Move into Beaufort town anchorage

Sunday 5 Dec, Beaufort anchorage, cruising day 8: Tinkering in the engine room, and move into town in the evening.

The wind continued to rise in the night, with gusts up to 23kts. There is quite a fetch across the anchorage and although Cloudy Bay is yawing from side to side, it’s not uncomfortable below. And we are thankful we moved more into the middle last evening. Otherwise it would have been a close thing with the mud bank behind us.

For much of the day the wind is still blowing strongly, despite the forecast for it to abate mid-morning. While studying the forecast for our next leg south, it’s clear the gulfstream has huge influence on the winds. In the stream and beyond it is often 10-15 knts higher and directionally different to the landward side of the flow. And as we are so close to it here, I suspect the forecasts may be a bit off occasionally, like this morning.

With wind and chill outside we spend the day below decks. First studying weather, then some tinkering on what I call my minor to-do list. Mostly issues that rose their ugly heads while on passage here. First, the button on the pedestal which operates the mainsail furl-out. I confirm that it is only this single button that has an issue. All the rest are working fine. I still need to go under the pedestal to replace a bilge alarm (it was one of the pieces that fell out of the box from HR-Parts – the FedEx story) so I’ll tackle this rogue button when I do that.

Next, is the deck wash pump. This will make readers realise I’m not the maintenance guru that I may appear on the videos. Two viewers of our last video boldly commented that I had put the impeller in the wrong way around when I featured maintenance on this pump. When I read such comments my first reaction is always along the lines of: “Pfff, there’s always one, to criticize”. But then I checked on google. And indeed, I had spun-in the impeller the wrong way! All these years I thought I knew how an impeller worked and I’ve been wrong all along. So, this morning I unscrew the impeller cover-plate to inspect. I find the blades have all flipped around the right way, defying my stupidity when I installed it. Job done and lesson learned.

Next job is the 220vac emersion heater for the domestic water supply. It was working just fine with shore power, but whenever I try to power it with the generator, several breakers trip. This heater element resides inside the dreaded hot water tank. This tank and I are still not on speaking terms after the replumbing battle I had with it. If I must remove the damned tanks again… I tell you, there will be blood on the streets!
Well, again defying my knowledge, it turns out I had reversed the 2 wires when I re-wired it following the recent removal(s) of the hot water tank. I had always thought for AC wiring, it didn’t really matter which was positive and which was negative. And for the shore power it actually didn’t matter. But for the generator output I discover the negative side is also connected to ground. So polarity does matter for anything powered by the generator. Anyhow, it is a relief because this is an easy fix. I just switch the wires around and bingo, all working just fine.

I finish this task at 3pm and realise we need to get going if we are to be into Beaufort before dark. Oana is a bit shocked that we have to move now rather than in the morning. She was quite happy snuggled on the settee reading her book. But in the morning there is an onshore wind forecast and the short trip there could become quite unpleasant, so now it has to be.

Although we could have sailed, we instead just motor the 10 miles for simplicity, and we ended up coming into the channel that leads up to Morehead City around sunset. The Beaufort channel then branches off the right, and within 10 minutes we are at the town channel searching for a spot in the crowded anchorage. The trouble with anchoring here is the channel is narrow and you have to anchor outside the navigable part, on the opposite side to the town ,where it shelves up very fast. There seems to be no space, but as we meander slowly down the line, someone is departing. Perfect. We are in luck. We drop the anchor… wait a while to settle … raise the anchor … move 50m … drop the anchor again. Seems we are rather rusty at getting nicely anchored on first attempt.

The evening is super still outside. Not a breath of wind and the town lights are an exact reflection in the water. All the boats are swung to the current that flows through this channel and we hope when the flow changes, that our anchor will stay put.

Then dinner and an early night. Tomorrow will be a busy day, checking in with the CBP, shopping, and getting Cloudy Bay fueled up ready for the next legs south.