Well the good news is that apparently felines have short memories. So Witty is not a permanent victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but his old pesky self. It was Saturday, the day before Easter, and warm and sunny so EVERYONE was out on the water. We saw hundreds of boats from Stand Up Paddleboards, to kayaks and canoes,

to fishing boats of all sizes,

to what I call motorized rafts.

And people were wading and swimming in the ICW too.

I put out the genoa and later the small jib but the wind was too close to our bow much of the time and too erratic. Anchor to anchor from 9:30 to 3:00. Only two opening bridges, one on request and the other every twenty minutes, which we made easily. The tide helped us the last third of our passage, except the last mile, once we got to Ponce de Leon Inlet, and we turned down the engine to near idle speed to give the watermaker two hours to make water before we arrived. We passed some nice modest waterfront houses

and some waterfront trailer parks also known as fishing camps....I think.

Rockhouse Creek runs east-west, connecting two  N-S waterways. (It is the horizontal in an "H".) When we arrived it was very crowded with perhaps fifty small boats and a few large ones. Folks had gone to the beach. We can only enter from the ICW, western end because it gets too shallow for us at the other end, but many powerboat people think that circumnavigating the unnamed island that forms its south side is a nice trip. We heard five of them comment on ILENEs name as they passed us. We had dropped anchor and settled in and by six p.m. there were only three boats left (one other sail and a trawler)

and we were too close to the sailboat, especially because there was so much room everywhere else and strong winds from the east were expected. So we picked up and dropped 150 feet further away from that sailboat. Our other neighbors were a family of campers.

There was no one on the other side of us, where we would turn right and be back in the ICW.

Im having trouble with the new snubber hook, (as well as the underline function) specifically in getting it to stay hooked onto the anchor chain; it falls off and dangles uselessly under the boat instead of doing its job. I tried tying it on but this wasnt working well so I next tried wrapping one side of the hook with rubbery tape to narrow the slot into which the chain sits, but that fell off. 

Here in Rockhouse, I knew it had fallen off when the wind came up at night: the chain took the load instead of the snubber and when ILENE hunted from side to side, the anchor chain snaps over in the bow roller making a sound like the boat is being pounded by a sledge hammer.

I created a way to mount the red and green dinghy navigation light using a suction cup, a piece of scrap plexiglass, a nut, some washers and a piece of thin line.

We have been noticing that Florida has given nicknames to its geography much as in Manhattan, neighborhoods like SOHO and Tribeca that have no legal or governmental significance  are used to define neighborhoods. The southern part of Florida: Miami, Fort Lauderdale and maybe Boca is called the Gold Coast. Heading north, next comes the Treasure Coast including Palm Springs, Stuart and Fort Pierce, so named because Spanish treasure galleons sank off this part of Florida. Cocoa, Titusville and New Smyrna are called the Space Coast. I hadnt noticed this before.

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At 8:10, we had help from the Beaufort Docks staff  "springing" us off the docks so our stern was swung out and we could back out safely. (They hold a line from our stern on the end of the dock while we go in reverse while trying to steer out. It works!)  This was the time of my choosing, but about 10 minutes too soon, resulting in a wait of that duration for the 8:30 opening of the Beaufort Bascule Bridge.
Once clear of the bridge we went perhaps a hundred fifty yards and then aground in mud. There is a fork in the watery path, of which we have to take the right because the left fork was silted in years ago. Mindful of that, I was so vigilant to to not take the right that I took a left, but at  earlier fork, and into a channel that was too shallow for ILENE at low tide. It was low tide so I knew we would float off eventually. But after half an hour I tried another trick. I swung the boom far out to starboard and hung my weight way over the side of the boat to heel her, just a few degrees, to break the contact of the keel with the mud, while Lene gunned the diesel. We were off again, delayed by half an hour, but no worse for wear. It seems I make more mistakes first thing in the morning. This is something to watch out for.
From then on, the only problem was the tide which slowed our progress up the Beaufort River, and through Adams Creek. With low tide at Beaufort at about 9, I thought we would have the help of a flooding tide pushing us on our way up. No such luck. About ten miles up is a high bridge and there the low was at 10:30. I put up the small jib but furled it soon, when it was obvious that there was NO apparent wind to breathe life into it. Even in the broad Neuse River, which we beat down in 2012, there was no wind. Our depth sounder stopped working for about ten minutes but then came back to life while entering River Dunes off Broad Creek. This place was dredged out of the pine forests since our chart was published and has about 160 docks constructed, less than half the number when it is fully built out. They try to make it feel like a Yacht Club, with its own Burgee and Clubhouse with library.

ILENE is at extreme right

We took on a load of fuel at their fuel dock at 3:30, having motored a lot since Jekyll Island, and got on our dock at 4:00.  The rain which had looked threatening all day, held off until the evening and night and during our lay day.
I washed the topsides, cleaned off the rust stains leading from the anchor chain down the outer edge of the starboard side of the deck, where the salt water washdown pump washes the rust particles it takes off the anchor chain, and then waxed this strip to try to keep the rust out in the near future. One shouldnt wax the nonskid deck; it is made rough on purpose. But this narrow strip is now waxed and I have to be careful to tell Lene not to place her feet at the outer edge.
We met some interesting people on our neighboring boats, including a Canadian man on a Catalina 42 with a 185 pound Pyrenese. We dined at the River Dunes Clubhouses dining room, only serving ten dinners that night, in addition to those for a wedding party above. Good food here.
On our day day we were picked up by Bill and Sandy, and served a delicious brunch of baked french toast with ALL the trimmings in their home, with its commanding view of the Neuse. They picked us up at 9 and brought us back at 2:30, so we had a good long time for discussing boats, destinations, books, politics, families, etc.
River Dunes is a relatively new marina, with good wifi and showers. They have an exercise room, pool and sauna. It is very well maintained, only $1.50 per foot and we cashed in the one-time-only Annapolis Boat Show special offer of two nights for the price of one. We liked it here when we visited at about this time of year in 2012 and just as much this time. We hope Bill and Sandy will visit us in NY, perhaps on their way on the loop around eastern Canada aboard m/v Lucille. From NY they would go north on the Hudson, through the Erie Canal, into the Great Lakes, east through the Thousand Islands, down the St. Lawrence River and, after Nova Scotia and Maine, back to North Carolina.

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I forgot something that happened in Beaufort, probably because Id rather not remember. While we were in the theater we heard a loud storm going on outside. Some water came into the boat through the mast boot but that was easily picked up. I learned to dispose of a used American flag with respect. We had retired one at the beginning of this cruise which had been torn to tatters by the wind. But the wind tore our newish flag -- and its flagpole -- off from the boat. I will figure out a more secure way of attaching the next one.
Yes, I know I said we had decided to anchor in the Stono River, just short of Charleston, but our speed was so good today that we made the 3:30 opening of the Wappoo Creek Bridge and never had to deal with the fact that if you dont make the 4:00 opening, you have to wait until 6;30. It seems by dumb luck, we had favorable tide and the deep water of high tide most of the nine hours we were underway from 7 am to 4:00 pm. The favorable tide is proven by our average speed - 6.3 knots.
I have thought of several additional reasons why it is impossible for that hypothetical Ph.D. to figure out a tide algorithm. It depends on where in the river you sail: in the center the tidal flow is different from nearer the sides. It varies during the six plus tide cycle, slow at the beginning and end and fast in the middle. At bends in the river, one side flows faster than the other. And when you add in motor-sailing, as we did all day today, your speed will depend on the wind direction and speed which vary from minute to minute, relative to the boats course which was a near continuous curve, and on the diligence and skill of the trimmer. Today the wind was generally from near our stern and the small jib self jibed many times, as it is designed to do. I hope to never mention that crazy hypothetical algorithm again.
It was a cool but not cold day, warming up in the afternoon, with hazy sun poking amidst the light clouds. No rain.
We had two small problems near the end. I bumped into the throttle lever while walking past the binnacle, decellerating our RPMs and bringing back the "alignment" problem that we hoped we had fixed. The rattle was back and big time. But coming to neutral and building up the RPMs slowly -- the rattle was gone again. Something is still wrong and needs to be fixed. Shortly after this I think I caught a crab pot float on our rudder. The wheel became very heavy to turn and our speed was considerably slowed. I think that a crab pot was the cause of the problem but we dont really know. I turned the boat several times and slowed her and if it was a crab pot float, it fell off.
One of the crew at work, doing what he does second best (first is eating!)

Here is Charleston from our anchor on the Ashley River. On our two prior visits here we took a dock at an excellent marina on the Cooper River, on the north side of town, which was full tonight. But we had no plans for sight seeing this time and did not lower the dink.

We have also determined, subject to plans D, E and F, etc., tomorrows (and the next days) passage: to the Masonboro Inlet and the anchorage of  Wrightsville Beach. At 6.5 knots this will take 24 hours, anchor to anchor. We plan to leave about 10 A.M., with favorable tide flushing us out. Decent wind from the west is predicted.
We have also determined our planning deadline for arrival back in NYC -- June 7. Lenes niece, Barbi, and her son, Trevor who we hung with in Amsterdam last June, are visiting and will arrive on June 10. We would like to get home a few days earlier to get settled and unpacked, and those few days also serve a second purpose: as a buffer in case bad wind prevents the Atlantic overnight up the Jersey coast, as it did when I helped Jim bring his 26 foot "Aria" up in about 1996.

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We left at 10 as planned, but I screwed up reading the tide table so the tide was against us on the way out of Charleston, though weakly. We put up the main in the inner harbor and jibed it several times on the way out, past Fort Sumter where our Civil War began. Actually it began in SC, earlier, with the thinking of Calhoun, on the theory of states rights to "nullify" federal authority, a doctrine now becoming popular again among the lunatic right in this country.

We turned left as soon as we reached the first buoy after the end of the seawall and put up the genoa as well. This was before noon but the wind was too weak and too far behind us, to move the boat with  any speed, so we motor sailed, mostly motored, until about 1:30. I even had taken down the mainsail. I had not realized how much of the first 109 mile long part of this passage, was more easterly than northerly and so the projected five to ten knots of west wind was behind us. Then came wind, much stronger than projected and a gift to us. I was able to get up half the mainsail, with double reef in it, and continued with the genoa. The wind built behind us and we were screaming along at seven to eight knots with peaks at 8.9. And with the wind about 120 to 150 degrees from our bow, we rolled a lot from side to side, most unpleasant. Lene felt a bit nauseous though she did not lose her food. We had a delicious cold dinner -- no cooking with the rolling. It was warm and sunny by day and reasonably warm at night, with no rain. But during the night we got some slow speeds, less than four knots and even though I did not put up the genoa again until near daybreak, it was this night part, as well as the first few hours, where we lost time

After dinner, at 7:30, we replaced the genoa with the small jib, a safety measure for nightime sailing in big waves, and were still making over seven knots with just the small headsail and double reefed main. We had put on the preventer to prevent accidental jibe of the mainsail, and with the small jib sliding back and forth we took it in and sailed under just double reefed main. The preventer was a good thing because the wind had shifted from off our starboard quarter, to off the port quarter during Lenes watch. We were sailing "by the lee" -- the way you get that accidental jibe. When I got up at one (Lene let me sleep late) we jibed the main and continued on toward the turning point - off the tip of Frying Pan Shoals, which extend many miles out into the Atlantic from the Cape Fear River. We saw very little traffic: Two big freighters passed us at quite respectable distances -- closest point of approach being miles away -- and one sailboat overtook us, headed for Beaufort. I saw his lights and estimate he was 200 yards off our starboard side, moving a fraction of a knot faster than ILENE. Prior to the close passage I had a radio conversation with him to confirm what each of us was going to do.

Once around Frying Pan, at about 4 to 5 am, we turned north to Wrightsville (The Masonboro Inlet) and the wind came up from our port quarter to its beam and even forward of that. This second leg was only 32 miles and wind speed varied considerably during the leg, as, consequently, did boat speed.
It is hard to get good pictures of a night passage so at least I have the long awaited dawn.

Masonboro Inlet is easy, wide, well marked and flanked with seawalls. Once in, it is easy to get to the anchorage area and we dropped at 1:30, only 90 minutes "late" compared to our projected schedule that would have averaged 6.5 knots. Nice homes line the bay side of the barrier island.

We put out a lot of chain because there is lots of room and 20 knots were predicted for this evening. But by 4 pm it was howling at up to 40. We visited Wrightsville and made the reciprocal of this same ocean passage, to Charleston on our way south last fall and hence felt no need to lower and raise the dink to stretch our legs in Wrightsville. Tomorrow: Beaufort NC, about 80 miles and if the forecast comes true, a beam reach  or close reach from the port side, with five to fifteen knots.
I  tried to take a photo of the pod of dolphins playing under and around our bow, taking the Ipad up there, but they are way faster than ILENE at eight knots. I took maybe 50 shots and only one, a video of less than one second, caught a dolphin. These were not the slow graceful swimmers in the ICW but racers amidst the big ocean waves. I couldnt get the video into this post but it is on Facebook. I did manage to neither fall off the boat nor drop the camera.
Ilene is a true member of this crew and a solid citizen on overnight passages. She grumbles a bit and still relies on me, and I have to admit I like the  second part of that. She is even taking an interest in the charts, tides and weather. I couldnt make this trip without her, physically, mentally or emotionally. We have some chores that each of us do most of, but both of us do many of the chores. She said she liked our 25.5 hours together.
On our honeymoon on the old ILENE, in August 2002, we spent a pretty terrible 36 hours in a noreaster off the coast of Maine  The boat got beat up (torn sail, water inside through the dorades, compass light out) and we got beat up too. After a good nights sleep Lene asked, "Where do we go next?"  I replied "God, I married the right woman!"  And that has become truer with each passing year.

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Amazing! This is the 365th post to this blog since it began in October, 2010.

We were underway from 8:15 to 2:30.  We went very slowly up the west side and north side of Cumberland Island, across St. Andrews Sound and up Jekyll Creek, on the west side of Jekyll Island. A new stretch of the ICW for us. We went slow because we wanted to arrive when the tide was an hour before high. We passed the huge Kings Bay submarine base, but without sighting any of those killing machines. We passed Cumberland Landing,

on the north side of that island, where the packet boat used to land. We also passed the abandoned lighthouse and saw a buoy that has apparently detached from its mooring and washed ashore. The NY Times had a nice article about the men and women of the Coast Guard vessel that services the buoys in the NY area. In the ICW most "aids to navigation" are not buoys, but numbered red triangular and green square signs posted on pilings -- cheaper to maintain.

But this passage, with a few quite shallow patches, was deep water, 40 to 50 feet, deep enough for nuclear subs, so buoys are necessary.

This Marina is a well loved one, essentially a long dock along the east side of the creek to which all the transient boats are tied, this from its free postcard.

Here is ILENE under the live oak tree from the shower house, laundry and restaurant. Her mast, with its distinctive double forestay is in the center.

My first chore was to change ILENEs engine oil and filter. The marina takes waste oil for $2 per gallon, and I paid $2.50. We have a good pump that sucks waste oil out of the engine through the dip stick hole. You have to run the engine to get the oil hot before sucking it out but this was not a problem in that we had been running since early in the morning. But I realized that when you think you have gotten all the old oil out you have to wait to let more of it drip down to the bottom so you can suck out more of it. This time I pumped one pump to many and some oil gushed out from the bottom of the canister onto the cardboard box that I had set under it to catch spills. Im hoping I did not ruin this tool and will be able to fix it. I was also able to twist off the old oil filter without dropping it and spilling its dirty contents under the engine. Patience, and resting and drying hands just before it came off was the key. Lene helped out at the stage when you pour the dirty oil from the canister of the pump into the recently emptied oil cans for disposal. She steadied the receptacle and the funnel while I poured. No mess! Then, using a tiny bit of laundry detergent and a stiff brush, I got rid of 99% of the remaining one percent of the pelican poop from the blue canvas.
 The Marina is extremely friendly and provides good, movie watching quality, wifi; Lene has watched a lot of TV shows. They also have bicycles and a golf cart, which we used for the limit of 90 minutes per usage, for shopping at the IGA.

It is a very small store with limited selection and high prices on the east (Atlantic) side of the island, which is being developed with homes and hotels. The one drawback is insects, which bite, especially Lene. Rain has been predicted for the last week, including very high probability several of the days, but it did not come. During this passage the grey lowering skies suggested rain but it did not come until about an hour after our arrival, and lasted for about eight hours.
Because we were spending three nights and two days here, I asked the marina staff for the names of people who wash bottoms, change oil of outboards and align propeller shafts. Leo Ross, 912-266-1323, looked at the alignment, first. "Well", he said, "with the problem being intermittent and only at certain speeds, it might not be an alignment problem at all. Lets take a look."  I had cleared out the aft compartment so everything was ready for him. "Whats this? A motor mount bolt!" he quickly noted, picking it up from the bilge. It seems that the engine was held on its shock absorbing mounts by only three of the four bolts and those three were loose too. And the flange at the forward end of the propeller shaft, which is held in place on the propeller by two set screws, was also loose! After everything was nice and tight, I ran the engine at pretty high speeds in forward and reverse while tied to the dock and so far it looks good, very good indeed. But the acid test will be trying this while underway.
As to the outboard, it needed both its engine oil, which I had, and its lube oil, which I did not have, to be replaced after its 20 hour break in period. And the latter requires a special tool to force the new oil in from the bottom hole until it flows out of the top hole. I will get that tool for next time. Leo went to Westmarine on his break and bought the lube oil. He let me help him and taught me how to do this, including whacking the screwdriver with a hammer to shake lose the tight seal.

Leo looks like a refugee from that Dynasty Duck program but he is a set man, a good teacher, knowledgeable and charges a very fair amount A diver came and scrubbed the bottom and reported that my zincs have 75 to 80 percent left but that the wheel that, when not clogged by seaweed tells us how fast the boat is moving through the water (as compared to over the ground), is broken.
With all of the repair activities we did get time to use the pool and hot club, or do the sightseeing I would have liked. They have a free museum which also offers a $16 guided tour train ride through the historic old town district on the islands western side, which the Macys and Goodyears and other people of wealth set up in the 1890s. A reason to come back! Our last evening we did have a pretty good meal at the annex of the historic dowager but quite busy Jekyll Island Club Hotel, where the rich hob nobbed -- and still do. The Club sent over a van to pick us up and bring us back to the Marina.

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We left the fuel dock at 8 am and anchored at 4:45. Lots of miles but all high bridges except one which opened on request. We went past Vero Beach and Dragon Point, where we had stayed on our way south. This was just as pleasant a passage as the one to Fort Pierce had been ugly. The ICW is deeper, wider and straighter for the most part, and it was sunny and warmer.
A pod of porpoises looked us over while crossing close behind us; we havent seen them for a while. When the tide turned, slowing us from near seven knots to 6.2, the wind came up, just far enough off our starboard bow to allow the small jib to get that speed back for us. We had planned to go outside in the Atlantic to New Smyrna, but the problem with the sunken barge in the Fort Pierce Inlet coupled with winds out of the north made the decision to stay inside until New Smyrna for us -- three passages instead of one.

In the morning the tachometer was not working, nor the engine hour meter. I took off and cleaned the plexiglass cover that protects the panel and the panel itself and jiggled the wires. Jiggling sometimes helps such problems, but no luck today. Then Lene said she had trouble with the ignition switch when turning on the engine. Oh yes, she had accidentally turned it to "Off". After "Start" it should be left "On", but turning it "Off" does not stop the engine -- it only turns off the electricity to its instruments. Switched back to "On" and the tachometer was instantly restored to operation.

A big pleasant surprise when I heard a yell of  "Roger" and saw a dark blue motorized catamaran passing us.

"Its Phat Cat," came next. Dave and Diane, with their two cats aboard, passed us. They resigned from the Harlem and are currently on their last leg (northbound up the Atlantic coast) of the "Great Circle Cruise". They started up the Hudson, and then through canals to the Great Lakes and Canada, down Lake Michigan, the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee and other rivers to the Gulf of Mexico, through the ICW east and south along Floridas west coast to Marathon and then northbound in the Atlantic.  This is a trip for power boats; our mast would have to be taken down for the trip, and laid atop the boat, would extend ILENE from 43 feet long to over 65. Dave and Di have been on the journey for about ten months. Since Marathon, they have been in many of the same places we were, but neither of us knew it and we had not met up until now. Their boats name is not on the boat and I might not have recognized it if they had not called out.

We recalled a wild Harlem Memorial Day Rendezvous near Ellis Island in NY Harbor. We had rafted up to Phat Cat and then another smaller sailboat rafted up to our other side and get her mast caught under our back stay. Several men got on top of Phat Cats roof and pulled down to the side on the other boats main halyard to free her. And again, during a Club Cruise, we enjoyed a good time with Dave and Di in Watch Hill, RI.

Phat Cat is a Lagoon 43, built in France, the same length as ILENE but twice as wide, so they have lots of room. It can be rigged with a mast and sails but Phat Cat is not.

The aft stateroom can be divided by a bulkhead down the middle to make two large staterooms if it is used for chartering; but Phat Cat has one immense stateroom, shown here with one of its two cats, Xena or Cassie, reclining on the queen size bed.  She goes faster than us and when we caught up we anchored near her at Cocoa Village, off to the west of the ICW in ten feet of water with 50 feet of snubbed chain.

Dave put down their dink and ferried us around the first night and the next two days that they stayed with us here, before moving on. We had not planned to stay here so long but the nearest place that can do a professional patch on our dink is in St. Augustine and they will not have time to do our job until April 7, so we have slowed down our itinerary to arrive there when they can do the work which will take two days.

We dined on Thai food with Dave and Di at Thai Thai our first night, a pot luck aboard their large boat the second and blueberry pancakes on ILENE the morning of their departure.

Lene making herself at home on Phat Cats back porch.

Dining room with nav station in background

Dave and I dinked across the Indian River to its eastern side where it was a short walk to the local Publix, less than half a mile. The four of us "shopped" Cocoa Village, right by our free dinghy dock, one afternoon. Lene got two pairs of shoes, Dave and Di enjoyed some excellent pastries from the bakery, and we toured Travis hardware, a famous old fashioned place with a huge inventory including tools for use on ocean liners. We bought a better lock to secure the dink to the shore or to the boat,   We are not far from Cape Canaveral where Disney Cruise ships put in with their thousands of passengers. One of the excursions is to take busloads of tourists to Cocoa Village for shopping.

When Dave and Di headed north, we took our dink across to Merrit Island so Lene could get her fix of supermarket shopping. I went back to Travis for a stainless steel snubber hook to replace the rusty mess that we had aboard, and "spline" rubber to affix the new cat proof screening into the frames of the side screens which had been scratched through. I also visited the bank and the Florida Historical society.

They have a good free dinghy dock at Cocoa Village, where one can tie up fore and aft to keep the dink away from the pilings and use the lock amidships to avoid theft. And you can see the shortened tiller extender sticking up, imagine before I cu 18 inches from it!
Lene got a message, her first on this trip, and after dinner at Murdocks,

(southern cuisine --  delicious and inexpensive) we attended the local production of My Fair Lady at the Cocoa Village Historic Playhouse.






And what a treat! The house holds 600. Eliza Doolittle was a sixteen year old. The actors were great and in the choral numbers 48 of them were on stage, supported by an orchestra of sixteen musicians. The costumes and sets were excellent and one would have paid five times as much to see this show on Broadway. Professor Higgins is such a misogynist and yet even today the story is great because the show makes fun of him for it.

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Lenes finger, at the right, is pointing out our slip on F Dock at this Marina, a huge one. In 2012 and 2014 we stayed at a free dock by the Radisson hotel, a couple hundred yards to the upper left of the poster but this time we wanted repairs and might have had to haul the boat so a marina was needed.

Gaston showed up with his assistant promptly as scheduled. I had cleared out the aft cabin to give access to the area of concern. He laid a pencil on the shaft, so light that it would easily detect vibration. Nothing. It does not happen at the dock, even when, tied onto it tightly, we run the engine in gear up to 2500 rpms, trying to drag the dock. He dissembled the flexible coupling again, tested for alignment with feeler gauges, reassembled it and pronounced that it was within tolerance. So the problem is outside the boat, at or near the propeller end of the shaft. He suggested that we wait until the fall and when the boat is hauled, we check the cutlass bearing and remove the propeller and ship it to California for what will be an expensive reconditioning job. He said that we are not in danger from the current situation.
Then he lent us his truck and we visited the supermarket, the drugstore, and a law firm where I signed a document and got it notarized. I spent a few hours planning the places we could stop along the Potomac on the way up and down to Washington DC. It is slim pickins for anchorages and marinas with water deep enough for ILENEs 58" draft. I have asked the 6500 members of a "private group" on Facebook for more information.
Later Gaston came over and paid us a social visit. He was born in France, raised in Israel and is an excellent mechanic. He was affiliated with and sailed in the Caribbean 1500.

The weather has been rainy most of our two days here and so we did little. I had visited the nautical museum and lightship in 2012 and toured the historic district. It rained then too!
They also have a Childrens Museum and one honoring Virginia athletes. I took a pass on those. There is a small Jewish Museum and a historic 1812 house, both of which can be toured, but only in season, not now.
So we took showers, took on water, cleaned the boat, blogged, read, cooked, ate and watched the first two episodes of the PBS series Wolf Hall, based on a novel by Hillary Mantell, which my book group read a few summers ago, about Thomas Cromwell, an attorney in the time of Henry VIII.

We would have left the second of these two days but the forecast of rain and 25 knot wind in our faces deterred us and the forecast came true.

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Underway from 6:45 until 4:00, outside in the Atlantic. Raised main in the harbor, because we were motoring directly into the wind. Then a brief two minute torrential downpour, a right into the inlet and another right outside put us on course for Beaufort. A straight shot at about 60 degrees for 69.1 miles across a good part of Onslow Bay, which is an 80 mile crescent from Southport to Cape Lookout. Out came the genoa and we were doing fine, on a port beat. But the wind was veering very slowly to the right, forcing us a bit more and more off course, not that this was dangerous: thousands of miles of the Atlantic were to the right. But then the winds came up strongly. The clinometer measures us while heeling 39 degrees.

The effect is more dramatic than shown of the clinometer.

We "buried the rail", i.e., water was rushing over the side deck on the leeward side.

So we furled the genoa, put a reef in the main and put out the small jib. Normalcy and safety restored. When the wind diminished a bit we were at a slower speed. Our objective was to be on our dock before night fall, so we turned on the engine and motorsailed. At one point we were pushed so far off course that it was time to tack. Then, instead of being pushed to the right of where we wanted to go, we were being pushed toward the left. As the wind continued to veer or "clock around" to the right, we were able to change course to the right, two degrees at a time, until our course over the ground matched the bearing to the Beaufort inlet.
We met two interesting boats in the inlet, a tug going in and a shrimper coming out.

Beaufort Docks is the municipal marina of Beaufort, with a large,friendly and knowledgeable staff. They gave each of us a wooden nickle, good (with a dollar for a tip) for a free glass of wine at the restaurant/bar of the marina. I had the house red both nights because Lene does not drink. Their showers are not fancy or spacious but clean, with lots of hooks, seats and plenty hot water. They provide a quality wifi at the docks. We used their courtesy car to get a propane refill at a fish store. And also, a delicious fresh flounder that the store fileted for us and Lene cooked that night. We also got groceries. and fresh engine oil for the next change. We each got haircuts from Rachel of Enchanted on the Lane. A mechanic came over to try again with the engines intermittent rattle and did less but charged more than Leo of Jekyll Island -- nothing, except he gave his opinions.
Our other diner was at a restaurant called Queen Annes Revenge, its food adequate. It was named after Blackbeards pirate ship, that sank just outside the inlet through which we had entered.
The North Carolina Maritime Museum had a good exhibit on the recovery of the remnants of that ship along with pirate life generally -- free admission.

There is also a lot there about commercial fishing and outboard engines, but the best part of this museum was about what they called "indigenous boats." These are boats built of locally available wood and designed to do the work needed by the local population and the water conditions they are likely to face. It started with dugout canoes with the best explanation I have heard on how they are created and ended with the sharpies, a type of flat bottomed fishing boat first built in New England but modified and popular in NC waters. They had several full size boats and models in the display. Worth a lot more time than the two hours I had for it.
I also had taken a stroll through the historic town, three blocks by ten blocks in size along the waterfront. Strip shopping malls and other attractions and probably some lovely suburbs are outside of this historic area. Front street is at the waterfront, its business side full of restaurants and shops and, across the small park area to the right, the marinas docks. The kitties did not enjoy it here as much as they had hoped to because a man on our neighboring boat is allergic to cats and was not pleased when he discovered Alfie exploring his cabin. They had to remain aboard.

Old placarded homes, are on the other streets.

The Allen Davis house of 1774, picture above was used by General Burnside in the Civil War but it did not say which side he fought for.

A historic triumph for this rural town was when the Railroad was built here, allowing inland produce to be shipped to market. The Depot remains beside where the tracks used to run

and is now a civic meeting place with a museum including this recreation of the RR office. Both the Railroad office and our barber reminded me of my maternal grandfather who was a barber when young and retired from the railroad office when he got older.
As sections of the Atlantic coast of Florida have been nicknamed the gold, treasure and space coasts, Beaufort and several surrounding towns now call themselves the Crystal Coast. Someone told me this was because the Atlantic water is so crystal clear.
In 2012 we anchored out off the docks here and did not go ashore. We made up for that oversight this time. From here on until Norfolk we will be inside.

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9:45 to 7:45 -- a long day, longer than planned. Our plan had been to go to the anchorage by Fort Matanzas on the Matanzas River, only 42.3 miles to break todays trip into two legs. The various sources we use: Skipper Bob, Doyle and Active Captain, have different ideas about how best to enter this anchorage. They all involve turning east into the Matanzas from the ICW but some are crowd sourced and some say to make the turn just south of green buoy 81A while others said to make the turn north of that buoy, and there is a discussion that the sands shift. We turned in just south and went from 12 feet of water to hitting the sandy bottom within 20 feet. Whump! Naturally, in such chancy circumstances we were going slow, as slow as the current in the ICW would allow. But if we had not been making some speed the current would have pushed us backward when we turned. We were able to back off in perhaps 15 seconds. But now we knew that we did not know how to get in there, though we saw another boat anchored within. So this episode took the bloom off the Matanzas anchorage rose and we motored the remaining miles 12.4 miles that we had planned to do the next day, to the Municipal Marinas mooring field in St. Augustine.

The waters were as vacant during this Easter Sunday passage as they had been crowded with people and boats the day before. This may have had something to do with the weather. It did not rain, but all day the meteorologists predicted rain and the skies looked like they were planning to let loose. It was reasonably warm until late afternoon. In the morning the winds were quite strong, gusting to 20 knots, so we flew the small jib while motoring and made more than seven knots. Later we made such speed when favored by the tide but only 4.8 knots when it flowed against us. Someones idea of an unusual waterside home:

It was a bit foggy, misty lets say,  toward the end, diminishing visibility of "the next buoy" which is our holy grail. This reminded me of how dependent I am on the most primitive navigation device we have: the human eye. But the mild fog in the mooring field is what permitted me to capture the loom of the Saint Augustine Lighthouse (one white flash every 30 seconds) at dusk.

We were visited buy a pack of four Porpoises, which swam against our boat on its mooring, probably seeking to eat seaweed growing on our hull, which reminds me she needs a cleaning.  Ilene believes they sensed our cats and wanted to make friends.

We plan to use our dink to run errands and for sightseeing tomorrow, and the launch, which only runs only once per two hours from 10 a.m to 6 p.m., on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the dink will be repaired. Weather permitting, we will sail, outside, to Cumberland Island by the St. Marys River on Thursday. less than 60 miles and ILENEs first sail since Miami to Fort Lauderdale.

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