Beaufort was a perfect little marina with some very big sailboats. We
came into the dock to
See some ocean going sailboats with 100
foot masts. Most sailboats can go to
sea, like the 30 foot boat that was in the marina in Oriental, headed to
England. But these sailboat were doing
it in style. Beaufort has a good inlet
to the ocean with no bridges to get under.
The controlling height on the ICW is about 65 feet of vertical clearance
which is the height of the mast of a 35-40 foot sailboat. These are highway bridge that don’t
open. All the other bridges open either
on demand or on a fixed schedule. Most
sailboats have to have all the lower bridges opened. We can get under anything over 30 feet with
our antennae up and we can winch the antennae down to 16 feet if we need
to.
We docked next to a nice Italian gentleman, Rene, who had come over from
Turkey solo and was headed to New York.
Back to perfect little marina because it was small, easy to get into and
right in downtown historic Beaufort. I
went for a walk the next morning and was delighted to see all of the old homes
in pretty good shape and most of them had a plaque with information about the
year they were built and the name of the original owner.
As you can see this house has had different historic owners
While John waited for a mechanic to change the oil, we have about 100
hours on the engines since Ft Meyers, I
got serious about chores. Four load of
laundry at the laundromat across the street in the General Store and
provisioning. The marina also had a
courtesy car we could borrow since the Piggly Wiggly was about two miles
away. We can manage pretty well on our
bikes usually but I can stock up on heavier items with a car. Beer is a heavier item. Did I mention that we both have discovered
Yuengling beer, its really good.
Since there were a number of Loopers at the marina, you can tell because they have a Looper
burgee flying on their prow, I decided
to host a docktail. Basically its BYOB and
something to snack on, though the host boat seems to prepare a little more stuff.
The final stop in Beaufort was their Maritime Museum Lots of museums are sort of interesting but rarely do I find a museum that goes into depth in just a few things that I don’t really know much about and I come away having really learned something, not just been amused for an hour or so. I don’t know whether that speaks to museums in general, or my attention span, but the Beaufort museum was really enlightening.
The Beaufort Museum had a display of a lot of artifacts that had been found in the wreck of Captain Blackbeards ship the Queen Anne's Revenge. The exhibit did a good job of explaining the life of pirates in the early 18th century. It also showed the early methods developed to save people from the wrecks that inevitably occurred on the shoals as ships, both legal and illegal tried to get into the ports along the North Carolina coast. It also described that battles against the German U boats. In all 177 ships were sunk off the North Carolina coast in WWII.
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