Left Beaufort, NC around 8:30 after meeting with local sailors at the Bean (every marina seems to have one) – the local coffee shop where boaters gather to share local advice and opinions about what we should/should not do … mostly they are full of encouragement to “have fun” and “don’t worry about running aground”. The motto seems to be, ‘just get out there and do it”.
In this heat, we now hope for rain ... or at least cloud cover all day!
The first 2 hours of the day are ideal … not too hot, nice breeze, running up Adams Creek Canal which is wide and deep across the channel. For the first time, I relax enough to bring my book up into the cockpit and get engrossed in something other than watching for trouble. But trouble in the shape of a barge manages to find us all the same. Dan had been watching the barge ever since it entered the canal. Usual protocol for a passing is port-to-port … kinda like driving down the freeway, with the understanding that each vehicle will stay on their said of the dotted line. All went well until the barge was a quarter-mile away … then it started to go to starboard, looking like it wanted to pass us on the right. This would be akin to the oncoming car on the interstate crossing the line and entering your lane of traffic. What do you do? With no communication from the barge, Dan continued to move to the right … kinda like moving over to drive on the shoulder, but you can only do that for so long till you are about to drive off the road. In our case, that meant that we were being pushed outside of the channel, and our safe water depth of 16 ft rapidly dropped to 9ft and then to 7ft and then to 3ft. The barge was still coming straight at us, and it was amazing that we weren’t aground. With no place left to go, and Maja still moving forward, Dan did the only thing he could … turned to port, gunned the engine, and turned in front of the barge to pass on the other side of the channel (kinda like deciding instead of being run off the road by the car crossing in your lane, you decide to cross over and drive in their lane!).. If I hadn’t thought we were going to be run over by the barge, and die, it would have been a great picture.
Now the barge is paying attention to us … and we get several loud honks of his horn. As we passed the barge to starboard, it was quite a scene to see both captains out on deck, yelling at each other at the top of their lungs! I suggested using the radio instead, and Dan dropped his usual courtesy tone to rage at the barge captain for running him out of the channel, not passing to port, and not communicating via radio. No reply, but we did hear the barge captain tell another boat in the canal that he would be passing to port (ha!).
Big River! At times, you couldn't see any shoreline.
So, no more reading in the cockpit! The last stretch of today’s trip was across the Neuse River with the north wind, and as expected, the waves were breaking over the bow so all the ports had to be closed below … making for a very hot boat. Fortunately it was a short stretch of water b/c it was none too pleasant.
We anchored in Oriental at 2pm, and took the dinghy into town. Oriental is considered the sailboat capital of NC because there are over 2500 boats and 850 residents. We stopped in at the local Bean Café (every place has one!) and had an ice cream cone while chatting with the locals. We had been in touch with “friends of friends” from BLM who left us bikes to use in town. It was a great way to tour this very cute place, and we hit all the local hot spots (marine flea market and hardware store) before returning the boat to two sailors who now live in Oriental, just off Whittaker Creek, where they are able to dock their boat. Very Cool. They have done a ton of sailing/cruising all over the world, and when we asked their opinion of several crossings we have ahead, the wife would share detailed advice while the husband simply said “sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and bear it; even the worse crossing doesn’t last forever. You’ll get thru it”.
And with that sage advice, we walked the beautiful waterfront back to the dinghy dock. We cooked burgers on the grill while watching the small fishing boats come out at sunset to go shrimping. These are small flat-bottomed boats (~16ft); they throw out large nets and troll in and out of the harbor all nite, cleaning their catch at daybreak.
This would be a great place to stay longer, but we have decided to move every day as we want to get to Norfolk as soon as we can so Dan can go down to FL and see his mom.
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