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