Beaufort, NC

So the plan changed again. A weather front with strong northerly winds is predicted for Tuesday through Saturday. Traveling north once that hits is going to get less appealing. Ocean travel will be off the menu in weather like that.

Early Monday morning we decided to take our last opportunity to make a big jump in the ocean. We left Wrightsville heading for Beaufort NC around 7am. There wasn’t much wind but that made for a calm sea. We motor/sailed a straight line and made it to Beaufort inlet at 5:30pm.

The trip inland on the ICW is about 20 miles longer and had a variety of drawbridges and fixed bridges that we would need to plan around. We could not easily make it in one day. Since we were traveling near shore, we could hear the VHF radio traffic from the ICW. As it turns out, we also avoided some dredging and construction work near one of the bridges. It was a good decision.

We had called ahead to confirm that we could top off our fuel at Town Creek Marina if we arrived before 6pm. We had to motor into the inlet against the ebb tide and made it to the marina with 5 minutes to spare. They could not have been nicer and more welcoming. They had space for us to stay the night so we did. We were not allowed to leave the marina property because of the Coronavirus Stay-at-Home order. No problem for us, we were planning to leave early the next morning anyway.

While Mike took the gear off the mast again for the inland run, I was visited by a large pod of dolphins. They were just hanging around. Mike said he could see them from the top of the mast and there was a white one in the bunch. I didn’t see that one but there were plenty of them to enjoy.

We have 200 ICW miles to go to Portsmouth.