Let's buy a boat in Miami he said ....

Early Morning on the ICW

Thursday 14th November

Veering off the ICW we pulled into Beaufort and found a great anchorage directly in front of the main tourist strip, with the added bonus of easy dingy access. We dropped the anchor and headed ashore, we put on a load of washing and after a quick walk around we headed for a little pub that we had read about in Active captain, and it was tiny - set in an old old building with heaps of character you could just imagine pirates congregating in the corner, it was full of sailing folk and pretty cool locals. We are right in the middle of North Carolina so the accents are getting pretty thick with a southern drawl think "y'all take care now ya hear". As we are having a beer waiting on the washing we started chatting to Bill who offered to drive us to the local supermarket (it was going to be a fair walk to get there and back) - how nice was that.
We were happy to take Bill up on his offer and after collecting our laundry we jumped in his car and we were off to "Piggly Wiggly" the supermarket with the cutest name. He then dropped us back at the dingy dock we had taken the opportunity to load up with some heavy items, like 2 boxes of beer and a big bag of flour.

Once back on the boat we discovered to our horror that Craig's phone was missing !!!

We searched all through the boat and the dingy, Craig went back to the dock and walked around where we had gotten out of the car - we rang the phone, it rang but there was no answer. We were hopeful it was in Bills car, he had told us he volunteered at the Beaufort Maritime Museum so we knew we would be able to contact him in the morning.

We were up and on land early, retraced our steps from when Craig last remembered using his phone, he had taken a photo of the sunset with Adriana in the foreground.

Our next step was to contact Bill, the staff at the museum were so helpful they called Bill and he searched his car but no it was not there, we contacted the supermarket and went back to the laundromat, but no it was gone.

Luckily we still have my phone, the very kind lady in the museum ordered us an Uber lift to the AT&T phone shop, where they happily gave us a new sim card with the same phone number at no cost.
The down side was we have lost a lot of photos and Craig had to wrack his brains to remember what passwords he had used for all the apps on his phone, Navionics, Windy, Banking just to name a few.
We met up with Daniel and Andrew and went back to the pub that evening but no the phone didn't ever show up. This really put a dark cloud over our stay in Beaufort.

Adriana in the Beaufort anchorage area, we lost all the other photos

Friday 15th November

On the way down we have been watching the series Black Sails and we are now in pirate territory. We went ashore to go back to the Maritime Museum. It is a beautiful well presented free museum with a large section on pirates, mostly focusing on Blackbeard, with lots of artifacts collected from the ocean floor, from wrecked ships either pirate ships or ships the pirates had taken.
A research scientist was on site her job was to sift through sand taken from around a wreck and pull out tiny particles of gold, painstakingly slow work. There were buttons and pins, swords and all sorts of tableware and bottles on display.

It was such a great spot in Beaufort we could have stayed there for a while but guess what there is a 3 day storm on its way. We tried to stay on anchor but the forecasts were for gusts up to 60 knots and temps down to 3C and we just didn't want to be that uncomfortable for 3 days and 3 nights.

We get our information from the Windy app

We had to call around but managed to find a berth at the Moorhead City Docks only a short motor from where we were. It was late in the day when we made the decision to move and the winds had started to build so we high tailed it around the corner and tied up safely to the town docks where we had showers and could go for a walk even in the rain and wind. Once we were settled we realised, as we had gone bow in to the spot, our power cord would not reach so we went for a walk to the local marine shop to try to source an extension cord. Unfortunately they did not have a cord with the correct amps that we needed.

The girls there were so helpful with their southern drawls "an all". A local who was being served at the same time as us offered to drive us to West Marine to see if they had the right one, how nice was that. To cut a long story short we had called ahead and what they thought we needed was in stock but the ampage was wrong plus it was going to cost us a few hundred US$$$ more than on Amazon.

This is the extension cord we were trying to find not your average extension cord

After catching an Uber back we just ran a normal extension cord down through the bedroom window and ran the portable heater.

We had wrapped a towel around the gap in the window where the cord came through but that didn't work very well as it wicked the water into the boat. In the end we just left the gap open, it actually didn't rain that much over the 3 days but the temperature dropped and it was very damp with buckets of condensation inside the boat and wind howling through the rigging. We awoke in the middle of the night with the ipad on the throw blanket soaking wet underneath from the heat of our bodies.

We ran the small heater the whole time we were there.

There were yachts either side of us one couple were from Germany and on the other side they were from Canada, we are meeting so many Canadians heading South for winter. They have a name "Snowbirds"

We rode out the 3 day weather securely tied to land, it was such a luxury. I even managed to get to the local library and upload a couple of blog pages.

Monday 18th November

We were up early and ready to go by 8am the winds had abated but the temperatures were still low !! So low that we decided to run the gauntlet and do a sail down the outside, back out into the North Atlantic to try and get further South as quickly as possible.

We worked out we could get to Florida if we sailed for 72 hours (3 days and 3 nights) 360 nautical miles. We would be missing out on South Carolina and Georgia but we were sick of being chased by the cold weather and 360 nm south would make a huge difference.

We passed this strange vessel, we asked the Uber driver - its used to catch practice missiles

Our first day was easy we had wind then it dropped out then it picked up again so it was a mixture of motoring and sailing we even sailed with "big red" the spinnaker when the wind dropped to a slight breeze.

Craig bundled up from the cold pulling up Big Red

The first night was hard and at one stage we both fell asleep but probably not for long we have to learn to be more disciplined in taking our turns on watch/sleeping. We had made a green curry and had plenty of food but you tend not to feel like eating and after the first night you generally just feel hung over.

It was so cold we were wrapped in all the warm clothes we owned

Another stunning sunset

We put the fishing line out on the second day and caught a tuna. It was just within bag size, it was like a massacre onboard when Craig filleted it there was blood everywhere I mean everywhere and you actually have to scrub the blood to remove it from the deck, yuck.

Before the massacre

An earlier fishing attempt ended with something really big chomping on a very expensive lure.

Craig was not happy

Stunning skies out on the North Atlantic

We were joined by a little bird for part of the journey, it spent a few hours resting on deck and was happy hopping around our feet.

The second night was horrendous with strong headwinds and confused seas with short sharp waves slamming into us and throwing us around we had to slow the boat down by shortening the main sail, it was difficult to go downstairs so we just sat wrapped in blankets and took it in turns to sleep it was still bitterly cold.

I mentioned earlier it gets dark about 5.30pm and the sun comes up at 7am - that's 13 hours of darkness.

So that we were not cooking in the dark we had dinner early and after we were finished we just looked at each other and said omg what are we going to do for the next 13 hours !!!

As dawn broke we hit the gulf stream we were out at least 60 nautical miles off shore as we were giving Cape Fear a wide berth. The water turned the most amazing blue and was 24c but it was choppy and we had current running against us making it quite uncomfortable so we were happy to veer inland once we had passed the cape.

We kept on through the night with no real drama.

On the second day we were getting used to the routine and our night sail was steady and not too choppy.

On the morning of the 3rd day the seas got so rough at one stage that I cracked it and said no more we cannot do another day/night like this. Thank goodness we had reached our planned destination and turned to head towards the Jacksonville harbour entrance.

There are only a handful of entrances from the ocean into or out of the ICW and even less that are main shipping channels, we had read about shoaling affecting the non major entrances so had planned to go into Jacksonville one of the major shipping channels.

After the choppy rough weather it suddenly changed to smooth rolling seas and light winds the water changed back to greenish blue and the temperature of the water dropped to 17c so we were out of the gulf stream and no longer fighting the currents. As the day warmed up we were able to remove our layers and for a while we just drifted along doing a few knots not fast but just cruising steadily along.

Craig went below and made sushi using the tuna he had caught. How lucky am I

We were greeted by dolphins as we approached Jacksonville one pod with a young pup who was so fast and had so much more energy than the others then another pod and another, our first real encounter with dolphins swimming along our bow.

Luckily we have all the ingredients onboard

Making do with a teacup holding the soy sauce

21st November 2019

The entrance to Jacksonville has windswept beaches on one side and warships on the other, lots of fishing boats, and the river was being dredged, there was lots happening around us as we motored up the St Johns River that leads into Jacksonville, then we took a side turn and anchored in a small basin just off the river we didn't need to take the 20 mile motor all the way into Jacksonville, we just needed to rest and regain some energy.

Entrance to the harbour we are excited to see the white sand beaches

So many Navy ships up and down the coast

Our anchorage in Jacksonville, just off the river, opposite suburbia

St Augustine is our next stop and we decided to take the inland ICW for the 30 nautical miles and as we were entering the start of the ICW we were using both our Navionics and Chartplotter, we were off the marked channel but both devices showed adequate depth for us, when suddenly we stopped dead OOpps we were sitting in 0.00 water. Craig threw Adriana into reverse and managed to get us out of a grounding, we swung back around and took the entrance in the centre of the white marked channel showing on the chart plotter, whew.
We had three bridges to pass under and timed it well managing to pass under them at low tide and just rising tides. The currents were incredibly strong especially under the bridges where the waterways were a lot narrower.
This part of the ICW is highly populated so its really interesting seeing all the waterside properties there are many huge mansions and boats galore along he shoreline, there is still shoaling and obstructions so it takes a lot of concentration to stay on track, but we made it safely to the outskirts of St Augustine, where we came upon a lovely secluded little spot just off the river, we pulled in and dropped the anchor for a restful night before hitting civilisation again. Its only going to get busier and more populated from here down to Miami.