35:01.3761N 076.41.9559W

Sunday Aug 1 2010 8pm

We didn’t stop in Beaufort, but continued on to Oriental NC. We passed through Beaufort about 1PM today, waved, and continued about 20 miles further down the road to Oriental. The boat was moving, we were still awake so we continued on. We’ll be here tomorrow and perhaps Tuesday as well. Too soon to  know the next step.

Here’s the Oriental harbor from our boat

The trip from St Augustine started as a motor boat ride as the seas were flat and there was no wind. The neat thing was a pod of dauphins decided to swim along the bow There were six of them, here’s a picture of five

And here is the guy that missed the group shot (there’s always one)

After the initial 10 hours of motoring the winds kicked in and away we went. With the help of the Gulf Stream we were moving at 8-9 knots (5-6 is considered good for us.) Then something happened that I just couldn’t believe, the wind didn’t shift as forecast. Two different forecasts predicted the same shift. I guess the Wind God didn’t get the memo – probably out playing golf or something. Anyway without the wind shift we ended up motoring the last 100 miles into the wind.

I wish I could comment on how nice Beaufort is, but from the deck of the boat as we motored through it’s hard to give a fair description. The trip from Beaufort to Oriental is our first Inter Coastal Waterway (ICW) transit. (The Ft Pierce to Vero Beach doesn’t count because we went out back the way we came in.) People say the ICW is worse than the most boring drive you know of. The ICW is traveling long distances at 5 mph, but we managed to find some excitement – no we didn’t run aground. Instead we found a boat on fire

It was a shrimper. It reminded me that I need to fix the small diesel leak I have. A definite to do here in Oriental.

I’m tired and there may be more that I’ll be adding about the trip later as I remember it.