Beaufort NC USA

We arrived in the Taylor Creek anchorage at Beaufort NC shortly before sunset at 1830 on Saturday 23 May.  It was the end of the first day of the Memorial Day holiday weekend (the official start of summer in America) and the anchorage was pretty crowded but we managed to find ourselves a space, tucked inshore between the main line of anchored yachts and the Shackleford Bank Island.  It took us a couple of attempts to get the anchor set in the right place and we needed to use Bill Strickland’s ‘drop the anchor, have a cup of tea to give it time to sink into the soft mud and then dig it in’ technique to get it to set properly.  Unfortunately, the anchor windlass really didn’t want to play ball and was very sluggish so the whole anchor then re-anchor process was more stressful than it should have been as we were horribly aware that recovering the anchor by hand, should the windlass die entirely, would be a hard job.  

Anchor windlass removed from the deck, upended and with the electric motor removed

When in place, the cogs visible in this picture (which we
cleaned and greased before putting everything back
 together) are covered by the roughly oval-shaped
 casing in the right-hand picture below…

So, job number 1 on Sunday 24 May was to sort out the problem with the windlass.  The anchor windlass is a critical piece of kit for us but it has a hard life and lives in a very exposed [Ed: read ‘wet’] position on the bow of the boat, with the electric motor below the deck but in the salt-laden, humid (and, in the tropics, warm) environment of the anchor locker.  The perfect location for rapid salt-water corrosion.  The first part of the job entailed disconnecting all the electrical connections to the windlass motor, a job that is done half in and half out of the anchor locker, with your weight taken mostly on your back on the rim of the hatch into the locker.  Never fun.  And, as ever, the anchor locker was a foetid fug of warm, salty, seaweedy air. A perfect Bank Holiday ambiance.  Electrics dealt with, removing the windlass from the deck was relatively easy as was then removing the gear housing, complete with attached electric motor.  Getting the electric motor off the gear case, however, was much less easy and required a fair amount of percussion engineering with a chisel and a large hammer.  But the iron grip of saltwater corrosion was eventually broken and, having briefly surveyed the motor, I elected to go with the easy option of binning it and replacing it with a spare new motor we had on board.  Even the financial director agreed!

Left: new electric motor.  Right: gear housing.  Note the saltwater corrosion on the rim of the housing and this is only about a year old.  The electric motor sits underneath the housing and, whilst it is covered in a rubber boot to reduce damage to it by chain impact, it has very little protection from salt water damage.  Perhaps not the best design in the world!

After that the job was relatively straightforward:  Clean and grease everything, attach the new motor and then rebuild the lower innards of the gear box.  Clean and grease the upper innards of the gearbox that had remained on deck.  Attach gear housing (with motor).  Replace all above in/over hole in deck and secure.  Revisit torture chamber anchor locker to reconnect electrics.  Test.  All satis.  Job complete.  

The start of summer.  Memorial Day weekend at Shackleford Bank Island

We’d started work early on the anchor windlass and by the time we’d finished the Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend was just getting going.  

Loads of people out and about and enjoying the weekend.  It came as a bit of a culture shock to us after so long in places which have been so quiet due to Covid-19

There were people everywhere.  On their own boats, in friends’ boats, on paddleboards, in kayaks.  On day-tripper vessels, on the ferries to the islands, walking the shores in all directions.  People everywhere, socialising, having fun – just as it was last year.

Surprisingly little social distancing and few masks in evidence, which also came as a bit of a surprise

For people who had recently come from places in the grip of formal lockdown and States of Emergency it was all a bit of a culture shock.

We adjusted to normal life by continuing with the jobs list.  Next up:  re-stencilling the numbers on dinghy, to keep us under the radar and ‘legit’ in those states that expect all vessels to be registered with someone, somewhere.  We don’t need to have a number on the side of our dinghy because BV is a British registered yacht but we didn’t want to have to go to an American court to prove that, as some friends of ours needed to, after an ill-informed local policeman had written them a ‘ticket’ for not having the registration number of their dinghy displayed on the side of it. 

Top: at anchor in a new and improved location with a new view

Part way through that job, a space opened up in the main line of the anchorage so we upped anchor sharpish and moved across so that we had better spacing on the boats around us and on the island shore.  In the process, we discovered that I had rewired the anchor windlass in incorrectly.  Pressing the ‘up’ button resulted in the anchor going down and vice versa – doh!.  Cue more time in the torture chamber when we were settled in our new space.

Looking forwards in our new anchored position in Taylor Creek

Meanwhile, Nicky played with the leadline to confirm the calibration of our depth gauge.  The anchorage seemed remarkably shallow compared to when we had visited previously, most recently in Nov 2019, and when we had moved positions in the anchorage, Nicky had seen the gauge read 1.9m yet BV was clearly not aground.  [Ed:  BV draws 2.0m and we have previously set the depth gauge offset such that the gauge reads 2.0m when the keel touches bottom.  A reading of 1.9m should mean that BV isn’t going anywhere fast!].  It turned out that the offset needed to be adjusted by 0.3m to provide a depth gauge reading that matched the leadline reading.  We were rather surprised by this and can only assume that it is related to my changing some of the instruments in Fort Lauderdale.  

Dolphins in Taylor Creek

Monday 25 May dawned much greyer than the previous day and, unlike a Bank Holiday Monday in the UK, turned out to be a much quieter day altogether.  But, to make up for the reduced people-watching opportunities, we had a spot of dolphin watching after a small pod swam in to visit the creek.

Taylor Creek from Shackleford Bank Island

By the afternoon the day had cheered up considerably so we dinghied ashore to walk around Shackleford Bank Island.

Some of the hundreds and thousands of Fiddler crabs

The Fiddler crabs, with one claw much larger than the other, were out in force but we only saw one wild horse, albeit we didn’t need to go searching for it.  

A beautiful day on the creek…..

From the Taylor Creek side of the island we walked across to the ocean side…..

…..and a beautiful day on the beach

……where there is a huge expanse of beautiful white sand beach, particularly at low water.  

This picture was taken on the holiday Monday, which was a much quieter day than the Sunday when this beach must have been madly busy

We walked for miles along this beach.  On our previous visits (always out of season), this beach has been almost entirely deserted.  This time, at the end close to the entrance channel to Beaufort it was incredibly busy with small motorboats and day-visitors who had come over on one of the many ferry services.  We have never visited in the height of the season and the crowds came as something of a surprise to us, though I guess that’s rather naïve.  We joined the holiday atmosphere by returning to BV the General Store in Beaufort, where we donned masks, bought delicious ice-creams and ate them in social isolation on the boardwalk alongside the Town Docks Marina.

A new neighbour…. parked a little too close for comfort

Returning to BV, we waved to a yacht that had just arrived which was cruising the anchorage, looking for a space to anchor……and which happened to be flying an OCC burgee.  Suddenly, we realised that it was Rob and Baudine Kuijper on Bojangles and, at about the same time, they recognised BV.  (We had previously met them, only briefly, here in Beaufort in November 2019.  We had talked Cuba with them and Nicky had sent them an email trail with information about the country in it.)  We chatted briefly; they had just arrived in from Sint Maarten/St Martin and were planning to head up to Deltaville when they had completed the check-in formalities.  But they needed to find a spot for the night, and Taylor Creek was clearly full, so they disappeared off to Town Creek in the hope of finding a spot there. 
But clearly some people didn’t think Taylor Creek too full at all as, an hour later, and with our dinghy lifted for the night, our evening was disturbed by the arrival of an American registered Beneteau, Journey, which anchored almost right on top of us.  It was so close that, as the tide turned, the 2 boats ended up less than a boat length away from each other for a period.  With quite different keel shapes, the Beneteau swung at a very different rate to BV and, consequently, I spent the night concerned that we would touch as the tide changed again and did not sleep well, getting up at frequent intervals to check that all was well. 

We were up promptly on the morning of Tuesday 26 May as, the previous evening Lionel and Elsie on Ruby Tuesday had invited us to join them and Dianne Tetreault, the OCC’s excellent Port Officer for Beaufort, for breakfast at one of the town’s cafes.  Happily, the crew of Journey were up and about as we headed ashore and, with the anchorage emptying of yachts, we suggested that they might want to move to a larger space.  They seemed a little surprised that we should feel this necessary but agreed to do so.

Breakfast with the Ruby Tuesdays and Dianne was great fun.  Dianne was on good form and clearly enjoying life in her new [Ed: now not quite so new to her] apartment in Moorhead City.  She told us of a number of OCC yachts in the vicinity and said that she would be taking Rob and Baudine (Bojangles) to see CBP and then to go shopping for food straight after breakfast.  She also brought us up to speed on changes at the Maritime Museum, on events in Beaufort during the Covid-19 pandemic, and offered to take us food shopping as and when we needed.  Most important for us, she reiterated how happy she was to accept incoming packages for OCC members – an absolute godsend for us.  Meanwhile, Lionel and Elsie told us of their plans.  They had been one of the large contingent of yachties that had been told to leave Cuba when the Covid-19 pandemic really began to bite there.  They had decamped to Key West (other friends went to Tampa, and others headed for Bermuda then the Azores and home to Plymouth) and gradually worked their way up the coast to Beaufort.  Their US Cruising Licence, issued in Puerto Rico, was due to expire in July, when they had hoped to be in Canada but, with no sign of the Canadian border opening to non-citizens, they had had a bit of a re-think as to how to manage the situation.  In the end they had decided to have Ruby Tuesday hauled in Annapolis and then to do some travel inland before their immigration stamps expire.  Their immediate plan, having done some food shopping, was to return to the anchorage at Cape Lookout Bight and take the next available weather window north around Cape Hatteras.

It was lovely to see Lionel and Elsie and also Dianne and we could have stayed and talked all day, but Dianne had an appointment with Bojangles and Lionel and Elsie needed to leave the marina they had stopped in overnight, so we said our farewells and split up.  We knew we would see Dianne again; we just hope we see Lionel and Elsie again somewhere, sometime.

We returned to BV and spent the rest of the day doing chores on board.  Nicky had some long overdue ‘home’ admin to work on, followed by some proofreading for the OCC’s magazine, Flying Fish.  I checked on the order that I had placed with Defender for new instruments to replace the rest of the aging ones fitted to BV (they’re 20 years old and showing it now).  Plus, we had to do some work on charts, waypoints and routing for our journey home, and also downloading contact information for other yachts headed the same way as us at about the same time.  That and emailing friends and family and other yacht crews made the day pretty much evaporate.

First thing on Wednesday 27 May we checked the weather again.  We thought that it looked suitable for a departure on Friday and emailed Chris Parker to let him know our thoughts – would he please send us a 10-day outlook and routing advice?  So, with that decision made we needed to get moving with final, final chores.  First up a walk to the ACE hardware store and the Piggly Wiggly [Ed:  great name!] supermarket for last minute maintenance items and fresh food.  Laden down, we returned with AAA batteries (for head-torches), fruit, veg, bread, milk and beer and spent the afternoon stowing everything.  We also had a further flurry of messages with Johan and Maria on Samantha, with whom we’d spent Christmas in St Martin.  They were a few miles away in Oriental and were planning to depart for the Azores and then Sweden in the middle of the next week.  It would have been fun to have met up with them again but the timeline was just not going to permit it.

The Fishtowne Brew House, Beaufort NC

Fewer tables than normal all 6ft apart

In the late afternoon we decided to treat ourselves to a visit to the Fishtowne Brew House.  It’s a really good microbrewery which we have tried to visit each time we’ve been in Beaufort.  Their Flounder EyePA is excellent but, unfortunately, they didn’t have any on tap.  That just meant we had to take a pot-luck pick of some of their other beers ….. and both were excellent too.  It was a rather bittersweet visit.  With our time in the US, and on the west of the Atlantic, coming rapidly to a close, and rather sooner than we would have wanted, we reflected on the fun we have had, the friends we have made and the places we have visited.  We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our time exploring this part of the world and will sorely miss all the fabulous people we have met and whom we are so pleased to be able to call our friends.  We’re going home for now but we certainly will be back again.

Thursday 28 May was our final full day in America for some time and the weather gods decided not to smile on us, chucking buckets of water down on us from the heavens.  We arranged to meet Dianne for a pizza lunch so Nicky headed off early to the laundry, whilst I got going with final levels checks on the engine and generator, cleared all the stopcock strainers of any seaweed, and generally ran through a gamut of final, final pre-long-distance passage checks.  The pizzas at the Black Sheep were excellent and we had a lot of fun chatting to Dianne who, as ever, had numerous things on the go.  The rain continued to hammer down so she kindly took us to get our propane tank topped up and to Piggly Wiggly to pick up a few items we had forgotten the previous day.  Then she was off to help out one of her many other cruisers.  Such a star – thank you Dianne!  

Passage food all ready to make the first few days easy

Back aboard BV we cooked up a passage stew to get us through the first few dinners and a soup for poor-weather lunch.  Defender and UPS between them came up trumps and the new instruments were delivered to Dianne’s apartment block in the afternoon.  But Dianne, again, was the real star, negotiating with the concierge who, technically had left for the day, to collect the boxes and bring them down to us so that we had them on the Thursday rather than having to wait until late on Friday morning to receive them – she knew that we wanted to catch the tide and the weather.  Thank you again!!  And, having the instruments that afternoon gave me time to fit another new one in the cockpit, though to complete the job will need to do some more significant wiring; a job to do when we next stop.  Consequently, we still have a couple of legacy instrument over the companionway but 3 of the 4 that were starting to fail have now been replaced which is good given that we will be using them non-stop for the next month.

So, the only things left to do before we point BV’s bows east across the North Atlantic are to top up with diesel and fresh water, both jobs we plan to do first thing in the morning just before we leave Beaufort.

Beaufort, North Carolina, USA