End of Day 2 - Beaufort NC towards Antigua

These Blog entries are edited versions of the messages we sent back as we completed the passage. They were sent by radio using a laptop that controls a modem and the HF/SSB radio, using the SailMail system. We sent the messages daily to Charlotte and she then forwarded them on to a list of family members.

2359hrs (EST, 5hrs behind GMT) 30 Nov 2018

Dear All,

It was a slow night for us.  We kept sailing throughout but were only making 3.5-4.5 knots so our middy to midday run was just 123 nautical miles.

We are in clear blue water again which is nice after the muddier coloured waters of the ICW and the Chesapeake Bay; add in an almost clear blue sky and I guess that you can put us in pretty idyllic offshore sailing conditions, especially because after lunch the wind built to 10-12 knots which helped us to scoot along at a much healthier 6-6.5 knots.  It's still variable though so we go through short periods of sailing at up to 7 knots with the sea bubbling past us followed by lulls where the wind vane steering goes all over the place.  Georgina, our wind steering system, really needs a steady wind from a consistent direction so she's needing quite a bit of tweaking to get her to hold a steady course.

With the water clean again, we ran up our watermaker this morning to check that was all functional, which it is.  We have more than enough water in the tanks for our expected 10 day passage, plus we have filled 4 jerry cans with fresh water as a contingency in case a tank splits.  However, by running the watermaker for an hour every day we'll keep the tanks fully topped up and be able to use as much as we wish for washing up and showers.

Keeping the log up to date and requesting a weather forecast on the notebook which also
controls the HF/SSB radio

We have a slight problem with our GPS plotter system.  I’m not sure why but the 2 displays seems to be stuck on 16 April 2099 as today's date. Unless BV has suddenly turned into a time machine, there's definitely something wrong there which we'll probably have to try to fix at our destination.  The position and other information is all good but the wrong date would be a pain if we had to put out an automated distress call because the radio uses the GPS date and time signal. But then cruising is supposed to be fixing your boat in exotic locations so it's all part of the dream.

We are settling into the watch rota but it usually takes about 3 days to fully adjust to the broken sleep pattern. That's partly why we left when we did, avoiding the gale force winds offshore, so that we'd have an easier first few days before the next period of strong winds which look like they will hit us on Sunday, though we're busy making easting to try to get as far away from them as possible.  As we implied in yesterday's missive, it's a lot warmer now.  The sea temperature is up to 23.9 deg C and the air temperature in the cabin at 2000 local time is around 22 deg C.  Clearly, it's cooler on deck in the wind but it's a lot more comfortable than it was close to the US coast with all that cold continental air. We'd rather it didn't blow too hard but, if it must, it'll be a lot more pleasant out here where it's reasonably warm rather than the other side of the Gulf Stream where it's nearly freezing.

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 30 Nov: N33 22 W74 33
Position at midnight 30 Nov: N32 40 W73 20
Midday to midday distance: 123 nautical miles
Midnight to midnight distance: 136 nautical miles
Total miles covered:  221 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go (direct line): 1120 nautical miles

End of Day 2 Beaufort in North Carolina to Antigua

End of Day 1 - Beaufort NC towards Antigua

These Blog entries are edited versions of the messages we sent back as we completed the passage. They were sent by radio using a laptop that controls a modem and the HF/SSB radio, using the SailMail system. We sent the messages daily to Charlotte and she then forwarded them on to a list of family members.

BV on her mooring/dock at Homer Smith’s Marina Beaufort NC

2359hrs (EST, 5hrs behind GMT) 29 Nov 2018

Dear All,

Cold enough not to melt the ice

So, we are finally off and running on our 1400-1500nm passage towards the Caribbean (direct route is 1320nm). The photographs for our departure show clear blue skies and you would be forgiven for thinking that it was delightfully warm in Beaufort.  The truth was exactly the opposite.  The heater was running from the moment that we got up until we departed and we were wrapped up against the cold wind for most of the day.  When we topped up the water tanks, the spilled water on the pontoon froze almost immediately making a small ice-rink and the bucket of ice that we had in the cockpit to rapidly chill the wine/beer for our pre-departure OCC gathering the previous evening had not melted at all.

The OCC gathering we had on board BV last night was great fun.  What started in concept as a beer and shrimps/prawns sundowners for us, Enjoyand Coolchangeturned into a full-blown dinner for 9 people.  Ruby Tuesdayarrived on the fuel pontoon and, as they are also OCC members, we couldn't exclude them and so we added Elsie and Laurie, plus we wanted to say goodbye to Dianne Tetreault, the fabulous OCC Port Officer in Beaufort. All 4 yachts were moving on today and so it became a bit of a last supper together.  Our small order of shrimps from the seafood part of the marina operation turned into a 5lbs buy which we cooked in 3 ways:  steamed, grilled with bay spices and fried in very light batter. Nina (Enjoy) and Cate (Coolchange) bought a pasta salad and a savoury rice respectively whilst Dianne turned up with a lovely spiced Texan cheese dip and a chocolate wine for desert. It was great fun and a lovely way to end our time in the USA.

(Top) Approaching the old lifting road bridge now being demolished,
which has been replaced by the high wide-span bridge pictured
 the background of the lower photo

Our 0915 departure was timed so that we had enough water get out of our berth without risking running aground, plus enough time for a last minute dash to the shops to get some mayonnaise. We'd run out last night making up aioli to go with the shrimps/prawns and discovered that we didn't have a spare jar in our store.  Just as well that we spotted that victualling oversight before we untied and set off! Surprisingly we didn't start sailing straight away.  The forecast had us believe that we would but, in the end, we’ve had to motor-sail nearly all of the way so far.  We are hoping for the forecast 15 knot wind to arrive soon so that we can conserve fuel by continuing under sail power alone.

Beaufort’s Town Quay area on Taylor Creek.  (Top left) this is one of the oldest houses in Beaufort (dated 1780ish) and is one of the transits (‘the white house’) for entering Beaufort Inlet as shown on old charts of the time

Beaufort slipping away behind us as we make our way through the channel and out to sea

We are heading ~145 degrees which is not directly towards our destination.  Our strategy is to make as much distance as we can on this heading for the next few days so that we can (hopefully) be on the outskirts of strong winds that the next winter low pressure area brings.  These low pressure systems run up the eastern coast of the USA and then on towards Europe and they usually have really strong winds associated with them. In the gap between systems we are hoping to get far enough south and east to miss the worst of the winds associated with the next depression.  When we start to 'feel' the depression, the winds will likely turn more southerly in the area we will be, so we will ride it east and then, as it passes, we should be able to start to head south towards the top of the Lesser Antilles chain. That might be made a little more tricky than we would like because as the low pressure systems passes us the wind will change markedly and we may even end up with a ridge of high pressure (no wind) or headwinds.

We're rather expecting this to be a passage with several periods of not as much wind as we would like, followed by periods of too much wind, possibly from the wrong direction.  So, it will be very interesting for us to see how our strategy works out and how much further we end up sailing to get to Antigua.

Dolphins in the Beaufort Harbour entrance channel

We have seen lots of dolphins both in the Beaufort entrance and now further out to sea, plus the other excitement for the day was at 1600hrs when we got into the Gulf Stream.  Nicky said that suddenly she could see the current in the way the sea was moving, much like looking at the way a river moves; there was a really obvious delineation between the Gulf Stream and 'not the Gulf Stream'. Over the next few hours the sea temperature jumped up from 15 to 25 degrees Celsius so whilst it's not shorts and T shirts weather yet, we'll probably be losing several thermal layers when the sun gets up.

Aside from all of that, the priority for us now is to settle into the watch routine and try to get BV making good progress under sails alone.

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky 

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 29 Nov: N34 27 W76 33
Position at midnight 29 Jul: N33 55 W75 22
0915hrs to midday distance: 17 nautical miles
0915hrs to midnight distance: 85 nautical miles
Total miles covered:  85 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go (direct line): 1241 nautical miles

End of Day 1 Beaufort in North Carolina to Antigua

Beaufort NC USA

Beaufort’s a great staging post for yachts headed to and from the US and up and down the eastern seaboard.  It’s on the ICW, south of Cape Hatteras and the Gulf Stream runs only 30nm offshore, which means that if you leave the port bound offshore, you can cross the Stream easily within a few hours, taking advantage of a suitable weather window to do so.  Consequently, having been met by the wonderful Beaufort OCC Port Officer, Diane Tetreault (she helped us by arranging our place at the marina, the last space available as it turned out; had been kind enough to let us use her address to have some important documents sent out from the UK; took Nicky on a quick run to the shops; and arranged dinner for all the OCC yachts in town), we found that a lot of our friends were also in Beaufort.  Our stop here turned into a very social one as well as a hard-working one.

Left: Coolchange was on the next dock.  Right: Sofia was directly in front of us

Cate and Murray on Coolchange were on the next dock back and Jonathan and Anne on Sofia were directly in front of us. Another OCC yacht, Enjoy, was moored in front of Coolchange and we had received word that Dave and Helen on Grace of Longstone were headed this way. Unfortunately Dave and Helen didn’t reach Beaufort before we left, which was a great shame but hopefully we will meet up further south over the winter. That first night we, along with Sofia, gate-crashed the unsuspecting Coolchange and had a lovely couple of hours catching up with past events and future plans.

I lost my small camera so this photo has been provided by Diane.  Clockwise from bottom left: Cate Basingthwaite (Coolchange), Nicky, me, Nina Preuss (Enjoy), Dianne Tetreault (OCC PO Beaufort), Sue Chambers (Sundowner), Howard Chambers (Sundowner), Don Preuss (Enjoy), Jonathon Lloyd (Sofia), Murray Basingthwaite (Coolchange)

The social gathering continued the following night.  Dianne had mobilised all the OCC crews in Beaufort and also Sue and Howard on Sundowner, who had stopped in nearby Morehead City. So, over some excellent burgers we had plenty of time for a further catch up with friends of ‘old’, as well as getting to know the Sundowners and Nina and Don on Enjoy (and arrange a shopping expedition with the latter for the Tuesday).

Chaos.  Servicing the generator and digging out the sewing machine mean that the contents of the machinery space and the oilskin locker end up scattered around the cabin

Empty machinery space, yes there
really is space in there sometimes!

It couldn’t be all party, party, party though.  When we had arrived we had thought that we would be in Beaufort for a week, as there seemed to be a decent weather window for a passage to Antigua beginning on Sunday 2 December.  So we spent pretty much all of Monday refuelling BV.  There is a fuel dock at Homer Smith’s but it was blocked with other vessels and, in any case, we really needed to use the fuel that we had in our deck jerry cans (we’d bought that fuel in Culebra just before we left the Caribbean for mainland USA).  So, the refuel took a very long time (a total of 11 jerry cans’ worth of fuel into the main tanks) but it was worth it to fill up and to refresh our fuel supplies.

By late Monday we had decided that, actually, Thursday looked like the best day to head off, which meant that we needed to get the rest of the work done fast!  Nicky spent most of the next day on a number of shopping expeditions, one of them with Don and Nina, whilst I serviced the generator and carried out several other maintenance tasks.  The generator is tucked away right at the aft end of the machinery space so I had to empty everything out of that large locker to get sufficient access to do the job easily (well, as easily as is possible, given that you need to be bent double in the space!).  I also fitted new filters to the watermaker, which had been sterilised and shut down since just before we had arrived in the Chesapeake Bay back in September.  We didn’t want to run the watermaker on the water from Beaufort’s Town Creek (too silty) so we would need to test it all worked properly when BV was clear of Beaufort and out in the open ocean.

The sun does shine in Beaufort but we didn’t get to appreciate it properly with all the jobs we had to do

It rained hard for the first few days of our stay in Beaufort and it was also pretty chilly so we put up our cockpit tent to provide us with extra dry, covered space to live in, given that the cabin was in an almost permanent state of chaos.  After all the work and with the chaos reigning below, it was lovely to spend Tuesday evening on Enjoy with Nina and Don and the Coolchangers, indulging in the luxury of space aboard a catamaran.  Lots more fun with lovely people and, of course, more discussion about the weather!

The new bridge between Moorhead City and Beaufort

On her trip into Morehead City with Nina and Don, Nicky had scoped out the location of the local Customs and Border Protection office, so first thing on the Wednesday morning we headed out to pay CBP a visit.  As far as the American officials are concerned there’s no requirement to clear out of the USA but most Caribbean countries need to see clearance paperwork from your last port when you arrive, so we wanted CBP to issue us a Form 1300. Paperwork in hand, and $19 lighter of pocket, we took the marina courtesy car on one final ‘last-minute and forgotten items’ food shop, before heading back to the marina. Unfortunately, at some stage in that running around I lost my small camera with all the pictures from the previous few evenings.

And the chaos continues….. we’ve bought food (and wine) so they need to go somewhere – more unpacking and then re-packing

Back on board after our shopping trip everything needed to be stowed and, at the same time, the servicing chaos was replaced with sewing chores.  With everything out of the aft stowage area to make access for servicing the generator we had the sewing machine out, so it made sense to tackle some of the sewing repair tasks before everything was stowed again ready for the passage.  We got some of the sewing repairs done but there are still several to go; perhaps a job for a beautiful Caribbean anchorage.

With the cabin back to some sort of semblance of normal order, we set about cooking for the passage.  The winter temperatures prompted us to cook lots of warming soup, some bolognaise sauce and a chilli.  We reasoned those would cover us for the first few days of meals, getting us through the worst of the cold whilst giving us time to settle into our watch system before we needed to look at cooking meals from scratch.

Fishing boats in for unloading at Homer Smith’s 

Not ones to make life easy for ourselves, and having enjoyed so much hospitality over the previous few days, we had invited everyone onto BV for a leaving party on the Wednesday evening.  The marina owner, Tony, also runs a seafood warehouse and there are fishing and shrimping boats in most days offloading their catch. So we bought 5lbs of fresh shrimp for the bash which had morphed from a casual(ish) beers and prawns to more of a pot-luck supper.

The main part of Beaufort is a lovely old town with lots of character

Shrimp bought and chores complete, we took the opportunity to have a look around Beaufort.  Dianne’s very much involved with the local maritime museum and had recommended we visit it but we didn’t have time – one for next time(!) but we did enjoy our wander around the town.

Ann Street.  Most of the oldest houses in Beaufort are located on Ann Street – and some of the houses are very old

Homer Smith’s Marina is only a short walk from Beaufort town centre and the nicest way to walk there is along Ann Street on which are many of the oldest houses in the town.

Left: Episcopalian church.  Right: Beaufort courthouse

Front Street – right on Taylor Creek and with pontoon berths in the centre of town.  But be wary about taking a berth here – charges can run as high as $6.50 per foot!!

Looking out to the anchorage in Taylor’s Creek and across to the islands where wild horses roam

The town’s main street is Front Street and it’s right on Taylor’s Creek, which is where the main anchorage is located. However, the tide runs through the creek quite fast, which can cause problems as anchored vessels swing on the tide, so some visitors anchor in Town Creek, close to the new bridge, though space here is quite limited.

Typical American small town street

Fishtowne Brewery and bar – atypical American small town business.  Great beer!!

On our walk we passed the Fishtowne Brewery and bar, which Cate and Murray (great beer drinkers) had talked about enthusiastically.  We stopped in for a look-see but didn’t have time to stop for a pint.

We didn’t have time to stay to have a pint so we sampled a couple of beers and took a couple of canned take-aways, back to BV

However, the lady working the bar said that we could sample a few of their beers and then she’d pour and can those we wanted in 2 pint crowlers.  We couldn’t resist the Peanut Butter Brown but they didn’t have enough left on tap for a full 2 pints, so we took what they had of that as well as a crowler of Sweet Potato Ale and one of Flounder Eye-PA.

LtoR: Nicky, Cate and Murray Basingthwaite (Coolchange) and Elsie and Lionel (Ruby Tuesday).  Photo from Dianne’s Facebook feed

The beers went down really well with Cate and Murray at that evening’s OCC gathering.  It was a pretty full house on board with 9 of us around the table – Coolchange, Enjoy, BV and Dianne as well as Lionel and Elsie on Ruby Tuesday, who had arrived in Beaufort the previous evening.

Dianne’s fabulous Hot Texan cheese dip and one of the shrimp dishes.   Photo from Dianne’s Facebook feed

I cooked shrimps almost until they came out of everyone’s ears and in between shrimp ‘courses’ we ate paella from Cate, macaroni salad from Nina and a fabulous Texan cheese dip from Dianne (note to self, must get the recipe).

LtoR: Don and Nina Preuss (Enjoy) and me.   Photo from Dianne’s Facebook feed

Left: Cooking the butterflied shrimps in Dianne’s recommended light batter (Photo from Dianne’s Facebook feed). Right: the dead bottle of chocolate wine that Dianne brought for dessert

Dianne also provided the inspiration for a light batter on the fried butterflied shrimps and, when we all felt we could eat no more, provided a chocolate wine as a dessert.  It was a revelation.  It’s not something we would ever have bought to try but it was extremely tasty and far better as a dessert after a big meal than a solid chocolatey dish.

The party broke up at a relatively early hour as all the crews had plans to leave the next morning:  Coolchange to head south down the ICW, Enjoy for a 24-36hr coastal ‘hop’ down to Charleston and Ruby Tuesday for a 4-5 day offshore passage to Bermuda.  Like us, Elsie and Lionel were planning on heading to Antigua for Christmas but had decided to route via Bermuda rather than more directly like us.  But with all the crews expecting to be in the Bahamas over the winter season, it is possible that we might all meet up again for a catch-up on each other’s exploits since the fun in Beaufort.

Beaufort, North Carolina, USA

A quick update from Beaufort NC USA

There are clearly a lot of blog entries missing for November.  We are working on them and they will appear soon but, as you will see below, our priority is to take advantage of a potential good weather window to head towards the Caribbean before winter really sets in.

Not much sight seeing has been done in Beaufort, which is a shame because there is a good seafaring museum along with a lot of period houses and nice shops.  Instead we have been working hard to get BV ready for our next big offshore passage, whilst also watching the weather patterns very carefully.  It looks like we should be able to leave tomorrow, 29 November, and be able to make reasonable progress before the next winter storm system sweeps up the east coast of the USA and then on towards Europe. It’s going to be an interesting 1200-1400 mile passage.  Aside from trying to get far enough south east fast enough to keep clear of the worst of the storms, it’s also going to be very cold for the first part of the passage. We hope it will be significantly warmer when we have crossed the Gulf stream but, just in case, as well as servicing bits and pieces and filling up BV with water, food and fuel, we have also cooked up lots of warming soup and the first few days of evening meals.  Those should get us through the worst of the cold and give us time to settle into our watch system before we have to look at cooking meals from scratch.  We’ll see how the plan works out.  We are hoping that the next proper Blog entry will be us arriving in the northern Caribbean in 10-12 days time.

Beaufort, North Carolina, USA

Intracoastal Waterway Day 4

Leaving Slade Creek

In the morning (Sunday 25 November) everything had changed completely.  Overnight the wind had blown at 20-25 knots but when we woke it had dropped considerably and had veered all the way round to the northwest.  Slade Creek had sheltered us well but we now had a few more miles than we had hoped for to make Beaufort before the end of the day.

A more sensibly sized barge!

Passing traffic

So, we got going at 0630 and motored south making light work of the passage down the Pungo River, across Pamlico Sound and into the Goose River – a major improvement on the previous day! In the Goose River we met a barge coming the opposite way – also a major improvement on the previous day’s barge, this one being a much more reasonable size in a much wider stretch of water.

There was relatively little canal work today

Compared to our previous days on the ICW, on this final day’s run to Beaufort we spent relatively little time in canals with thick undergrowth and trees close up to the boat.

The open water of the Neuse River. It’s relatively shallow at about 6m deep, but that’s deep enough not to concern us too greatly. Sadly there wasn't enough wind to sail

Instead, most of the route followed dredged channels in quite wide rivers and sounds.  In fact, for a surprisingly large portion of the route across and along the Neuse River in the middle of the day, the course of the ICW was marked by posts/buoys but it wasn’t even a dredged route and we cut the corners as we motorsailed, trying to make enough speed to get to the marina at Beaufort before the staff went home for the day.

Wacky races at the entrance to Courts Creek!

We weren’t the only ones who could sense the closeness of the open ocean at Beaufort.  Along the expanse of the Neuse River all the boats spread out a bit; some left the loose convoy to go to Oriental, some joined in from there, but suddenly there was a great coming together again where the route entered Courts Creek – the final narrow river/canal stretch before Beaufort.  The few minutes close to the entrance markers were manic with vessels suddenly catching up with each other and motor yachts shooting up from all angles, paying little heed to the ICW rule of passing other vessels at minimum practicable speed so as to minimise wash and disruption.  In fact it was quite interesting how many motor yachts we saw on our ICW Day 4.  We had seen virtually no motor yachts, or commercial traffic on Thursday 22 or Friday 23 November, probably because of the Thanksgiving Day holiday.  There were a few more motorboats (and sailing yachts) on the Saturday and, suddenly, on the Sunday, we were inundated with other vessels!

Part of the final leg up Courts Creek, unaccountably empty of other vessels but probably not for long

The banks of Courts Creek started off very rural and ended quite built up with houses in the northern part of Beaufort.  We got no photos of the passage under the big new road bridge joining Beaufort and Morehead City and then….

In at Slip 30 at Homer Smith’s Marina, Beaufort…..

….suddenly we were negotiating the shallows of Town Creek and making our way gingerly into our allocated ‘slip’ (berth) at Homer Smith’s Marina.  We had made it with 50min to go before the staff left for the evening which pleased us and, better still, despite it being low tide, we just failed to go aground on our way into our berth.  Great news! 

…. and from a slightly different angle!

It turned out that we had been allocated the last available berth in the marina, so when she arrived to welcome us to we gave Dianne Tetreault, the OCC Port Officer for Beaufort, a huge thank you for making the marina booking for us.  Dianne kindly took Nicky up to the nearest supermarket to replenish our milk stocks (we’d drunk lots of tea and coffee, especially on the really cold days on the ICW) and gave her a quick orientation tour of the town.  And then, with an invitation to a meal out the following evening she left us to catch up with the other OCC yachts in residence at the marina and to start doing some longer-range planning for our stay in Beaufort and our departure for warmer climes.

Beaufort, North Carolina, USA

Intracoastal Waterway Day 3

Oil change

Saturday 24 November started with a 0700 alarm call followed by an engine oil change.  How else would you want to start your day?  To speed things up a little, having anchoring the previous day we had got out all of the bits we would need from their various storage areas but, after a long day, we really hadn’t fancied tackling the oil change that evening [Ed: and besides the engine was too hot at that point].  Instead, we accepted that we would depart a bit later and get the oil change done first thing.  Our version of first thing that morning didn't really match that of the other yachts in the anchorage.  When we peered out of the window at 0700 we saw the last of the other 4 yachts we’d spent the night anchored close to heading off down the ICW.  A wise move on their part it turned out but more about that later.

The Alligator River – Pungo River Canal, almost 24 statute miles of ruler-straight motoring.  Just a couple of slight bends and 2 bridges to break up the vista

With the oil change done and everything put away we raised the anchor at 0900 and set off down the Alligator River – Pungo River Canal.  Stretching out 24 miles it has just one bend in the middle, so 2 hours to go before any steering was needed!  We did keep our eyes out for bears in the woods that we were passing but didn’t see any. However, we did see another pair of bald eagles and, with the southerly wind, the day was a whole lot warmer than we had experienced recently so it all made for pleasant motoring in a very straight line.  Looking at the scenery as we passed through, it was quite apparent why the early explorers and the first nation-builders had searched so hard for a route to the west via a river.  The woods through which the Alligator River – Pungo River Canal has been built look absolutely impenetrable, except where there is a watercourse.

The tannin-tinged water of the ICW

The water in this bit of the ICW is fresh or only slightly brackish.  It's great for killing off any sea creatures stuck to the bottom of the hull but it does create a brown ‘moustache’ on the bow of pale coloured yachts or, in our case, on our white waterline stripe.  The reason for this is that the water is coloured by tannic acid from the bark of juniper, gum and cypress trees.  The acid stops the growth of bacteria and in days gone by, before refrigeration, water from the area, and particularly water from the Great Dismal Swamp, was highly prized for use on sailing ships.  Stored in barrels on board it stayed fresh and potable for far longer than normal ‘clean-looking’ water.

The tug Royal Engineer pushing a barge.  Seemingly lots of space to pass?  Not so!

A few miles short of the end of the Alligator River – Pungo River Canal we heard a radio call from the tug boat Royal Engineer.  In a strong southern drawl the skipper notified all in range that he was entering the canal and heading north – our way.  For us, the issue was that he said that he was pushing a barge.  Nearly all of the barges we’d seen so far in the USA have been big, so this was something of a concern for us.  The charts of the canal are strewn with warnings stressing that vessels should stay in the centre of the channel because of the danger from tree stumps and sunken logs at the edges, so passing a large barge was potentially a bit of a challenge for us.  As we were in a slightly wider part of the canal we decided to stop and wait for the tug to come past.  Nicky, called the tug driver on the VHF radio and, in best BBC English, informed the skipper that we would hold our position whilst he passed us. He sounded somewhat surprised when he responded and well he might, as took another 20 minutes before he actually came past us.  In the pictures above it looks like there was loads of space and a motorboat did overtake, probably wondering what all the fuss was about, but then he may not have realised that we have a 2 metre keel underneath us.  Sitting at a third of the way in from the edge of the canal, as the tug got very close and whilst the motor boat was overtaking us, I advised the tug boat captain on the radio that we couldn’t get any closer to the bank. Luckily for us he confirmed that he had enough space to pass.  Just as well really because drifting at 0.1knots we promptly ran aground!  That at least meant that we held our position perfectly whilst the tug passed by and, fortunately, once it had cleared us, a big burst of power and some manoeuvring towards the centre of the canal got us free without the need for assistance.  We had been right to be cautious and wait for the barge.  [Ed: Wow, that’s quite an admission from ‘Captain Impatient’ himself]

The Wilkerson Bridge – 64ft clearance (and a remarkably narrow gap for that tug and barge to get through)

A mile further upstream was what we hoped would be our last stressful moment of the day, the Wilkerson Bridge. All of the bridges on the ICW are supposed to have a minimum vertical clearance of 65ft or to lift or swing to give the necessary height clearance.  A small number have been built with a 64ft vertical clearance – I guess that once they had been built the authorities just accepted the 1ft error.  For us though, with a 62ft mast and antenna sticking up from our yacht, a 65ft vertical clearance sounds a whole lot better than 64ft.  And we can confirm that a 2ft clearance between a bridge and the top of our antenna looks pretty tight when you go underneath!

Heading south down the Pungo River with 22+knots of wind across the deck

Once though the canal we started to head out across the wider expanse of the Pungo River.  Lydia had recommended that we try a restaurant in the town of Belhaven, which we left to starboard as we went down the Pungo River.  But we still had several hours of daylight and Belhaven’s river is pretty exposed to the SSE, which is where the wind was howling from, so we decided to continue with our plan to clear the Pungo River, cross the Pamlico River and head south into Goose Creek where there would be some nice sheltered anchorages.  Fifteen miles to go and just enough daylight to do that we thought, even though we were now motoring with 22 knots of wind across the deck slowing us down.

The offshore winds around Cape Hatteras and
 Cape Lookout Point that we had come inland to avoid

At this point it’s worth having a look at the weather chart to the right.  The red arrow indicates the Pamlico River which we were aiming to cross (we were in the tributary just above the arrow).  The chart also shows why we were doing all of this slow ICW faff: had we tried to sail outside Cape Hatteras by now we would have been ‘enjoying’ a 35-40 knot wind blowing us onto a lee shore whilst battling against the Gulf Stream surging northeast just a few miles offshore.  In comparison, hours of motoring in the ICW was easy work.

WhiteBrown water over the bow – heading south in the
Pungo River with 30 knots of wind across the deck

Easy work turned into very slow work when the wind increased to more than 30 knots across the deck directly on the nose.  BV started to ‘hobby horse’, nodding up and down between the waves, and mostly making less than 4 knots speed over the ground (SOG).  We plugged on for another hour, trying motoring at different angles to the wind (which improved the SOG) only to find, when we ‘tacked’ back towards our destination, that the wind had veered so that, once again, we were hobby-horsing into wind and waves.  Clearly, we needed a few more hours in hand to make that extra mileage.  That really early start made by the other yachts we’d been anchored next to in Deep Point now seemed like the best thing to have done but it’s easy to be wise in hindsight.  Instead we turned tail and ran towards Slade Creek.  Our GPS SOG went from 3½ knots battling south to 8½ -10 knots heading 6 miles back towards our new overnight destination.  We successfully dodged the sunken wreck in the entrance and dropped our anchor in the last of the light in what we hoped would be a sheltered and secure anchorage.  Just before we lost the mobile phone signal we got a message from Dianne Tetrault, OCC Port Officer for Beaufort; it was really blowing strongly there and the weather was very unpleasant.  We were very glad that we hadn’t pushed things and tried to sail to Beaufort offshore.

Slade Creek near Belhaven, NC, USA