the spring line attached and the other bow line could have easily been grabbed, but the staff just stood there with the bow line limp and did nothing to keep the bow from rubbing up against an exposed bolt head. The captain of the boat next to us tried to get them to pull the bow away from the dock, but they said that we needed to get the port stern line on to center us and that there was nothing that they could do. In other words, they thought that by centering our stern that we would somehow or another effect centering of the bow. Huh?!? The staff that was handling the bow line was "holding it limp like a leash" according to the woman on the boat next to us. When Sue yelled at them to pull us off, their response was that "it wasn't their problem". They never pulled on the bow line to keep us off of the exposed bolt head or the edge of the finger pier and as a result we scraped two places on the hull and Awlgrip can't be (easily) repaired.

None of the staff offered any apology nor did they appear to have any clue that they didn't do what they should have done. Two other boats had similar docking experiences today and all of us have sworn that we will never return here. What really confounded me later was that virtually all of the slips were empty and they could have placed us on a face dock without any issue. They also didn't need to place us in a slip next to another boat that we had to deal with while docking. In my opinion, the staff is clueless with regards to the issues that confront someone while docking a boat. When you're docking a boat, especially with wind, you expect that the staff that assists you knows what they're doing. This cost me a scratched boat and an expensive repair bill.

On the other hand, the trip from Morehead City to here was quite enjoyable as most of the time we were in wide open expanses and we had didn't have to worry about tidal currents, traffic or bridges. We didn't have a breath of air for most of the day, but in the afternoon the wind picked up and we actually had a wonderful sail when we entered the Pamlico river and we got to sail for 20+ miles!

We did have a close-up encounter with the owner of a brand new 63' Hatteras. We pulled into the Jerret Bay boat yard for fuel and were looking at a new Hatteras behind us. This was a $3M+ boat that had just been delivered and the owner was about to take it out on a shake-down cruise. An hour or so later we saw it pulling up behind us. He passed a catamaran and then pulled up beside us. He slowed down to the worst possible speed (with his stern as low in the water as possible) and threw up a huge wake that rolled us 45 degrees and washed the decks with water. Do you think that he offered an apology on the VHF? Of course not! The catamaran behind us said that he saw the bottom of our keel! I hope that I can chalk this up to a lack of experience instead of expecting all of the slower boats to get out of his way.

Tomorrow we'll continue our trek N and we need to make a decision about the Dismal Swamp Canal as the water levels are low due to a regional draught. I don't want bump submerged logs as we head though.

-- Geoff & Sue

For the cruiser:

Don't go to the Dowery Creek marina unless you have no other options, and if you do go here, don't trust the staff! Instead I would suggest going to Bellhaven Waterway Marina which is a wonderful, but small, marina just a few miles S. We were going to stop there, but decided to try somewhere new. What a mistake!

Log ID: 985