A Tale of Two Chemists: Beaufort and Beyond

Beaufort and Beyond

Friday 16th ton Sunday 18th May, 2025

Our couple of days in Beaufort were a good mixture of rest and activity. On Friday, while strolling around town, Mike got a phone call from Joel, a friend he had met during his 3 week stay in Morehead City in Oct 2023. Joel had come over to Beaufort in his motor vessel. He collected us from the dinghy dock and took us on a tour of Taylor Creek. It’s amusing to realize that we have anchored in that creek several times but never got further than the dinghy dock. We saw many beautiful homes with docks and boats on the mainland side. On the island side we saw plenty of white ibis and at least ten of the feral horses that inhabit the national seashore in this area. Joel was a great tour guide and I was so happy to have met him. He dropped us off explaining that he had to do some preparation for his trip to Aruba on Monday! Later that day, we got an Uber to Morehead City to meet Diane and Joel and their regular Friday night crowd at a nice bar/restaurant. Having eaten an enormous late lunch in the intervening hours, we stayed for a couple of drinks and then made our way back to Beaufort.

Saturday saw us doing laundry. At the laundromat, we met Dan, a young sailor single-handing on a 51ft Beneteau. He was so young (29) and excited about his boating adventure. He recounted his trip from Miami to Beaufort over the very stormy days that we had enjoyed tied to the dock in Charleston! It sounded like a very tough passage—frankly, I couldn’t imagine deciding to do that. He’s on his way to Maine for the summer and then has plans to sail offshore to the Virgin Island. I quizzed him about any longer term plans. He confessed that at some point he would need to get another job before he could formulate further adventures. Wow, he represents a different type of boater to those we usually encounter!

Mike spent part of the afternoon cleaning Cotinga’s water line. He does this from the dinghy. The combination of swell from passing boats, trying to hold the dinghy against the side of the big boat and leaning over into awkward positions results in a bad case of seasickness. After a couple of hours, he was starting to feel better. I’m pretty sure he didn’t enjoy our dinner out quite as much as I did—maybe because of the motion sickness. Returning to Cotinga, we got ready for an early departure on Sunday.

It was chaos in the anchorage on Sunday morning. Boats were lying in all kinds of directions. Our anchor chain was disappearing under the hull. The depth sounder was showing some scary readings (3.9 ft!). Many people were out on their decks trying to puzzle out the cause of all this mayhem. I’m pretty sure that we weren’t the only boat to depart earlier than planned. We rejoined the ICW after the confusing section north from Taylor Creek. We encountered a lot of boat traffic (it’s Sunday) on our way to the South River anchorage, off the Neuse River. As we were turning into the South River, I commented to Mike that we were going to miss the barge-tug combo that was making it’s way south along the Neuse (not the first barge of the day). In an after thought, I added, unless it decides to motor on into the South River and anchor there. Not too long after we had got the anchor down, we saw the tug and barge turning into the entrance of the South River. I couldn’t quite believe it.