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| Kelly-Peterson 44 | ||
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Beaufort NC to St. Augustine FL 1: BEAUFORT NC TO CHARLESTON SC
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| As much as we loved Beaufort, NC, we were very eager to get further South. Once we left, it didn't take us long to reach some warmer weather somewhere in South Carolina. Our pace really picked up and we were in Savannah, GA in less than a week. Although we had traveled completely in the ICW so far, we did make several coastal hops to get to Florida, especially for most of Georgia. | ||
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Beaufort NC to Topsail NC Our new jib and our staysail were both delivered on Saturday, so we were anxious to leave soon afterwards. We tried to leave Beaufort on Sunday, February 5, but both the current and wind were so strong that we could not get away from the dock. There were whitecaps in our slip... The weather was much calmer the next morning, and we finally were able to bid farewell to our little town. The dolphins (porpoises?) that had escorted us into the dock showed up again as we were leaving. It was low tide and Belisana did bump the bottom once where some shoals had formed between the marina and the shipping channels. But we knew deep water lay just on the other side of the shoaling, so as we watched the depth decreasing, Maria kept it at full throttle. We pushed right over the shoals and found the channel literally 2 or 3 feet past the shoaling. We've discovered that when currents are really strong at intersections, sediment is deposited creating shoals.
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Leaving Beaufort behind...
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| The trip to Topsail was almost uneventful, except for passing Camp Lejeune. Our guidebook mentioned that you may get to see the Marines practice landing their amphibious watercraft. After awhile we noticed a flurry of activity heading toward us - about five or six inflatable watercraft. They showed off a little and zoomed around us some, which was pretty cool. It was quite funny - we had our camera out taking pictures of them and then we noticed that one of the boats had a civilian aboard who was taking pictures of us! We started laughing and so did they... | ||
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Topsail to Southport Despite heavy fog the next morning, we were able to leave Topsail quite early and make it all the way to Bald Head Island outside of Southport and just on the other side of Cape Fear. Shortly after leaving the marina in Topsail we passed a huge barge - no fun in a narrow channel in the fog with a pier coming out from shore. We did get some rain showers throughout the morning but Ria, Nolan, and Mimi still managed to get on deck some. |
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| As we approached the Wrightsville Beach area, we saw a lone palm tree on a sandbar in the ICW. As we got closer, we noticed it was a fake tree - perhaps stuck there to inspire cold weary cruisers to keep pushing South to their tropical destinations. | ||
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We had hung up our food hammock in Beaufort, which really help clear off the galley counters. |
What's wrong with this picture? | |
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| We had to cross some shipping lanes as we neared Southport and headed out to Bald Head Island. | ||
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| Staying
at Bald Head Island Marina was a great place to position ourselves for our
first offshore passage the next morning - a 97-mile (84nm) trip to
Georgetown, SC. Since the marina opened up to the Atlantic Ocean, we
were able to leave before sunrise to allow plenty of time to get to
Georgetown before sunset. Bald
Head Island ended up being a pleasant surprise. It's only accessible
by ferry, with very few cars. Only a couple of hundred people live
on the island and they all drive golf carts. The island has remained
largely unspoiled and we arrived early enough to go exploring for awhile.
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| The marina entrance, just on the Atlantic... | ||
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| Southport NC to Georgetown SC | ||
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We got an early start - about 5:30am.
We saw the sun rise over an hour later over the Atlantic. It was a
beautiful day with great weather. Our trip took us 20 miles offshore at the
farthest point, so we didn't see land for most of the day. We quickly
found out that Maria is prone to seasickness, especially in the rolly motion of
following swells. She took a Dramamine and was useless most of the trip
because the Dramamine made her so drowsy. Next time we decided to try
Benadryl instead.
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Land was a welcome sight! It cheered everyone up. Georgetown is a cute little town about an hour inland. We walked to a park (well, Nolan rode his bike) and later downtown to eat supper. It's the type of place that we would want to explore further if we had more time. |
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| A creative use of the compass cover | ||
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Georgetown to Charleston
We had trouble again with our rebuilt alternator after leaving Bald Head Island. We had someone look at it at the marina in Georgetown and found out that it had burned out - again. We debated about staying in Georgetown and getting it repaired - we can't anchor out without charged batteries and marinas are too expensive to continue staying at each night. In the end we decided to keep going further south and get a new alternator either in Charleston or Savannah. We had another beautiful sunrise to begin our trip to Charleston. Nolan helped with his daily morning task - wiping the condensation off the inside of the cockpit panels. It was a nice day but windy, which is one of the reasons we went on the ICW rather than doing a coastal hop. The other reason was that we had read that the ICW north of Charleston is beautiful and "jungle-like". Well, we never did see anything resembling a jungle, but it was a nice trip after our first offshore trip the day before. We did try out our new jib for awhile...
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| Brian and Nolan singing "Knick knack paddy whack" | ||
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Charleston Harbour was a quite rough with whitecaps. It was very windy but luckily we didn't have far to go. We saw Fort Sumter in the distance (first picture below) and would have taken a detour to get closer but the conditions on the Harbor made us decide to go straight to the marina, especially since Fort Sumter was further out towards the edge of the Atlantic. |
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