FRIDAY MAY 21ST

Spent the day getting the boat ready to head back to Minnesota tomorrow. Our daughter graduates from William Mitchell School of Law on Sunday. No way can we miss that. 

One of the projects was to scrub the stain off the bow of the boat. The tannins in the water spray up on the bow leaving a stain that boaters call the eyebrow, mustache or smile. 

All I know is that it is brown and no matter what boaters tell you to spray on it to remove it, nothing beats elbow grease. Especially Ross’ elbow grease! 

We will return to the boat on June 19^th and continue on up to the Chesapeake Bay. 

THURSDAY MAY 20TH

It was a relaxing 43 miles from Beaufort to New Bern. Our final port on this leg. We turned off the ICW and headed upriver 22 miles on the Neuse River. The Neuse is quite wide and it could be wicked traveling if the wind was up. Fortunately for us, it was not.

It’s been a while since we’ve crossed a body of water large enough to use the auto- pilot. Today we could and it makes for a much more relaxing trip.

It was easy to see why New Bern was a popular port back in the early days. It has good deep-water access from the ocean and the land around the town is much more suitable to wagons being able to bring goods in. Many other ports we stopped in were surrounded by marsh and wetland.

The water here is brackish, and not salt water. So New Bern is a river town in comparison to a coastal community. New Bern was the Colonial Capital from 1766 to 1776. It had the first printing press in the New World and it is also known as the birthplace of Pepsi Cola!!! Being the curious sort, I wondered which came first: Coke or Pepsi. I love the Internet!! Coca-cola 1886. Pepsi 1898. And now, you know.

WEDNESDAY MAY 19TH

A rainy morning in Beaufort, North Carolina. It is very dry here, so don’t want to complain too much about it. It pretty much stopped raining by 11:00, so we ventured out. 

Bought tickets for a historic tour around the town on an old double-decker bus. 

We took the chance that the rain had ended and sat up top. Much better view from up here, but we had to duck several times to avoid tree limbs and branches. 

The homes here are very old and have stood through many hurricanes. There is not natural stone in this area, so any brick or stone you see on these houses arrived here as ballast in the hold of a ship. 

This house belonged to a relative of a famous female spy named Emeline Pigott. Emeline would come here and visit often. She fell in love with a Confederate soldier who was killed at Gettysburg. At that point she decided to spy for the Confederates. The women wore huge hoops skirts back then and she had pockets sewn inside that she would smuggle messages, mail, guns, knives, food, even boots. She would have Federal troops to her home and feed them. All the while pumping them for info and then passing it along. She was finally suspected of spying and captured. Of course it wouldn’t be proper for a man to search her. While they looked for a woman to do the search, Emeline ate several of the military messages and destroyed most of the remaining mail and messages she was carrying. She’s considered a hero and we saw Emeline Pigott dolls for sale in the shops. 

This is the house that the girl who is buried in the keg of rum once lived with her family. It was on the shoreline with many other large homes, so they were obviously very wealthy. 

In the afternoon we took a guided walking tour. We were the only two signed up so we had the guide to ourselves. We toured the old apothecary/doctors office. Photography wasn’t allowed, but I snuck a picture anyway. She spoke quite a bit of the medicines available at the time. Most mixtures were a combination of about 80 plus proof alcohol, laudanum(opium), chloroform, cocaine and formeldehyde. Wouldn’t have cured anything, but you wouldn’t have cared! The guide said most women were addicts because they had been given these “medicines” for so many ailments. 

There was a large sports fishing boat named the Tenth Frame that came in to the dock. A few days before they were out fishing and saw something floating in the water. They drove over to it and it was 3 people clinging to a cooler!! Their 20 foot boat had been swamped by a wave 2 days previous and sunk before they could get their lifejackets. The boat sank 12 miles off shore. The current had taken them out 30 miles when they were found. The captain commented that he called the Coast Guard and when they arrived they were very rude to him and the crew. Not even a thank you. And they started inspecting his boats for flares and what not. The Coast Guard didn’t want to provide the survivors with life jackets and made the fishing captain give up three of his. Not a very glowing report on the Coast Guard.

TUESDAY MAY 18TH

Walked up town for breakfast to Yana’s. Yesterday on our walk we passed it and it looked like a “must see”. It only offers breakfast/lunch and was already closed for the day.

What a fun place!! And good chow to boot. The jukebox was flipping 45’s so we listened to the King singing Jail House Rock and ate biscuits. Can starting out the day get any better? 

There was so much fun memorabilia in this place! Take a look at this. It’s the star at the top of the tree. The walls were covered with photos of cars from the 50’s, movie stars and movie posters. 

Of course the locals can’t help but wonder who the heck that ninny is running around taking pictures. So usually someone asks and we have a fun conversation. Met a nice couple sitting in the booth by the Christmas tree.

This Jaguar was parked opposite the café. Click on the photo to enlarge it and check out the vanity plate. I’m thinking Yana does okay with the place.

Walking back to the boat we overheard locals greeting one another as they passed. A couple responses we heard to “how ya doin”? were “better than a man’s kitten” and “finer than frogs hair”. 

We traveled today to Beaufort, N.C. where we will stay for 2 days.

We walked to the North Carolina Maritime Museum. It had excellent displays. There were displays about Blackbeard the pirate, the history of seafaring in this area and the ecology of the area. 

Blackbeard ran his flag-ship, QUEEN ANNE’S REVENGE, aground in the inlet to Beaufort. He marooned his crew here and abandoned them. (nice guy!) The crew was captured and hung. Many items are on display that they have recovered from the ship. Blackbeard was eventually captured and killed. It was a very brutal time in history. They cut off his head and made a drinking vessel using the top of his scull and then covering it in silver. This is a replica of it by the way.

There was a display on commercial fishing. Our guess was correct in what the men were doing a couple of days ago while wading out in the water. They were gathering clams and would have using one of these. A clamming claw.

We have seen many, many dolphins on our journey. Thought it was interesting to see how they are constructed on the inside. 

Across the street was a building where you could observe traditional coastal wooden boat building. 

We wandered up the street and came upon the Old Burying Ground. It maybe seems morbid to some our interest in cemeteries, but we view them as the real museums. These people are the true history, not the buildings and forts they left behind. It is probably one of the most beautiful cemeteries we have walked through. No straight rows of stones as they were buried around the Live Oaks. The Live Oak trees have an oval shaped rather thick leaf. They don’t look at all like oak leaves back home. The ground is covered with a thick layer of the dried leaves so there is very little grass. Wisteria vines grew up many of the trunks of the trees.

Many people were wandering through the cemetery. One of them gave us a tour map as they were leaving. We walked to each of the stones listed and Ross read the story a loud. None of them were huge historical figures, just people with their own story. These two stones are Sarah and Jacob. Married in the mid 1700’s. Hubby went off to sea not to return and presumed dead. Sarah remarried (to Nathaniel) and they had a child. Years later shipwrecked Jacob returned to find Sarah remarried. The men agreed Sarah would live out her life with Nathaniel but spend eternity at the side of Jacob.

This marker is for a man whose parents arrived in America on the MAYFLOWER.

This stone is for Captain John Hill. His son had this inscribed on the stone:

“The form that fills this silent grave

Once tossed on ocean’s rolling wave,

But in a port securely fast,

He’s dropped his anchor here at last.”

This one is a bit disturbing. The marker reads Little Girl in Rum Keg. We noticed beads and trinkets on this grave and other graves of children. It must be a local tradition. I’ll have to ask someone.

Her story is she came to Beaufort from England as an infant with her parents. She grew up and wanted to see her homeland so her father took her, promising his wife they would return. The girl died on the return trip from London. The father had promised to bring her back so rather than allow a burial at sea, he purchased a keg of rum from the captain. Her body was placed in it to preserve it, and he brought her home to Beaufort.

This one gets the prize for fanciest marker. It’s captain Otway Burns. The cannon is one off his ship.

This one creeped me out of bit as Nancy L. is my name!! Nancy’s story is legendary. She fell in love with her tutor, Charles. Her father opposed the romance so Charles went away to make his fortune, promising to return for Nancy. Unbeknownst to Nancy and Charles, the local postmaster, a friend of Nancy’s father, intercepted all correspondence between the two. Before he died, his guilty conscience led him to confess this to Nancy. As an old man, Charles, still not able to forget Nancy, returned to Beaufort. He found she had never married and she was still in love with him. He also discovered she was dying of “consumption”. They married and Nancy died several weeks later. 

MONDAY MAY 17TH

Storms this morning, so we delayed our start.  It is dry here so locals are very happy about the rain. We had 2 bridges to pass through today. One of them only opens on the hour, the other on the half. And they don’t hold the bridge if you aren’t there and ready to go through. So we were trying to time our day around the bridges.

Drove through some showers but nothing major. And not lightning, so that was good.

We passed these men wading in the water and gathering something off the bottom. We are guessing it was clams. There were several skiffs in the area doing the same. You can see there is a floating bucket to the one man and he would bring up something every so often and toss it in. 

Hey!!! It’s Surf City USA.

We passed through the area of the Marine base Camp Lejeune. We passed this sign warning if there was training going on. When there is, boats are not allowed through this part of the ICW because of live fire drills they fire over the ICW. 

We saw many decrepit looking tanks on a stretch of island with signs warning to keep out. We imagine it was also a training area. 

Ross spotted this LRT Landing craft. Likely also used in training exercises. 

We arrived for the night at Swansboro, North Carolina. It is a small, quaint town. Upon check in at the marina, they gave us a historic walking tour map. So off we went, before the heavens opened up on us. (the sky was pretty dark)

Our walk took us past this house built in 1887. Most of the foundations of homes built in this town are with bricks used as ballast in ships and then discarded when they arrived in Swansboro. 

Roscoe in his continuing quest to taste test ice cream up the Eastern Seaboard. 

Next to the park in town was a small pier. A few kids where fishing with poles, but the others were using casting nets. We stopped to visit with this man. The small dark objects around the outer edge of the nets are weights. When it hits the water the net is in the shape of a circle (if you are good at casting) and then sinks. The weights coming together and ensnaring anything that would be in it. He didn’t catch anything in the few casts we witnessed, but he said he usually goes home with something. 

We ate dinner on board as it started to rain. 

SUNDAY MAY 16TH

Possible severe weather predicted for this afternoon so we got an early start.

Only had 27 miles to make, so arrived well before noon at Wrightsville Beach.

Weatherman lied. Turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day.

Went to the beach!!!!

SATURDAY MAY 15th

Once again we got an early start. The weather is always a concern and the forecast was for possible storms in the late afternoon. We always try to be settled and secure before it arrives. Not that things always turn out according to plan. Ross does a great job researching marinas for us to stay in. He uses several websites that provide information submitted by other cruisers. He reads about hazards, fuel prices, negatives and positives about marinas, and such. We also follow the blogs of fellow Loopers who are traveling ahead of us. 

Today we traveled 62 miles to Southport, North Carolina. The scenery continues to change and there are many more pine trees. The water color continues to change from the tannin brown color to the grey green color of the ocean the closer we come to the Atlantic and the more inlets there are. The smell of the air has changed. The air no longer smells like a lake, but has the salty smell of the ocean. Not that there’s anything wrong with a lake, but there’s nothing like the smell of the sea.

Our trip today took us through what is called “the rock pile”. It is not a pile of rocks, like it sounds. It is a manmade cut through coquina. Remember that is the stuff that was quarried and used to build forts and homes. It is like coral and very sharp if we were to hit it. 

You can tell by the picture how narrow this cut is. And it is only deep in the very center. There is a rock ledge along the channel and if we were to hit that, it would have caused severe damage. Very severe damage!! Before we entered the cut, Ross gave a call out on the radio so if any other traffic was coming they would radio back and we would wait. It is too narrow to safely turn around if you met someone (like a barge). Roscoe once again navigated us safely through. 

Most of where we traveled today was just a narrow ditch. This incredible home was located along it. It looks like a villa that should have been in Italy. Their view was this narrow ditch and condos on the other side. That’s it!!!  Why spend the money on a place like this here?  I just don’t get it.

I never though I would see this! It was a tram that crossed that the ICW. Coming from up north, we see these this sort of thing only on ski hills. And it even looked like they had skis in the outside rack!!!

On closer inspection we saw that they were golf  clubs and the tram ended at the club house. 

This is a pontoon bridge we had to pass through. It only opens on the hour so we had to wait in the channel, along with many other boats for the opening.  The center of the bridge (the part with the white house on it) is floating. 

The car traffic is stopped and the center section swings away to allow boaters through. If you look closely at the picture you can see section of the road. This was our first experience seeing a bridge of this type.

We are in purple martin country. Homes and marinas have these gourd type houses for the birds. Purple martins eat loads of mosquitoes and come back to the same area each year. It has been fun to watch them swooping around catching bugs and listening to their chittering.