Today was another long day of nine hours underway wending
our way to Beaufort (pronounced BO-fort rather than Byew-fort, SC), NC which city tonight to go into a
shelter-in-place mode by order of the mayor.
We got underway at 0730 under overcast skies which later turned mostly
sunny in 60-degree weather. Our route
took us at our zippy eight miles per hour down the Pungo river and across a
smallish arm of Pamlico Sound where we ran across another of my Trawler Forum
friends, Dave in Sylphide heading north.
Dave is a really entertaining writer and amuses us all on the Forum with
his antics in his new-to-him boat. We
then entered Goose Creek, a narrow passage down to a body of water for some
reason called Bay River which debouched into another section of Pamlico Sound
where we encountered a bit of northeast wind making the sound a bit
choppy. However we soon turned our stern
to the wind heading inland giving us an easy ride for the next fifteen miles
heading southwest up the Neuse River before turning southerly again into Adams
Creek for the next fourteen miles which in turn dumped us into the Newport
River, the body of water behind the cities of Beaufort and Morehead City. These bodies of water while not true creeks
and rivers had to be named something; so I guess the namers selected things
they resembled. Adams Creek in
particular was lined with many pastel colored homes which we assumed were
mostly getaway places. There were some
rather stately ones. We also noted a lot
of duck blinds near the shoreline of lower lying lands. This area under the great flyway of the
migrating ducks and geese has been a waterfowl hunting paradise for well over a
hundred years. Back in the late 1800’s
there was such demand for feathers for ladies hats and meat the birds were
significantly overhunted, and many tales of hunter versus regulators
ensued. The infamous punt gun was one of
the poachers’ potent weapons. We arrived
at Homer Smith Marina here in Beaufort at about 1615 being assured the winds
were going to blow us right onto the pier.
By the time I had gotten our steel beast turned around and headed to the
tee-head of the pier for the desired port side landing, the wind came up astern
and threw the stern away from the pier.
Some helpful person had grabbed our bow line and made things worse by
securing it to a cleat meaning I could no longer use the bow thruster to push
the bow away from the pier in order to pivot the boat about its axis swinging
the stern back in. I was afraid we were
going to hit one of the large concrete pilings supporting the floating pier
scratching the hull up, but I got the bow line released so I could get clear
and make another attempt. In the end,
the simple thing to do was get the boat turned so that I could back up into the
wind and let Mary get the stern line to the helper on the pier. Then I simply pushed the bow in with the
thruster while holding up against the wind with a bit of astern gear. After signing in at the office, we grabbed the
courtesy car, always an adventure in all-but-a wreck auto management, and went
off to the Pig, Piggly Wiggly, to you Yankees to stock up on a few items before
the town went into shutdown mode as a measure to prevent corona virus spread. The wake-up weather may be a bit too windy to
safely get off this pier; so we will just have to see…
The business end of the bridge and what do we have here, just swinging the camera to the left? Why it's Mary "standing watch" in the pilothouse. :)
The business end of the bridge and what do we have here, just swinging the camera to the left? Why it's Mary "standing watch" in the pilothouse. :)
