From Oriental (our last post) we continued down the ICW and spent the night in Beaufort, NC. The town is listed as a “must see” for cruisers, and it was a fun little town, though Covid kept us from going into any shops. We actually thought a coffee shop might be safe, but walking into the door we saw that at least one customer and at least one barista were not wearing masks, so we turned right back around and skedaddled out of there.
The marina that we fueled up at was not easy to get into at all, and we struggled a bit exiting. The morning moon let us pull out of Beaufort before dawn the next morning, which is kind of nice but quite stressful. You’re navigating through a busy harbor in the dark relying on a chart plotter and radar, hoping that your eyes help a little. The eastern sky was showing a little light by the time we hit the ocean, and we had a beautiful motor sail down to the Wrightsville Beach inlet, arriving just before sunset and in time to get the anchor well set for the night.
We would have loved to be able to make the run under sail only, but the wind was from dead behind us so the only way the sails would work would be to pole out the genoa and prevent the main. I’m not proficient enough yet to feel comfortable on the deck poling out the genoa by myself in rough seas (and the seas were rough enough), so we opted for keeping the wind just off our stern and motor sailing to move it forward a bit, allowing the genoa to work.
We also caught a nice skipjack tuna, which we then enjoyed for supper!
