River Dunes to Georgetown, SC

I was glad we had sent out our nightly SPOT signal to family members (we get a copy too) because I clicked on it to find out where we actually were! We arrived here in Georgetown at 8:20 pm after an overnight passage from River Dunes, and the unlighted approach to this marina (the only one in Georgetown with any dock space left) was not our favorite part of the trip!

The conditions were perfect for our first trip "outside", so we left River Dunes after fueling up and headed for the inlet at Beaufort. We were able to sail down the Neuse, and through a bit of the Adams Creek canal, and enjoyed an easy passage through the crowded harbor area of Beaufort/Moorehead City and were out the inlet around 3 PM. The breeze was perfect, 8-12 out of the NW, and we all rolled out jibs and motor-sailed through the night. It is a great comfort to look back and see three sets of running lights all night long! Well, 2 1/2 sets anyways.... Andiamo found that the breaker would trip every time they tried to turn on their running lights, so they were visible only by their steaming light, but they kept in close to the pack and we didn't encounter anyone until we passed within a mile and a half of a tanker (easily identified by AIS) without incident around dawn this morning.

We rounded Frying Pan Shoals (off Cape Fear) at daybreak and headed further west. It isn't possible to head straight from Beaufort to Georgetown because the Frying Pan Shoals stick WAY out from Cape Fear, so it adds a bit of time and distance to the trip.

Today dawned bright and brisk and breezy. We had quite a ride until early afternoon when the wind, which had come around to the NE, started to quiet a bit. The waves were sometimes a little rough, but we were willing to accept them because they brought pod after pod of porpoises that spent hours, literally hours playing in our wake and jumping to ride our bow wave. Hence the preponderance of porpoise pix. We even had a few that followed us in the inlet in the evening. As has been our luck with the inlet here, we had to fight the current all the way up (11 miles) to Georgetown, but we wanted a quiet dock to tie to for the night. Everyone else has turned in, but I wanted to send this off while I could! Tomorrow we plan to stay and enjoy Georgetown and give Andiamo a chance to work on their running lights. Maybe tomorrow I will figure out how to send the video of playful porpoises to the blog. It (whoever it is) told me the video exceeded the allowed size of megabytes, oh well! ~~~~~~~~~~_/)~~~~~~~~~ (extra water under our keel this leg) M&D

It started at River Dunes, Oriental, NC. We all prepared to head our separate ways. Martha started the day with her last luxurious River Dunes shower-please note the four spray jets that tickled and massaged. Then she and Dan saw Jay, Pegg and Mom off from their cottage. Around 9 AM all four boats headed for the fuel dock before heading out as the next leg would be a long one. Out the canal-like entrance and on down the Neuse to Adams Creek. Then it was out the inlet at Beaufort around 3 pm and offshore we went for our first overnight passage of the trip.

Hopefully you are ready to be bored to death by a plethora of playful porpoise pictures...here they are.