We have started our next cruise.
We left our friends dock to move down the river to Clubfoot Creek. This is where we lived at Matthews Point Marina. The marina has new owners and is now Bishop's Marina. We anchored off from the docks to spend more time preparing. We had left Cori's kayak with our friends Bill and Helen and we brought that back to the boat. We have other friends here that helped us out, Wayne repaired the wiring on a water pump for the water-maker, Louise took Cori to town for more provisioning and Vic loaned us his car to run errands. Finally after a hectic two days we felt we were ready and with a promising weather forecast we pulled anchor and started the new adventure.
On Tuesday, November 1st, we pulled anchor and motored down the ICW from the Neuse River to Beaufort Inlet and at 3:00 pm we headed out the inlet and started off, hopefully to Florida. Initially the winds were on the nose but the forecast was for them to clock around from the northwest. We motored along and about 9:00 pm the winds had shifted enough that we could shut down the engine and begin sailing. Later during the night the winds dropped and we had to start motoring again. By sunrise the next morning we had made our way past Frying Pan Shoals. The winds had started to come up and by changing our course a little we were once again sailing. We sailed all day running from 4-6 knots with the winds from behind. We continued on this course into the night. Eventually the winds shifted more to the northeast and we adjusted our sails and altered our course putting us once more on a direct line to Florida. The winds had been building and we were seeing 15-20 knots of apparent winds. When you add our boat speed, which at that time was 7-9 knots, we were in 20-25 knot winds with gust up to 30. We were seeing boat speeds we had only had while being pushed in the gulf stream. Along with the winds increasing, the seas were building and we were getting pushed around by the following seas. This unexpected speed was causing a problem.
Traveling at our usual 5-6 knots we were expecting to arrive at St Augustine sometime Friday morning. By increasing our speed we would by arriving in the middle of the night. St Augustine Inlet is not somewhere I want to arrive at night. Due to the shifting shoals the buoys that mark the channel are periodically relocated and are not accurate on our charts and chartplotter. It can be done at night but daylight and binoculars make it safer. With the combination of poor arrival time, the increasing wind and rougher sea conditions we made the decision to alter course and make for Beaufort SC. We continued on to Port Royal Sound going up the Beaufort River and anchoring in Cowen Creek around 2:00 pm on Thursday, November 3rd, a trip of 320 miles. We spent the night in this quiet anchorage catching up on our sleep. After checking the weather forecast we decided that we would wait until conditions improved before continuing. We pulled anchor and continued up the river and anchored across from Downtown Beaufort. In the evening we went ashore to check out the town and their "First Friday" event. This is when the shops are open late, music is broadcast in the streets and the merchants are offering complimentary drinks (my favorite) while we perusing their stores. The next morning we went ashore to be tourists. I love a good museum and found that the Beaufort History Museum was outstanding. The volunteers provide an outstanding tour and history lesson. From there we walked over to the St Helena church and cemetery checking out graves dating back to the Revolutionary War.
Sunday morning we pulled anchor to move to another more protected anchorage. The forecasts were predicting that the low pressure system off of the Bahamas would form into a Tropical Storm and was heading to the east coast. Monday we went ashore to check out the new area and hit the grocery store again.
Now it is Tuesday and we are monitoring the weather forecasts since Tropical Storm Nicole is causing hurricane warning in Florida and is expected to track up the east coast after making landfall in Florida. We are thankful we did not make it to St Augustine. For now we are safely tucked away in Factory Creek with the anchor well set and what I think is the proper amount of chain played out. We just have to wait and see what happens.
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