It’s Bow-fort not Bew-fort

Monday, July 6

Our next stop was Beaufort, North Carolina.  Not to be confused with Beaufort, South Carolina (Bewfort). Our next leg was going to be relatively short so we left Bald Head Island at 11:00AM.

On the southeast side of Bald Head Island is the Frying Pan Shoals. These are sand or gravel bars that extend out from land for many miles. The shoals determined that we were going to make our first journey through the intercoastal. If we left Bald Head and headed out far enough to clear the shoals it would add hours to our trip.

From Bald Head we headed north up through the intercoastal. The couple hours through the there were very pleasant. Just a little bit slow.

We left the intercoastal at Masonboro Inlet and went back out into the ocean and continued to push north. Once out of the intercoastal we were able to get back up on plane and maintain cruising speed.

We entered the Beaufort Inlet and wound our way around to the Town Docks.  On our way into Taylor Creek I was busy putting the lines on the boat and getting the fenders out.  I flipped one fender over the side and the clip that attaches it to the rail snapped. We lost a fender.  Of course it was one of our newer ones.

We had plenty of help to tie up to the dock. Our place for the night was right on the town boardwalk.  We realized pretty quickly that tonight we would be the show. One of our favorite quotes in boating, is this, “Sometimes you’re the show; and sometimes you’re the audience.”  As we were tying up a man came up and handed me our fender.  He'd been out on the water and picked it up for us! Kindness is awesome.

We fueled up at our dock so we could get an early start in the morning. We cleaned up, us and the boat and walked across the street to Clawson’s for dinner.  It was probably the best meal we’ve had on the trip.  They had outstanding seafood bisque.

This was our most expensive marina of the trip so far.  $126 a night!  Yikes.

We sat down with our charts and Navionics to try to figure out the next leg of our trip.  Dan wanted to do the ocean route and head out around Hatteras and end up in Rudee Inlet.  I wanted to do the intracoastal again and go to Coinjock. We talked it back and forth and opted for the ocean route. We tucked in pretty early.