Beaufort North Carolina

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As Marty mentioned, we tied up to a dock safely- and that dock was in Beaufort North Carolina.

Beaufort is apparently the third oldest city in North Carolina. This is a very nice city with a lot of history, and a lot of pride in their heritage homes and buildings. It has been very well restored, and it is certainly a beautiful quiet place to be if you have to be somewhere for a few days. The public dock is in the old restored part of town, so there are restaurants and gift shops right in front of your boat.... a lot of them are still open even in this very dead time of year. Most houses have the year they were built on the front, and some date back to 1706. The burial grounds are so peaceful and beautiful, and some of the old stones have very interesting stories and histories as well: common burial grounds for victims of the Indian wars in 1711, common burial ground for victims of shipwrecks, civil war heroes, freed slaves, yellow fever... all kinds of stories. According to town history, Blackbeard's flagship Queen Anne's Revenge was lost outside Beaufort. A few of the old buildings have been converted to bars, but the woodwork and overall cozy old feeling has been kept from years gone by. It has been an absolute pleasure wandering the streets here.

There are not many boats in the transient docks at this time of year.We met the crew of Solglimt on their way to Brasil via St Thomas and we were happy to have them as neighbours for our stay. A few others came in to gas up and stay the day or maybe overnight, but it was Caribee and Solglimt floating alone for the most part waiting for repairs. Our repair was the motor once again- we called a mechanic for help because we could not figure out what was wrong. It seemed to mostly be an air lock, and there was the issue about the propelor being over pitched as well. The mechanic confirmed that we had the wrong prop on our boat. We could not find what we needed anywhere online, but luckily we were told about a prop place where they could bend it to the pitch we needed, and there was a dive shop right beside it who could come install it- all good! The other issue is the coolant leak. We bought a replacement hose because it is usually the hose at fault and ours is getting old now, but I was not able to find any leaking or wet areas on the entire hose so I am not convinced that is the problem. We will monitor this and keep trying to find the leak.

We treated ourselves to a night out at a place called Backstreet Bar.... because that's exactly what it was. This was the bakery back in the day, and now it is a tiny cozy bar with an open fireplace and a metal circular staircase leading to upstairs-much like the outside staircases in older sections of Montreal, but much smaller and a tighter spiral. A bluegrass influenced band was playing that night, and they were great (L Shape Lot for those who are curious). We had an amazing night with some super friendly local people.

The weather is a few degrees warmer than Norfolk, making for a very pleasant stay. We were happy to have to walk for groceries for once! There were dolphins in the inlet each day, horses on the sand islands right across from us, and loud norcturnal herons perched on the pilings around the boat like sentinels. A relaxing place to be, especially in the silence of the night (other than the loud nocturnal herons!)

A weather window has come, we leave tonight and we will try to make it to Charleston. Bye bye Beaufort, and bye bye NC!

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Comments

[roger Gaby]

Yeah!
Hope you are in Charleston by the time you get this e-mail. Warmer days will come. Fair winds to you two. Roger

[Caribee Sailing]

thank you, I think the winds are listening to you! I am updating the blog now- we will miss Charleston unless something goes wrong. Unfortunate since I really wanted to see it, but then again I wanted to see Savannah, St Augustine etc etc we can't see everything. New plan is either St Simons or St Mary's!