It seems that mother nature wants us to move south. For the past few days we have had a north wind pushing us down the ICW. After our night in the Alligator river ( I was on the lookout, but didn’t see any alligators) we proceeded to mile 153 and anchored in Eastham creek for the night. There we headed over to Chautauqua for a dinner of BBQ hotdogs and a bean salad. We had another cold night and were glad for buying fleece PJ pants in Elizabeth City.
On Remembrance Day we left at 7am and motored down a narrow canal and then were out in the Neuse River. The guidebooks warned us about this river, as it gets quite choppy depending on the direction of the wind. Another day of north wind, so we had our sails up and our motor off and were cruising along at a great pace, surfing down the 2-3 foot waves. By the end we had almost caught up with Chautauqua as they headed into Oriental. We anchored on the other side of a bridge with a 42 foot clearance. My parents just snuck underneath. They said that they thought they had a few inches to spare!! We were able to get in touch with a mechanic from Sailcraft – a boat yard in Whittaker Creek. We motored the boat around and spent the night at their dock. We were so impressed with the service there. Everyone was so friendly and our motor was ready first thing in the morning. The mechanic showed us some things about the motor and made some suggestions as well as answered all our questions. They didn’t even charge us for spending the night at the dock. We were able to borrow their bikes and ride around the quaint town and have a hot shower. We bought a baguette for dinner, and wanted to look around more but it was getting dark and we didn’t want to be biking around in the dark.
The next morning we left at 9:30 am and called our parents and told them we were on our way. They passed us on the other side of the Neuse River. We were able to sail right to where it got narrow, and could have probably sailed the whole way to Beaufort because the wind just funneled down the canal. There was a bit more boat traffic then we were used to and it’s starting to get more built up with houses.
My mom had promised that there would be lots of dolphins to greet us as we neared the city. We only got a short glimpse of 4 fins along the way, maybe they have all moved further south? The wind was so strong from behind (We were so glad that it was behind us and not from the other direction) as we approached Beaufort. We anchored among some derelict boats moored in town creek. The wind finally died down towards nighttime. At dinner we discussed the plans for the following day where we would dinghy around to Taylor creek and dock at the town docks so we could explore Beaufort.
Saturday we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast, as we had no milk for cereal, all our instant oatmeal was used and we had only 1 egg left… time to get some more provisions. We ‘car-pooled’ with my parents around to the main docks in Beaufort. We saw a boat from when we were stuck in Sandy hook, about a month ago! They had come down on the outside route and were stuck here waiting out the remains of wind from hurricane Thomas that had created waves 18-22 feet in the Atlantic. It’s exciting to run into boats that we have met along the way. We walked around the downtown and bought a few sailing books at a store and some updated charts. We had coffee with our parents at a cafe and then all went to the maritime museum (where I tried to memorize all the poisonous snakes in the area). Afterwards mom and I walked 1 mile to the grocery store, and the men went back to the boat. We took a taxi to the docks with all our groceries and dad picked us up with the dinghy. Again, we wish we had more time to explore Beaufort, but we need to keep moving south if we are going to make it to Florida before Christmas. We put Beaufort on the list of places to explore more on the way back.
Just an aside note, before to comment, I think you had to have a google or some other account and then sign in. Sal and I changed this so now anyone can comment. We really enjoy reading the comments and will try to answer any questions.
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