Belhaven, Oriental, Beaufort, Wrightsvil

Oh boy has it been an action packed week or more! We are currently in Wrightsville Beach, NC just outside of Wilmington. We are going to be here a little while. :) Good thing it is a very cute beach city with PLENTY going on and Wilmington not that far away.

Where to start....I am writing and picturing all of this so I can have it when we are done. I just turned 50 (thanks to everyone that wished me Happy Birthday) and I just don't trust my memory so much. The pictures are funny for me, because they may seem inconsequential but they trigger a memory of a location or an event. Find Penguins limits me to 10 pictures per post, so these I had to chose VERY carefully. I want to remember so much about the last week or so.

We traveled pretty fast from Belhaven to Beaufort because of the damage done to the boat during the storm and we wanted to be planted to do the repairs. We "skipped" our planned overnight in Oriental, only stopping for gas, a walk and lunch. It was a cute little town with another marina / motel Dave and I should consider for retirement (only kidding). But other than that, it did not have much to recommend it other than a lot of flies and tightly packed in boats. The best word to describe it was - Mayberryish.

From Oriental we stayed on the ICW and made our way into Beaufort. Beaufort docks were very expensive, but we found a dock that was owned by a local Friends of the Museum group. It was cheap. It boasted a porta potty (1) and the Junior Sailing club. It was a mile from town and had a great field for the dogs to run in. Dave already mentioned the pirate rally that was going on when we arrived!

In Beaufort we rented a car since we knew we were going to be driving around for repairs and we got off the boat for a few nights to celebrate my 50th Birthday. Dave showered me with gifts, flowers, treats and catered to my desire to recover from our Ophelia trauma with relaxing by the pool. My friend Aimee, who is doing so much for us, did one more thing and surprised me by showing up to celebrate with us. For some reason I am very bummed about turning 50 and all of this really helped me jump over the milestone. It was perfect.

After Dave "mostly" finished the needed repairs, we decided that 6 days in one city was a little too long and it was time to move on. Our very poorly researched plan was to hit Swansboro, just about 2 hours away. The thing was, the days had been very grey leading up to our departure, we had no water and no pump out on our inexpensive no frills dock and our solar was down to it's last watt. Without a whole lot of planning, we decided that the best thing to do was to use the boat engines to charge our batteries, make a 2 hour journey into 3 or 4 and go far out into the Atlantic to make water and dump our black water (the rule is 3 miles out). Things started out fine and ended with us traveling almost 70 miles and 6 hours straight to Wrightsville Beach, past Swansboro and Past Surf City, our other planned stops.

I'd have to let Dave tell the story to fully encapsulate what happened but I can tell you what I know. The solar not charging was too much drain on the batteries and whatever Dave tried to do to circumvent that drained the boat batteries instead of the other way around and that made the boat stop running altogether, let alone make water or dump black water. We floated a bit and then began calling the very very few marinas we saw along our route. We found one we thought would be fine in Swansboro, but we had to get there before 5pm. On our approach to the inlet, we noticed that waves were breaking in what was marked as the channel. Trusting our navigation charts, we attempted an approach anyway and hit 1 ft of depth. You guessed it! Another bent propeller! And a frustration at not being able to get into the channel to stop for the night. More frantic research ensued and the best we could come up with was to make it another 40 miles to Wrightsville Beach.

As I mentioned when we hit Swansboro we were pushing 5pm. With another 40 miles to go that means at least 2 and half hours for us. And yes, that would mean attempting to enter another channel, but this time in the dark. All I can tell you is that I sighed. Dave researched and memorized the channel on his graphs and we thanked the gods when we saw lighted channel markers and many houses and a bridge lighting the waterway we needed to anchor in. And after 4 tries, anchor we did. That is where we are now. Anchored in the middle of Wrightsville Beach. Dave is so happy! It's FREE!

What Could Go Right? I feel incredibly loved. Our dogs are so fun to watch frolic. It's like watching the world through little kids' eyes. Dave is very very handy and when the boat just turned off in the middle of the Atlantic, I DID immediately look up Boat Tow telephone numbers, but I believed him that he could fix it. The weather is BEAUTIFUL for the next at least 5 days. There is so much to do here and another car rental is right up the street for ease of getting around. We have had great access to groceries and laundry and we really lack for nothing. Even water. We have just had to buy it to drink. Dave has a plan today to get our boat pumped out and water filled for showers while he does the remaining fixes, so it should all be really comfortable.

What Could Go Wrong? Well, I have outlined that, but for posterity's sake; In Wrightsville Beach Dave will be working on sanding and gel coating the boat, solar fix, finding a back up generator, replacing the propellers (good thing we have those extra's now), getting an air tank, getting gas, getting water, getting pumped out, re-anchoring and he STILL doesn't have great fixes for oil leak and water leaks.

Boating is so much fun!Read more