We loved our stay in Beaufort, NC but we awoke to 34 degrees and it was time to leave.
We had lots of fun in Beaufort riding around in the sexy loaner car. The car was green but the door was red. You had to pump the breaks to slow down and it had a death rattle sound as you drove down the road. We loved it. It was FREE.
We decided to do a pub crawl through Beaufort but we only made it to the Black Sheep Bar which was 20 feet from our boat. We met Capt. Scott from MV Legacy (58′ Grand Banks). Capt Scott kept us entertained with stories about his grandparents yacht that he was now the captain of. Capt Scott even gave me a tour of MV Legacy when we left the bar and she was very impressive.
Our GPS tracker was capturing our journey as we headed South. It clearly was not recording where the straight lines are shown but it gives a reader an interesting view of our last few days of travel.
I met another fella who said he noticed my Boston accent as he was also from that part of town. When I said well I’m from Foxboro (home of the Patriots to be exact) he mentioned someone he knew from Foxboro and it turned out to be a childhood friend of mine (Small World). Turns out we knew many of the same folks from back home. I snapped a selfie as it seemed like the right thing to do in the moment.
As we made our way out of Beaufort we passed a buoy tender with two gentleman who looked quite cold.
It was a small craft advisory and the whitecaps were appearing even in the small body of water we were in.
As we made our way down Bogue Sound I hailed a boat that was anchored in the channel. Turns out they were having engine trouble but were not in need of assistance.
We passed this fishing vessel that had clearly sunk in the shallow waters.
And around the next corner was the Marines Camp Lejeune. They were doing live fire exercises to we were forced to stop and drop anchor.
We dropped anchor believing that no traffic could pass during the exercises but soon a tug boat was passing us on anchor. Maybe he was just slow making his way out of the firing zone?
It was fun to watch the Osprey plane flying over the top of us. Recall the Osprey is a plane capable of vertical take off and landing.
When we were finally allowed to continue down the ICW we and all the other boats were racing to make it to the only decent anchorage within range. You must be careful when you run fast down the ICW because if you run up on a shoal going fast you may not be able to back off of it. Soon the sailboat behind us ran aground and they asked us if we would turn around and come back and wake them as hard as we could to possibly rock them off the shoal that had them stuck. We agreed knowing that it was risky as in order to wake them we’d have to run fast right next to the shoal they were stuck on. We did our best but in the end a local crab boat was the one who deserves the credit for pulling them off.
We were thrilled to see them free as it was still 2 hours away from low tide and if they had not gotten off that shoal quickly they were going to sit there into the night.
As we made our way to the anchorage at Camp Lejeune we passed many bullet riddled targets on shore.
The sun was setting and it was beautiful.
Soon were were anchored for a peaceful night.
Today’s leg looked something like this
MV Simple Life 