Adventures on Beannacht

Wednesday 21^st Jan

Leaving Oriental was once again a rushed affair, motivated by our need to arrive at a destination that felt like it was in the part of the story where things began to feel vibrant and exciting, the first chapter rather than the prologue. Neither of us imagined, naively perhaps, that we would spend two months in the States, but today marks that milestone. Equally we couldn’t have imagined that we would buy a boat that required such substantial work before we could leave the US, but that we did.

Our haste also led to our first significant mistake of our boating life, a little grounding in Adams Creek not 5 miles from Oriental. The entrance is narrow with shoals on both sides and a kink to the right. I lined Kel up with the next marker and was pottering about on deck when our boat speed went from 6 knots to 0 in an instant. The boat nosedived into the sand bottom and the engine droned as the prop struggled to plough a furrow. Kel immediately backed off the shoal and all was well, but it took us a few minutes of careful problem solving to see the marker that we had missed and tentatively move back into the channel. A frightening experience for both of us, and another little jab at our rushed departure, at the time we were pushing to reach the entrance to the ocean by sunlight and our haste made us careless. 

The sea brought us some comfort a few minutes later when our first dolphin interaction on the water happened. Dolphins love playing in the bow wakes of boats, but we hadn’t expected to see any in a creek as shallow nor one as far inland. Three beautiful big flippers playing at our bow and swimming under our keel chirping to each other the whole time. Kel and I whooped at them and they surfaced on their sides to get a better look at us and they would spray as we hung over the side of the boat. Stunning ocean forgiveness, all was well.

 

After groundings and dolphins we decided to check in with the weather and realised the wind had moved from a forecast NW into the south, making our SW course to Charleston a bit of a slog. We regrouped and decided to stop at Morehead and tie up at a local restaurant for the night as they only charge $10 for dockage if you buy a meal. Which we would have been happy to if they were open, which they weren’t, so instead we had that one on the house. Today is our second day motoring down the ICW killing time, and importantly making miles before the winds switch back and we can make our way out into the ocean.