Relaxed and safe on Beaufort town dock

Wednesday 27 Nov, Beaufort NC, day 1: Move Cloudy from anchorage to dock, wander the pretty town then just relax, for once.
Lovely peaceful sleep at anchor in Taylors Creek, directly opposite the old town of Beaufort. Not a single lap on the hull or squeaking of lines. Bliss. I did get up during the night to check we swung ok with the change of tidal current. We are pretty close to the next boat and unless we swing exactly together, we could touch. But all good there.

However, whilst things are perfect now, the forecast is not so pretty the next couple of days. Strong winds from SW veering to the NE. Not sure we can be relaxed ashore with that wind plus the tidal current playing with Cloudy when in such a cluster of anchored yachts. So we decide to head to the town dock to ensure peace. I know … a bit chicken, but we want to start the season without stress or calamity. So at slack tide, 10:15am, we maneuver to a nice T-dock position where we will be blown off the dock and also easy to exit on Friday, when the next weather window south will be. Very nice people tying us up and checking us in. We see Ladyhawke and Viaggio (which we cruised with yesterday) are also in the dock and we say hi to them. Funny how you feel friendship just by happening to sail on the same passage. Imagine the same comradeship happening in a highway service station! Such is cruising life.

All tied up and plugged in, Oana starts the bread maker and we head off to town. It’s a balmy 20degC today and at the moment lovely and sunny. Feels like another world compared to chilly Maryland. The town is quiet. Clearly a summer tourist town. But everything is open. Lots of restaurants and shops plus numerous historic houses, all Carolina style: clapboard, white, verandas etc. A very pleasant little town for a stopover.
We visit the Maritime Museum, where we meet Dianne Tetreault, the OCC (Ocean Cruising Club) port officer whom we contacted before leaving Herrington. As usual for OCC port officers, she has been extremely helpful, offering her address as a postal drop, booking the dock for us and now that we meet her we even get an invite to Thanks Giving dinner tomorrow. Wonderful.

On the way back passed Cloudy, on our tour of the town, we drop back in to get warmer clothing and decide, while on board, to have a coffee. Coffee turns into rain and a very relaxing long afternoon on board. We don’t go out again all day! We somehow feel totally drained of energy for some reason and it’s nice just to totally relax. I guess the last 6 intensive weeks of non stop maintenance activity have finally caught up with us.

But there is one important job to do while we are docked with available water. The engine room needs a wash from the “salt” water invasion that happened on passage in the Chesapeake. First it gets sprayed with a de-salting solution, then rinsed. And while at it the whole room gets a wash down to rid it of the sanding dust from when we fitting the new thru-hulls. We just pray that all the electrical side will still work after this dousing! But if not, at least the engine room and contents look sparkling again 😊. As for the leak, we can only assume it was an accumulation of rain water from the saloon window leaking. We know the water ran down the lower curtain track, exiting at the back of the saloon. I guess over the summer it accumulated in the engine room silver backed insulation and exited when we first healed over in the Chesapeake. I hope that is the end of it now.

In the evening we manage to stream internet on the dock WiFi and settle in for an evening of Jack Ryan series 2. 4 episodes later we feel fully entertained and relaxed. Almost worth the marina fee! We go to bed with the predicted wind howling in the rigging, glad that we don’t have to do an anchor watch.