Beaufort NC USA (Part 4)

You don’t get a group of yachties together for long without there being great discussion about the weather and the previous evening at Clawson’s Restaurant had been no exception to the rule.  Very strong winds were forecast for the weekend and with that in mind we wanted to reposition our anchor a bit so that we could put out something more than the 25m scope we had already.  So, first thing on Thursday 14 November we moved BV to the town dock to top up on water and fuel, only to discover on our return that the red yacht that had arrived the previous day and anchored close to us, had repositioned somewhat in our absence.  Not a perfect state of affairs!  We reanchored in what we hoped would be a good position, well aware that we had a day and a bit before the strongest winds were due to hit; plenty of time to reassess the situation if necessary.

Watermaker reinstallation.  Top left:  tubes, pressure gauge and pipework with the new membranes.  Bottom left:  All put back together….  Right:  ….and reinstalled under the aft bunk

Mid-morning Dianne came past with our watermaker membranes and o-rings and wind generator blades for Carol and Steve.  I set to with fixing the watermaker whilst Nicky and Carol repaired to the laundry for a mammoth session of feeding quarters into the machines.  By the time Nicky returned I had the membranes installed, a leak check complete and the whole shebang up and going for its run-in period.  It takes an hour at minimum pressure to clean the preserving fluids off the membrane and then another hour at pressure before the product is guaranteed to be potable.  But at the end of that time it was certainly very potable with a TDS of less than 150 ppm almost an order of magnitude better than the 1000+ppm we had when we identified the issue.

In and around the other jobs on board we had discovered that we had an over-pressure or over-temperature leak from the hot water tank so I played with that a little, cleaning scale off the safety systems and adjusting the water temperature.  Then we met up with Steve and Helen Lawrence (Miles) for beers in the Back Street Pub and subsequently a scratch dinner on board BV.  Great fun.

The wind started to pick up overnight and Nicky spent a good part of the night awake watching how we, and other yachts in the anchorage swung.  At the tide change we got too close for comfort to the red yacht and were both up letting out a little additional chain to ensure that we remained clear.  Chris Parker’s forecast on the morning of Friday 15 November was very pessimistic about the imminent storm with much discussion of gusts of around 50kts and sustained winds around 40kts in our area [Ed: albeit a short distance offshore].

Anchored in Town Creek, close to the new bridge between Beaufort and Morehead City

We decided to take the opportunity to move to the anchorage in Town Creek.  The anchorage there is much smaller than the one in Taylor Creek but the tide doesn’t flow through it as extremely.  There were already 2 other yachts there but there was space for a third behind them so we bagged the gap, laid out 45m of chain and dug the anchor in hard.  Much more comfortable!  Innamorata II took the opportunity to move up to Jarrett’s/Bock Marine to join Grace of Longstone and Miles negotiated a good rate (due to weather) in the Town Dock Marina.

And then we waited.  We did some admin paperwork, caught up some of the blog backlog, and I had another play with the water heater, swapping out the pressure and temperature valve which appeared to be leaking through the temperature side for a 3 Bar (vice 2.5 Bar) pressure-only valve.  That made a big difference but clearly the pressure’s not correct.  If I can remove the temperature valve on the old safety system, I’ll replace it as a pressure-only valve.

We checked the weather and saw that a weather window for a passage to Antigua was likely to open up on Monday.  Discussion emails flew around the OCC group.  For us, with our transmission part still not due to arrive until Monday (and food shopping still to do), Tuesday first thing was looking good for our departure, with the added advantage of giving a day for the seas to start reducing.

A brief lull in the rain

Homemade Pizza Mk1

By the early hours of the morning on Saturday 16 November, the wind was howling at around 30kt winds and the rain was hammering down, but BV was riding nicely on her 45m of chain pointing straight into the wind.  She was much more settled in this anchorage than she would have been in Taylor Creek with the tide flooding and ebbing through and we were a lot happier with a good length of chain out.  During the day we planned our movements for Monday, wrote a detailed shopping list, read some books, including Pete Goss’ [Ed: what a novelty, to find time to read a book!], did some blog writing and cooked up a pizza which we ate watching a film.  A cosy day on board.

The xy-Grib picture of the low pressure system that produced all that wind.  We were under the tip of the pink arrow, close to the flag-shaped wind-barb that indicates 50kts of wind from the northeast

The wind howled and howled all night.  We slept through reasonably well with earplugs in, confident in our anchor and chain and the holding now that we had been in situ over 24hours.  We guessed at the wind reaching 35-40kts in the anchorage; the local paper reported that the wind had reached 60kts close by at the entrance to the harbour!

The old exhaust which had been patched earlier in the year needed replacing

Homemade Pizza Mk2

We spent Sunday doing checks and preparations:  engine checks, generator checks.  In doing the latter we found  that the exhaust was not looking good, so we spent the afternoon fitting the spare and cleaning up.  Nicky bailed the paddling pool dinghy of gallons of water.  We delayed making soup due to the generator exhaust change.  And, of course, we checked on the weather.  The plan was still looking good though the longer range forecast offshore was complicated, with the GFS and European models differing quite significantly in places.  By the evening the wind had dropped enough to make an expedition ashore a viable option and we dinghied into Taylor Creek to meet up with Sam and Jane (and Poco the dog) from Scoot as well as Steve and Helen from Miles.  It was nice to get off the boat for a bit and, as ever, the Back Street Pub did us proud – we’ll miss its great beers.  It was a fun evening with, of course, more weather and routing discussion, after which we returned to BV for Homemade Pizzas Pt 2.

Zwailer arrives in the anchorage

Dianne had kindly agreed to drive us around a on Monday 18 November as, most difficult for us, we needed to get to the CBP Office in Morehead City to obtain exit paperwork.  We also needed to do a food shop and to get our propane bottles refilled, both of which we could do on foot in Beaufort but they would be tasks much more easily achieved in a vehicle.  Richard and Jane on Zwailer, who also intended to head for Antigua, needed to visit CBP too so first thing on Monday they repositioned to Town Creek and from there we all dinghied ashore to meet Dianne.

Thanks to Dianne, all our tasks were quite quickly and very easily completed.  Propane first, then CBP and then a whistle-stop tour of Lidl and Walmart for top-up shopping for Zwailer and provisioning for us.  We ended with a stop at Frank’s Franks and enjoyed hotdogs (thank you Dianne) whilst hearing about Frank’s work with the homeless who live in the woods surrounding Morehead City.  A totally different side of the place compared to that on show at the Veterans’ Day Parade when so many local muscle cars drove the parade route.

Back on BV we stowed the food and cooked up a huge goulash – passage meals for at least 3 days.  We also re-taped the anti-chafing foam on the spreaders and re-ran the burgee halyard which had chafed through in the wind on Friday (happily during the day so we didn’t lose the burgee which went over the side!).  To our disappointment we discovered that UPS had accidentally left our transmission shaft unit on a truck on Friday so it had shuttled back and forth between a couple of depots and then sat back where it had started over the weekend.  Getting hold of a real agent via UPS’ automated switchboard is virtually impossible but Nicky eventually managed to do so and was assured that the item would arrive on Tuesday.  We decided to take advantage of the extra hours available with a run ashore to the Cru Bar to use their internet to update our computers and, rather than eat our passage food, ‘drowned’ our sorrows in a couple of large burgers at Clawsons.

Zwailer – final preparations before she left at about 1300 on Tuesday 19 November

Beaufort, North Carolina, USA