After traveling for five straight days, we decided to take a few days off to enjoy Beaufort, NC. This is one of my favorite spots along the ICW. There are palm trees lining the ICW, tourists in the streets and dolphins in the river. It is the first place where it feels like we have arrived “somewhere”.
We spent two nights all by ourselves at Safe Harbor: Jarrett Bay, hosted by the awesome Bruce (he remembered us from last year). Jarrett Bay is a wonderful spot but it is pretty far from any restaurants or nature. I really wanted to be close to both for my birthday but we had some strong winds forecasted for December 28. So, on December 27, we cast off the dock lines and journeyed a short six miles south to Taylor Creek. We found a great spot to anchor close to town. Our first dolphins of the season greeted us as we laid out the anchor, the anchorage was already living up to my nickname for it – the dolphin highway.
One of my goals this season is to become proficient at driving the dinghy, so I took the tiller of our new electric outboard motor and steered Margaret P. to the nearest beach. It was my first beaching attempt and only second attempt at captaining this little ship. We got a little wet but we made it ashore on Carrot Island. There are about 20 wild horses roaming this island. We saw a lot of fecal evidence of their presence but unfortunately, did not encounter one on our walk.
We spent the afternoon enjoying the nice weather and area. On one of our trips into town, we met sailors Dick and Laura on SV Maia, a boat we recognized from Deltaville. They invited us over for happy hour. We spent a few hours swapping stories about their circumnavigation and Mackinac Island. They were so humble about their amazing travels. They planned to head directly from Beaufort to the Panama Canal to finish their circumnavigation in Mexico.
After happy hour, Lucas took me out to dinner for my birthday at a delicious Mexican restaurant in downtown Beaufort. We had birthday margaritas in addition to lots of chips and dip. In the morning, we went back into town and I purchased my birthday gift from my parents – a kite! It had been years since I had flown a kite but it sounded like a great thing to have on the boat. I picked out a beautiful beginner kite from Beaufort’s kite shop. We then headed back to the beach on Carrot Island for my first flight. I had a blast trying to fly her, it is one of those activities that is just as much fun as when you were 10 years old. After the kite session, we packed up Alaya and headed back towards Jarrett Bay. Another wonderful birthday on the water!
We ended up staying at Jarrett Bay for another week. It is just such a safe, convenient and friendly place, although it is in the middle of nowhere if you don’t have a car. To fix that problem, I found us a cheap rental car and we rented it for the entire week. This meant we had transportation for exploring the area and to do our final, final provisioning.
The rental car also would help us solve our life raft problem. When we ordered it back in November, they required a commercial address for shipping. We weren’t sure where we would be when it was delivered, so we had it sent to the Deltaville boatyard. After trying to get a delivery update for weeks while we were actually in Deltaville, we found out about four hours after we sailed out of Deltaville on December 20 that the raft was scheduled for delivery on January 2. Cool. We decided to keep heading south and just rent a car when the raft was actually delivered.
While we waited for the life raft, we finished a few boat projects and I did another provisioning run. I had been searching all over for shelf-stable milk and I hit the motherload in Morehead City. At some point soon we are going to stop buying food and start eating through our stores.
In between chores, we explored some local parks, including Fort Macon. This fort was a really cool spot, and after a summer on Mackinac Island, we have a soft spot for forts. We spent an afternoon learning all about this brick structure built in the 1830’s to protect the Beaufort Inlet. We joined a tour with a very knowledgeable local guide who reminded us of our soldier friends at “our fort” back home.
While on the tour, we learned that Fort Macon holds a special cannon firing on New Year’s Eve every year. We are apparently in our “Cannon Era” because we found ourselves at the fort the next day to blast in the new year. They shot off nine 24-lb cannons in quick succession to a crowd of 100’s. It was my kind of NYE party too, the cannons fired off at 7 p.m. and I was in bed by 9 p.m.
A few days later, we got up early and jumped in the rental car for what I hope is our last long “road” trip of the season. What had taken us five long days on the ICW, took us about five hours by car. Our route happened to follow along the Dismal Swamp Canal, an alternate to the ICW in North Carolina, and we stopped to check out its famous visitor center.
We pulled into the boatyard in Deltaville around 1 p.m., loaded up the new life raft and then hit the road again. We made a quick pit stop for our last Chipotle burrito. Rumor on the street is there are no Chipotles in the Bahamas. We were back to Beaufort by 7 p.m., tired but pleased to have completed the life raft task. We were officially ready to go offshore!
The next afternoon, we made our way back to Taylor Creek, to position ourselves for an early morning exit to the ocean. Unfortunately, the dolphin highway anchorage was pretty full of other boats and we couldn’t find a good spot to drop the hook close to the inlet. It was also pretty windy, with gusts in the 20s. We tried one spot far up the river but our anchor dragged as we were trying to set it. We hauled up the anchor, feeling pretty discouraged. I made a quick phone call to the marina downtown, after some discussion, they graciously let us tie up to a dock for the nine hours we needed. Exhausted, we got docked and caught our breath. We were both feeling anxious and excited about our offshore plans the next day.
Our alarms went off at 2:30 a.m.. We started to get dressed, I put on all my thermal layers in preparation. Just as I got my last layer on, we heard a knock on the boat. “Was that a knock?! It’s 2:30 a.m.!” And then another knock. I poked my head out the companionway and was greeted by Larry, a fellow sailor from our home marina in Michigan. I was so surprised to see him that it took me a minute to place him (and it was 2:30 a.m.!). He and his wife, Ginny, left Toledo Beach Marina the year before us. We had spent time with them when we were both working in the boatyard but never got their contact information. And here we all were two years later, at the same marina in North Carolina, getting ready to take the same weather window at the exact same time. Such a small world! We quickly exchanged contact information and then finished our last-minute preparations. Larry and Ginny cast their lines first and then we followed them.
So long, Beaufort, we were headed back into the ocean, with friends!
