Any port in a storm Lindsay McRory November 10, 1995 There is broad diversity among the people and the boats that live and cruise the Intercoastal Waterway. Most of the boats we've seen to date are well-equipped coastal-cruising boats, a small percentage equipped for offshore sailing as well. Hakuna Matata fits into the later category. Occasionally, we'll see a boat that reflects the owners' very unique personality and sailing ideals. Imagine a 32-foot powder-black ferro-cement hull, shaped like a lifeboat. Sprinkle the hull with loose bits of chicken wire left over from construction. Add a 10-foot bowsprit, and give her completely flat decks from bow to stern. Now take an '82 or '83 one-ton van, chop it horizontally just above the wheel wells and mount it on the deck so the rear doors are flush with the stern. Replace the doors with sliding Plexiglas, and replace the windshield with a larger Plexiglas plate. Keep the original captain's chairs (now I know why they are called captain's chairs) and hook up the steering wheel to the rudder. For a rigging take two wooden poles and mount them sort of vertically on the deck. To secure the rig, tie it off from the deck directly to the masthead. No spreaders. I helped tie her to a dock and would estimate a weight in excess of 30,000 pounds. Nice enough skipper, he just marches to the beat of a different drummer. While docked at Alligator River marina, a severe-weather warning was posted for the following night. Our next stop will take us out of Albemarle Sound and down to Belhaven, N.C., at mile 135. The morning was clear and calm. We left at 7 a.m. with an estimated arrival time of 1:30 p.m. Our route took us through a few larger bodies of water, and around some larger land cuts. The Pungo River canal is a very long land cut--it is 28 miles in length and about 100 feet across--that seems to go on and on. While we were in the canal, the weather started to deteriorate a little. By the time we entered Belhaven, visibility was down to a few hundred feet in fog and rain. The wind was an uncomfortable 30 mph. There are several marinas in Belhaven, but all of them were full! This was a surprise because the marinas so far were all nearly empty, and there are four marinas here! In favorable conditions you can anchor in the harbor in about 8 to 10 feet of water. But the swells were picking up to 3 to 4 feet, which meant we could be hitting bottom between each swell if we anchored here. In addition to the shallow water, Belhaven Harbor offers no (that's none, zip, zero, zilch) protection from a southeast storm. We decided to backtrack four miles to Dowry Creek marina. As soon as we stuck our nose out of the harbor, the wind piped up another 15 mph. We made no headway at all! We turned back into the harbor. We would scour the shoreline looking for anything to tie up to. Failing that we would use the depth sounder to find the deepest place possible to drop a hook, and hope for a soft bottom. As we traveled along the back of the harbor, we saw a large dredging barge and considered docking up beside it. A possibility, but tying alongside it would require docking sideways to the wind and being pushed right into the barge. While turning around to evaluate docking to the barge's stern, we spotted a dilapidated old fishing dock that hadn't been used in the last 20 years. Not quite perfect, but if we tied up at the very end, Hakuna Matata's bow would be just off the wind. After our initial docking, it took about two hours to get all the lines, fenders, and sacrificial life jackets between the dock and the boat. It was a very dangerous process. The way the boat was surging and pounding into the dock it would have been quick and easy to loose a hand or a foot. There was no way that we could leave the boat unattended, even for a minute. With the enormous forces it was only a matter of time before something broke. We continued to make only minor adjustments to the line and fender positions until midnight, when one of the large pilings we tied up to started gyrating in large circles. Another line was secured from the bow to a different piling to provide strain relief while we retied the original bow line. Finally, at about 3 a.m., the wind shifted to the north and started to ease off. The next morning we walked to end of the dock. It was appropriately boarded up with "DANGER" signs. We sustained only minor damage: some gel coat was scuffed, the rub rail was chewed, and docking lines took a lot of wear and will soon be replaced. Our next couple of days are going to be spent fixing, cleaning, and catching up on our sleep.