The End of the Road (for a while)

It’s a relaxing motor up the ICW, but we have one last stop before heading into the Chesapeake.  Ocracoke Island has always been a place of interest to us, so we take a detour east to the Outer Banks.  Ocracoke is accessible only by boat or plane, and is located at the very southern end of the Outer Banks.  Much of the surrounding waters are shallow, but a deep channel exists into Silver Lake, the protected harbor for the island.  That is, the channel is deep if you stay in it, but it is also consistently shifting so the buoys don’t match up with our charts.  In a moment of confusion we take a marker on the wrong side and immediately get hailed by a ferry leaving the harbor.  The captain points out our error and we quickly change course – we should have been aground but somehow managed to avoid that crisis. 

There are marinas inside Silver Lake along with an anchorage, but we decide to pull up to a National Park dock.  One of the benefits of aging is that you qualify for very inexpensive docking as senior citizens within the National Park system.   

The view from our dock overlooking Silver Lake harbor

For the most part, the harbor and docks are empty.  It is still off season, but the town is gearing up for the tourist crowds that will begin to arrive around Memorial Day.  That is, they will begin to come if the ferry from Hattaras can run.  Once again, we see another outcome of Hurricane Irene.  Last fall’s storm silted up the Hattaras Inlet and now the ferry boats can pass only on the very highest of tides. The tourists are missing along with food at the grocery store, and, according to a live-aboard sailor at our dock, nary a toothbrush can be found anywhere on the island. The ferries we saw while approaching Ocracoke travel several hours from the North Carolina mainland and are a much more costly means of shipping to the island.

We plan to stay at Ocracoke several days as it is truly a delightful place.  Bicycles are a mainstay for transportation, and we pedal through the village and surrounding developments where some of the side streets are paved with crushed oyster shells.  There are a number of attractive restaurants and gift shops awaiting the crowds. We cross over the island to the Atlantic side where the National Park controls the entire length of the seashore.  It is a magical land of sand dunes, flat beaches, and pounding Atlantic surf, and we share it with only a few sunbathers and fishermen. 

Pounding surf on the Atlantic side of Ocracoke

Just us and the ever present shore birds

The dunes for which the Outer Banks are famous

As always, weather controls our choices, and we leave a day sooner than planned due to some coming unsettled weather.  We overnight in the tiny town of Bellhaven and the next day, after surviving the traffic and bridges coming into Norfolk, VA, we stop in Hampton, VA.  This looks like an interesting college town with some recent redevelopment along the water front, but all we have time for is a dinner at a local restaurant to celebrate both Mother’s Day and my birthday (what a bummer when they both fall on the same day).

The next day we take a short hop up to Deltaville, VA.  We anchor off the docks of Deltaville Boat Yard for a couple of nights, getting a variety of tasks completed before our boat is hauled out for a month of routine maintenance.  For the majority of the time, we will live on the boat while it is on the hard.  This facility makes it as easy as possible as we have electricity and water.  What we don’t have is a working head (bathroom) which means we have a five minute walk to a restroom and shower – try that in the middle of the night for a fun experience! We are working at a number of maintenance tasks, but the yard will strip off all of our bottom paint and reapply six coats of barrier paint and three coats of bottom paint.  We are also looking into having our standing rigging replaced, either now or within the next year.  But, no matter how you slice and dice the situation, this is the price you have to pay to cruise full time.  We commiserate and share dinners with other cruisers in the same predicament, enjoying a screened in area overlooking pretty Jackson Creek.  Just across the way is an osprey nest whose residents keep us entertained while perching on some of the docked boats’ wind instruments – never a dull moment!  And speaking of never dull, the unsettled weather that sent us here sooner than expected has morphed into the season’s first named tropical storm.  It is located directly east of us, but we hope to only experience increased winds and some rain.  Finally, while the yard is hard at work, we will drive to Ohio and Wisconsin to visit family and friends, and also get the routine maintenance our bodies require with visits to doctors and dentists.  Thus, this blog will take a break until Exuberant is back afloat and underway sailing north for the summer.

Heading Back to the Good Old USA

We spend three nights at a dock at Treasure Cay in the Abacos while the weather settles down.  Friends anchored about 20 miles further south have reported seeing wind gusts in the 60’s, but our sheltered harbor sees considerably less. 

With the passage of this front we have an extended period of fair weather and feel it is best to begin the journey back to the States.  In addition, we have friends on another boat with similar plans, so we will have good company during the passages and layovers.  Our first hurdle is getting through the Whale Passage which exposes you to ocean waves and tidal rips.  With the improved weather there is a veritable parade of boats at slack tide heading to the northern Abacos.  

Distant island in the northern Abacos

It would be nice to stop for a day or two to explore this area, but we are determined to make the long passage while the weather is benign. Thus, these islands will have to wait for next year.  We head north until the chain of now mostly uninhabited islands turns west into the Little Bahamas Bank.  We pass the last significant island at sunset and proceed over the bank of shallow, flat water for another 50 miles until we find ourselves in deep Atlantic waters, about 60 miles east of Florida.  It is here that the Gulf Stream laps the Bahamas, and here where we make our turn north into the fast flowing current.  The Gulf Stream is a conveyor belt for sailboats.  At times under sail we see speeds of over 11 knots, not bad when your hull speed is somewhere around 8 knots. Through the day and the following night we click off the east coast ports we so laboriously passed last fall. At one point, we have several small birds take up residency on our boat when we are about 100 miles off shore.  We wonder what they are doing out here and suspect they have been blown off course to the ocean and need a resting spot. 

One  of our little hitchhikers - it would sit on your shoulder or on a finger

By the next day they appear to have left, but later we find one has died in the forward stateroom. By sunset of the third day we have left the Gulf Stream and are heading into Charleston, SC.  We cover 460 miles in just under 60 relatively painless hours.  We drop anchor in the Ashley River and first thing the following morning, check in with Customs and Boarder Protection at the nearby marina.

The pineapple motif of this fountain in Charleston symbolizes a welcoming spirit - we felt very welcome to be back in the USA

 

We are legally home and now it is time to reacquaint ourselves with civilization.  Since leaving Nassau in December, we have seen only one working stop light.  We have been bicycling with little traffic, and traveling on the left hand side of the road.  Charlestown on bicycle is a whole other story. We have many errands to run: groceries, West Marine for missing supplies and parts, and a mall for a variety of other needs. The heavy traffic takes some adjustment, and happily we live through the experience.  It is difficult to describe the numbness you feel when you finally arrive in the land of plenty.  The grocery store is overwhelming – you walk down the aisles with your mouth agape and struggle to limit yourself to purchases that can be carried by bike. The laundry is located in a nice dockside restaurant where you have breakfast while monitoring the new, high quality machines that don’t eat your clothes.  There are so many choices at the mall that you struggle to make decisions. In the evenings we dine out with our friends, but have difficulty choosing where to go; again, we are not used to having so many options.  We also have a little free time in Charleston to bicycle through the historic sections of town.  Not much has changed since we visited last fall except for the pervading fragrance of jasmine that is currently in bloom. Everything seems so green and lush in marked contrast to the arid landscapes of the Bahamas.

A weather window opens up, and we leave Charleston for another ocean passage. This time we are too far west to take advantage of the Gulf Stream, but we have a comfortable passage of 30 hours and 213 miles to Beaufort, NC.  It is mostly a motor, but the trip is enhanced by several encounters with pods of dolphins. They play in our bow wake, they dive under the hull and reappear on the other side, they swim along side our cockpit and roll on to their sides to glance at us, and, once in a while, they jump totally out of the water.  It is a thrill for us, and we suspect they are trying to make some sort of contact with us, another species of mammals.  In all, our two passages have covered a distance that would take us close to a month to do on the Intercoastal Waterway.

We arrive at Beaufort mid-day and find the anchorage to be very crowded. Rather than risk swinging into the channel and being asked by the Coast Guard to move at an inopportune moment, we decide to take a dock on the town waterfront.  We relish the opportunity to have unlimited electricity and fresh water, and spend an entire day cleaning the boat.  Over the past months we have accumulated copious amounts of salt on the deck, rigging, and canvas, and since it rarely rains in the Bahamas, Mother Nature has not assisted with a washdown.  A clean boat is a happy boat, and we’ve got one happy boat!

With chores completed, we wander the waterfront boardwalk past many tourist oriented shops and restaurants.  The place is hopping as this weekend is Beaufort’s annual wooden boat show.  On display are some beautiful home built wooden boats that would be equally as appropriate as fine furniture.   

This one person trimaran kayak was used for fishing - seems too beautiful for that!

It’s hard to believe they will ever see water, but their owners take pride in describing the experiences they have had.  One young builder of a trimaran tells of a race he participated in that circumnavigated Florida.  Also on display are several beautifully restored Lyman run-abouts, manufactured in our hailing port of Sandusky.   

One of several Lymans on display

The boat show is sponsored by the North Carolina Maritime Museum, so we stop by there to see the displays.  This is an extensive museum with the central focus on the ongoing aquatic archeological dig of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, Blackbeard’s primary pirate ship that sunk just off the entrance to Beaufort. A large maritime library and display of model boats also capture our attention.  Across the street, the museum sponsors a school of wooden boat building.  The large shop is full of interesting hand tools, and docked outside the facility are a number of traditional sailing craft that have been built on site.  Occasionally, we see them under sail through the surrounding anchorage.  

This gaff rigged sailing skiff works its way through the harbor traffic

 Perhaps the biggest draw is the boat building contest taking place under a tent next door.   

Activity in the boat building tent with a finished example from last year's contest

 

Twenty teams are given the raw materials and four hours to build a simple rowing skiff. After the gun goes off, we hear screaming power tools and see billowing clouds of saw dust.  Four hours later, with the finish gun, over half of the boats are complete, and the rest definitely resemble the finished product.  The contest scoring is three-part, with credit for the time taken to completion, quality of workmanship, and a follow-up rowing race between the functional boats.  It is entertaining to say the least.

We enjoy the ambiance of Beaufort with its streets of antebellum homes and frontage on Taylor Creek which separates the town from Carrot Island, part of the Rachel Carson Nature Preserve (under the auspices of the National Park Service) and home to a herd of wild horses which can occasionally be seen on the island’s beaches. 

Wild horses on the distant beach

 

Traffic is light so bicycling is a good way to see the area by day and in the evenings we enjoy live music at several of the restaurants along the water front.  

We could happily stay longer in Beaufort, but we need to continue northward.  We bid farewell to our cruising companions, Linda and Roger on Sandcastle, as they are heading to New Bern, NC to dock their boat for the summer.  We have traveled with them off and on since leaving Georgetown in the Exumas, and parting ways with good friends is one of the downsides to cruising. We will complete our journey to the Chesapeake via the Intercoastal for the remaining 200 miles.  Otherwise, we would need to round Cape Hatteras, often referred to as the graveyard of ships – not a very enticing description from our perspective.  

A typical anchorage scene along the ICW in North Carolina