Day 227: Friday, April 19, 2013
Port to Port: Morehead City, North Carolina
Underway: 0:00 am Motor Off: 0:00 pm Miles Traveled: 0 Stayed At: Marina
First Things First: First time getting hit by another boat (I knew I shouldn’t have written about that the other day); first maritime museum.
Mile 205 to Mile 205: The wind is howling and the waves are crashing today so we are staying put to wait for the front to pass before moving on. We went out to a late breakfast at Pete’s – okay but nothing special. We borrowed a couple bikes to head over the bridge about 2 miles to the little town of Beaufort. There are some neat shops there and a highly recommended Maritime Museum. Our friends on Slow Churn are at a marina there too and we wanted to stop by and say high. So off we went.
Well, it probably would have been almost as fast to walk. There were no sidewalks and the walkway over the long bridge was so narrow, you had to walk the bikes the whole way. The traffic was horrendous too. Cindy thought she was going to die. We always feel less safe walking along the road than out on the water. We made it in one piece and low and be-hold, who do we meet within minutes of getting to town – Roger and Dorothy from Slow Churn. They were coming out of the museum just as we were going in. What an amazing coincidence. So we made plans to meet in a little while to go to lunch after we finished with the museum.
The Beaufort Maritime Museum was a pleasure. The coolest part was relics from the pirate Blackbeards ship – Queen Anne’s Revenge. What a strange and colorful part of this area’s history. There is also another building where small wood boats are being built using the old techniques. Hopefully this will be the first of many maritime museums that we get to explore.
We had a fun lunch, did some quick window shopping and headed home to get things ready to potentially leave tomorrow if the wind dies down. Well, our plans are now in limbo. Cindy was on the boat and I was walking down the dock as a Tow Boat US boat was maneuvering a cruiser onto the dock when he got caught in the tide and forgot to look behind him as his backend swung in and hit Boris and twisted her so hard it bent a bracket and broke the latch that holds the motor up. Shit happens but its still a bummer. On the plus side, this is a good place to be stranded for a few days and Denard (the harbormaster) is working hard to get it fixed and back to normal. The winds are going to be howling again Sunday and Monday so we are going to make the best of an unfortunate situation and enjoy our stay in Morehead City. Maybe we’ll have time to do a little longer range planning now. And take a nap. And watch a movie. And take another nap. Cindy likes that idea.
As I’m writing this, we are awaiting the arrival of the storm front (the same one that dropped snow on Minnesota, rain in Chicago and tornadoes in the south) and the wind and rain soon to come. Denard was nice enough to give us the keys to the Marina just in case it gets too wild to stay on the boat. It at least gives us a nice piece of mind to know we have that option. Stay tuned for more news tomorrow.
