First up, you all likely may know there is a Beaufort, NC and a Beaufort, SC. They are spelled exactly the same however they are pronounced very differently. If you mispronounce the city when in the wrong state that locals will not be impressed. So, it’s BOW-firt, NC and BEW-furd, SC. Now that we have all that straight we can freely wander around town without offending anyone.

We left Oriental about 8 am headed south for Beaufort. It’s only about a 4 to 4.5 hour trip. Leaving Oriental the boat is covered in yellow pollen and there are large amounts of pollen floating in the water as well. The boat will need a good washing when we get there.

The considerations for this trip are that south of Oriental we start to experience current along the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW). There is also some significant current coming into Beaufort and trying to dock a boat with current can be a bit tricky. We decided to time our departure so we will hit slack tide when we arrive in Beaufort. The dock hands at the marina in Beaufort have assured us of their help on the dock when we arrive. Here is a photo leaving Oriental.

The mornings here are still a bit cool, it was in the high 50’s when we left this morning. We are just get accustomed to boat travel mode once again. We have hot coffee and away we go.

The scenery along the ICW is very pretty.

We had one 65′ bridge to go under today. No problem.

Luckily we didn’t end up like this boat.

We got to the Beaufort Docks marina right about 12:30 pm and slack tide is at 12:20 pm. We had no problems coming in and getting right into the slip. The directions the marina gave us to the slip were all based on the landmark of the 165′ sailing vessel parked at one of the end slips in the marina. You can’t miss it. The instructions were, just come to the stern, turn into the fairway and dock to the right.

After we arrived and checked in, we took showers and decided to walk around town and see what there was to see. We arrived on a Monday and like most towns, we are finding that many restaurant may be closed on Monday or Tuesday. We did find one restaurant open in town, called Finz which was right on the waterfront. It was warm enough in the sun to sit outside and we had a great meal. Sometimes an afternoon meal for us is Linner, either lunch or dinner.

The next day we gave the boat a good wash and I was able to also clean all the eisen glass, that’s the plastic glass for our enclosure. Meanwhile Mark was cleaning up mud in one of our holds that had washed down toward the bilge from the anchor locker. Mark had cleaned the anchor locker a few days earlier and now had to clean up the remaining areas that were downstream.

It was a nice day so we decided to get the dinghy down and the outboard motor because we wanted to explore Carrot Island which is directly across from the marina. Carrot Island is uninhabited strip of land that has wild ponies on the island. It’s part of a nature preserve so there are walking trails and other wildlife as well.

Of course nothing on a boat goes to plan. Before we could go exploring in the dinghy Mark had to spend about an hour fixing the outboard. The outboard won’t start and was leaking a bit of gas. He took apart the carburetor and cleaned it and put it all back together. It seems like something wasn’t seated correctly from the last time he did the carburetor because once it was all back together, it started and ran just fine.

We dinghied over to the island and did some exploring.

We found the wild ponies!

We ended the day with a nice meal aboard the boat and we were both tired and ready for bed early with all our chores and exploring today.