After three nights in Wrightsville Beach, NC, our New England roots were pestering us to put the pedal to the metal! At first light, Karen and I motored out the nearby Masonboro Inlet, one of the few inlets to the sea in this area that is easily navigated by sailboats. We decided to go ‘outside’ again to avoid several shallow areas in the ICW and to try to put some more miles behind us. Camp LeJeune, the infamous US Marine Corps base in North Carolina, was also right squarely along the path of the ICW, and the guidebook warned us that a military vessel blocks the ICW when they are firing across it. Yikes! No Thanks!
Our goal was Beaufort, NC, about 70 miles north. The morning started out glassy calm on the ocean and with the kids both still asleep below, Karen and I had a rare occasion to have adult time together. I suppose at this stage in the trip, we could all use a little more time with the same age group!
Our passage to Beaufort turned into a pleasant sail with the help of a light onshore breeze. We were only making 5 knots of speed, but what a relief it was to be sailing and not hear the motor running all day… and not have to keep a constant vigil on the depthsounder! About half way there, we spotted a speck on the horizon – perhaps a fishing boat – it was hard to tell. It had two towers. Perhaps a dredging rig, but why so far off the coast? As we got closer, the speck began to get wider and wider. We saw little bee-like objects coming and going from the ‘hive’. With the binoculars, it became apparent this was an aircraft carrier and the little ‘bees’ were helicopters, making training runs between the ship and Camp LeJeune. I tried to reach the ship on the VHF radio, but they didn’t respond to my calls. I was trying to determine how much clearance we were supposed to give them. Since 9/11, these ships and many large commercial vessels at anchor maintain a security zone around them, sometimes guarded by a patrol boat seen hovering around the area keeping a very watchful eye on you as you pass. Several pleasure boats around us replied to my radio calls with the same interest, but I still couldn’t hail this massive ship, with probably several thousand crewmembers aboard, all with their specific duty, assigned with military precision, but no one was assigned to simply keep watch on the VHF radio! If no one was minding the VHF, I figured it couldn’t be that important what they were doing, so we passed about 1/2 mile off their bow.
Later in the day, we heard them call on the VHF, referring to themselves as “Warship 3”, warning vessels in the area that they were starting a ‘live fire exercise’. These Camp LeJeune folks can’t keep their finger off the trigger!
With eagerness, we approached the Beaufort Inlet, with the helpful push of a few knots of flooding current. Many shoals abound in these waters, and on one of them lies what is believed to be the famous pirate Blackbeard’s ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge.
Speaking of pirates, are kids in your area crazy about the whole ‘pirate thing’? I’m amazed how much the pirate theme has taken over! It has been the topic of conversation and in tour books and history museums from the Caribbean, through the Bahamas, and all throughout the coast from Savannah to here! And not just kids – many grownups (like us!) are flying pirate flags. Whole stores in these coastal towns are dedicated to pirate paraphernalia, bookstores have significant sections dedicated to their life and lore, and museums seem like they are vying for who has the most pirate artifacts. One of the ‘reenactors’ at the pirate encampment in Southport, who does these things as a weekend hobby, told us that his group used to portray Revolutionary and Civil War events, but now everyone wants to see pirate events – and they don’t particularly care if they are historically accurate or not! Those of aboard Thalia like our pirate movies and flags, but I felt a little like part of the herd rushing around trying to find the last Cabbage Patch doll!
We safely arrived in Beaufort harbor and laid our anchor to rest in the murky, root beer colored waters of this charming seaside town. This was only after we had been given ‘advice’ from several neighboring boats on how to anchor. The harbor in Beaufort is squeezed along the side of Taylor Creek, at the town’s waterfront. In some spots, you can fit 2 or 3 boats clustered together just off the channel in the creek, and in other areas there’s only room for one boat along the side. We tried first to shoehorn our way in just off the channel, trying to compromise between being out of the channel and far enough away from the cluster of smaller sailboats anchored in the shallower water closer to the creek’s bank. Well, the natives were not too friendly here! Our habit, when arriving at a new harbor to anchor, is to swing the boat through a circle that approximates the swing it will go through around the anchor if the wind were to shift directions. We check for sufficient depth during these sweeps, and once satisfied, we drop the anchor in the middle of the circle. I have found that the circling makes others nearby a bit nervous, like we can’t make up our mind what to do, but the technique has worked well for us. With a bit of diligence, it looked doable to try this spot, so, with Karen on the windlass control, we began dropping the anchor. For those already anchored, it is a common event to watch the newly arrived try to anchor, and perhaps get a glimpse of someone else’s goof-up, or husband-wife quarrel, or on rare occasion, a boat banging extravaganza! Some are obvious about how they stare; others are more subtle veteran, milling around their cockpit or behind the portholes of their cabin, but watching you nevertheless! So it was as we began anchoring. But, hold on, what was this? Someone was saying – shouting actually – something? But where? Oh, there he is, several hundred feet and several boats away. But is he shouting at us? Yes, I guess he really is? OK, what’s he saying? Oh, something about how “You can’t anchor there – you’ll be in the channel!” It was a bit irritating, as we were inside the outer most boat to the channel, and why did he have to be yelling across the decks of several other boats to tell us this anyway? Ofcourse, with the slightest hint of yelling, everyone else stops what they are doing and watches and waits for more entertainment. Then another boat right next to us tells us they are on a mooring (an obvious fact) and advises us to “not let out too much scope”. OK, that’s it, Karen and I agree. The self-appointed anchorage police win – we are out of here! A friend on ‘Renaissance’ that arrived just after us called on the radio to tell us there was plenty of room and deep water further up the creek. Fabulous! We’ll leave these cranky boaters in our diesel fumes! Indeed, we found an idyllic anchorage along a quiet section of Taylor Creek, with beautiful marshes, placid waters and wild horses rooming on the adjacent, uninhabited Bird Shoal. Peace at last!
Top on the agenda for Beaufort was to find a respectable restaurant for breakfast. As an incentive to get the school year completed (and to free ourselves of being teachers!), about a month ago I had posted a countdown to the last 30 of the 160 lessons for the year. We had just completed lesson 155 and the posted reward was a special breakfast ashore. After a bevy of syrup related specialties, and a buttery bowl of grits that I could have easily done without, we all walked the town and checked out their excellent maritime museum. In the evening, we visited the local public library. What a benefit it is to travelers like us to find these small-town libraries. They almost always have free, easy-to-use internet connections, and this one also had a good children’s book section and plenty of tables to work at. We had taken advantage of these public libraries from Nova Scotia on south along the Atlantic coast (but unfortunately they were few to be found in the Caribbean). On this night, the quiet library was the perfect setting for me to finish updating the resume and start researching companies – yes, it is that time to start the job search! With just over a month before we are back home, it is time to figure out what the next chapter in my career will be!
But, all of our time in Beaufort wasn’t work. On one of the three days we were there, we took the dinghy and our kayaks around the other side of Bird Shoal and spent an afternoon relaxing and playing at an isolated stretch of beach.
Beaufort is the perfect place to spend several days or a week exploring the numerous inshore waters that are protected from the wind and waves by the outer Shackleford Bank. There were several outfits that rented houseboats, which looked like a great vacation. In addition to the wild horses, we frequently saw porpoises surfacing around our boat and just ashore from our anchorage, Zack and I had a great time investigating tiny crabs, called Fiddler Crabs, at low tide, as great masses of them scattered from our foot steps, like the armies of Troy.
With just 5 lessons to go, both teachers and students were in a mad frenzy to finish the year. No longer did we follow the orderly curriculum list for each day. The kids were racing to finish and one day we might do all of the remaining math for the year and finish the test, then the reading, and so on. It was great to see the momentum! And then, suddenly, on the day we left Beaufort, the kids were all done with the year. What a relief! We had been teaching since mid-August in Nova Scotia, sometimes 4 days a week, occasionally 5 days a week, and always taking the full morning on these days. While this is less time than a traditional classroom setting, when you are anchored in paradise, or sailing in big winds, or trying to fix broken refrigeration systems, there are many things begging for your time rather then school books! We had heard several tales of other parents, on sailing adventures such as ours, that had given up or skipped over significant chunks of curriculum, as the tropical beaches beckoned. But, we stayed the course, and hopefully our kids will someday appreciate it!
The reward for completing school was dinner ashore, and the next town of any significance was Oriental. Before we got there, though, we needed to fill up with diesel and water. We chose the Morehead City Yacht Basin because they were along the way and had promised me they had 8′ of depth alongside their docks, especially important as we were at low tide. The approach up a skinny canal past a sulfur plant and a fish factory rated low on the smell index as well, but we had no problem staying in the deep water. The marina staff, appearing to be eager to help on this quiet Friday morning, directed us to the fuel dock. With fenders down and Karen and the kids ready to toss docklines to the staff, I slowly eased us closer to the dock. The bow line was secured without issue and I slowly put the engine in reverse to bring the stern closer, but we didn’t move! The depth sounder, reading its default ‘1999’, told the tale, and there we sat, cockeyed to the dock and stuck in the mud! We threw them the stern line for good measure and fortunately, we were close enough at the bow for them to pass us the fuel line and the water hose. We did our business and backed out to deeper water and carried on our way, losing a few style points to anyone in the ‘yachting’ camp who might have been watching. But, alas, this sticky mud bottom was ultra low stress compared to the razor sharp coral heads of the tropics!
As we rejoined the ICW and started through the cut, a tug pushing two barges of molten sulfur from one of the plants at Morehead City moved in front of us. We became very used to staring at the stern end of the tug, named Beaufort Belle, as the captain masterfully navigating the turns of the ICW while 1-2 foot shoals loomed just outside the channel markers. With the weight and momentum of two barges, I was very impressed how these captains managed their way through the ICW; it made our job aboard Thalia pale in comparison. I noticed from the markings on his hull that he drew about 7 feet, which was convenient for us as we stayed behind him, although the wash from his propellers stirred up the silt so much that our depth transducer could not develop a reading. These tug captains, standing up in their glass enclosed towers, appear to the pleasure boater below as god-like creatures looking down on the masses below. We were monitoring VHF channel 13, the ‘bridge-to-bridge’ frequency that the commercial boats use, and I could see as well as hear the captain as he talked to another tug that was southbound ahead of us in the cut. The southbound tug, John Parrish, was captained by an unusual female voice and she spoke in a calm, controlled, southern accent back to the Beaufort Belle. The Beaufort Belle had just issued a Security call, an advisory statement on the VHF telling other boats in the area that he was beginning to enter the narrow cut. The captain on John Parrish, in a cool, gentile manner, responded that she was southbound and she would be pleased to ‘cool it down a little’ to let him pass. She also added, in passing, that she was bound for a nuclear plant south of here and, oh by the way, she had a hard time seeing around the cargo stacked on her barge. Wow, this should be exciting! Sure enough, as the John Parrish approached, the two captains exchanged more pleasantries, and passed within a few yards of each other. And, indeed, there was no way for the lady captain to see anything directly forward of her – I was very surprised this was legal, or that she would accept such an assignment! If you look closely at the picture, you’ll see the stern of the Beaufort Bell passing to the right, and the oncoming John Parrish to the left, with only its masthead sticking up above the cargo.
After the pass, the John Parrish captain concluded, in the cool and calm fashion reminiscent of a lady of distinction on a southern plantation, saying “I think I can now have my cocktail!”
On the other hand, the lady at the helm of Thalia, hailing from New York, had no time for these Southern cordialities! She was tired of seeing the stern end of Beaufort Belle, and after confirming with the captain, she pulled us out into the passing lane and put the throttle down, except that this is not like a corvette on I95! When you pass a tug going 6 1/2 knots and you’re single diesel is smoking to make 7 knots, it is like a slow motion movie. After what seemed like an eternity, we cleared the bow of the forward-most barge and Karen moved back over. With a New York wife, you’ll surely waste no time seeing the world!
Clear of the cut and sailing into the Neuse River, we weren’t sure if there was room to anchor in Oriental, so we headed across the river to a protected spot called South River. It was just in time, too, as the Coast Guard was relaying a ‘special weather statement’ about high winds, thunderstorms and lightning upwind of our position. We ended up trying for awhile to outrun it on our way to South River. Compare these two shots, first the foreboding view astern…
… and the relative calm of the view forward.
Lucky, we were only hit by a brief blast of cold air. The lightning and much of the rain had dissipated by the time it reached us. However, our excitement was not over. As Karen drove us into the S shaped entranced to South River, we became accustomed to the 3-4 feet of water under our keel. The actual depths agreed fairly closely with the charted depths and we continued to head for an indentation in the shore for some protection from the wind. Suddenly, to our shock, the boat went from 6 knots to 0 and the bow dipped ominously down with the momentum. Oh man, we had run aground… again! And hard! There should have been 3 feet under the keel, but we had evidently found an uncharted shoal. Karen revved it in reverse and to our pleasant surprise, despite hitting the shoal at nearly full throttle, Thalia slowly backed off and began reading depths again. Phew! Our nerves were seriously rattled now. We quickly tried the opposite shore, dropped the anchor with 1 1/2 feet under the keel, and were pleased to find a half hour later that the water was glassy calm and the dark monsters in the sky had swung around us.
After a second review of the charts and the cruising guide, we decided to give Oriental another try – it was just a short 8 miles across the Neuse River again, and we raced along close-hauled for a short, brisk sail. How smooth and fast Thalia would sail, even under a light breeze, when the water was flat! We found sufficient depths to anchor in the harbor at Oriental, and securing ourselves with a stern anchor, we dinghied ashore to discover this acclaimed stop along the ICW. Oriental was nicknamed ‘the sailing capital of North Carolina’, a title we couldn’t find reason to challenge, with its 3000 boats despite a population of only 900. Within a half hour, we were twice the recipient of Southern hospitality. First, the proprietor at Inland Waterway Provision Company – a menagerie of marine supplies, gifts and clothing, with shelves crammed so full and aisles so skinny, you had to back out if some one was coming the other way – repeatedly offered for us to borrow their loaner bikes. We said we might be able to use them tomorrow, but as he walked us out, he again offered for us to use them anytime we liked. Then, after inquiring at the local coffee brewery, The Bean, we found they offered free wi-fi access, but when I asked if they had a printer so that I could print out Zack’s final geography report, they seemed particularly sorry they did not have one. But, I should simply ask anyone around town and they’d be happy to print it out at their home for us, they insisted! Could this be the ideal spot in suburban America where everyone cares for everyone else?! I should know, as 21 years ago, I had come to Oriental to be on the receiving end of their hospitality, at a time when I really needed it. Just out of college, a fraternity friend and I had just bought an old 32 foot sailboat named ‘Two if by Sea’ in Oriental, and when my friend backed out of our planned voyage to the South Pacific, I was left with a boat to fix up and sail to the Chesapeake Bay to start a new job. I was scared and alone in a land unfamiliar to a southern Californian, but many an outstretched hand came to my aid at the marina and when my Dad arrived to help me sail to Annapolis, the sudden turn of events proved more fulfilling than I could have wished for. How it seems that with an anxious opening of a new chapter in life, the plot soon thickens and draws you further in.
My Dad and I had many adventures on that first extended cruise, but the one memory that has lasted the longest is a simple pair of topsiders. Found abandoned but in good shape at the dockside in Oriental, they fit my Dad perfectly, and up until his last visit with us in Puerto Rico this spring, my Dad has never failed to bring them along each time he visits! Also quite memorable, my Dad and I co-founded our ‘Buck Island Stew’ while anchored near Buck Island on the ICW just north of here. We hope to stop there once again on this journey. My Dad, after hearing we had arrived in Oriental, told me “well, you have completed the circle now!”
For our first night in Oriental, we found a waterside restaurant at the Oriental Marina to celebrate our new graduates and our official retirement as school teachers! Does it seem like we are happy?! It had been a very long haul…
With no school to stress over, our whole routine onboard changed. We could use the mornings to explore ashore or paddle a kayak or read together as a family — or just relax, which is what we did on Sunday. In the afternoon, our solitude was interrupted by a group of about 5 boats, all open cockpit skiffs of varying design and seaworthiness, dragging nets in a circular fashion off our bow. As best we could determine, they were fishing for shrimp, and this was most certainly a family affair.
Most often it was the man of the household or a grandfatherly figure at the helm, with a wife and kids milling about the deck, some breaking into takeout food for an early dinner. A few of them left by nightfall, but at midnight when I turned in, I could still here one of them, droning on in the night, with the high revving sound like a lawnmower, making continual passes in our front yard!
On Monday morning we walked and scootered over to the post office to mail the final tests for Calvert School and in so doing started to contemplate a summer without school work. Yee haw!
Our next destination was a town named Belhaven, well known in these parts for their festive Fourth of July celebration. To get there, we took two days of short sails on the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers, stopping for the night on a brief cut on the ICW between the two rivers. There was no room to anchor in the cut and the only option for tying up was along the shrimp docks of the RE Mayo and Company facility. As the lone pleasure boat amongst shrimpers, and a Luftwaffe of mosquitoes out after dusk, the evening came to an abrupt end. If you ever cruise the ICW, be sure to have some good, fine-mesh bug screens for all of your hatches. A night without them is a night without sleep!
In the morning, I settled up with the office – the best deal in nightly slip rentals anywhere – a mere 40 cents per foot, or $18.80 total. Take that, you stuffy New England marina owners!
We hope you all are enjoying fine weather and special memories with family and loved ones this summer! Thanks for sharing in our adventure!