We left our marina in New Bern yesterday, Nov 14th and headed toward Beaufort NC. We had hoped that conditions would be conducive to going straight out the inlet and heading at least 24 hours down the coast. However, conditions are not conducive to much of anything except “hunkering down” either at anchor or in a marina. We are safely tied to a dock at Spooners Creek Marina, near Morehead City. The marine weather router we listen to in the mornings says to expect 2 or 3 days of pretty terrible weather with no opportunities for south-bound travel in the ocean. Today is certainly lousy - rainy and blustery with building winds. They are expecting 60 mph winds in the marina tonight. It is raining steadily now so we are boat-bound. Mary Beth did take Riggs for a walk this afternoon and they both came back soaked, but that is still better than a Riggs with no exercise confined to a small space like a boat. He had a ball walking in the rain; MB- not so much!
Underway at last!
David washing dishes on our first night aboard before the heater had warmed us up.
We’ve been watching the weather for the past week, and there have been some promising forecasts for ocean travel, but time after time they get worse as the date approaches. This is pretty frustrating. It is annoying to be ready to go, provisioned, checked and planned, and now having to sit for 3 or maybe even 4 days in another marina only 40 miles from where we started. Really!!??
So what do we do when we are stuck like this? We read, I do music stuff, and today I messed around with the SSB radio a bit, Mary Beth took the dog for a walk in the rain, we did a few boat chores, doubled up our lines and bumpers in preparation for the high winds and we will probably watch a movie. The real question is what will we do tomorrow and maybe the day after that and maybe even the day after that? Sigh…After all of the bustle to get ready to go, it is nice to be able to relax, listening to the rain coming down and feeling warm and snug in our cabin below, but one or two days would be nice, not three or four.
The good news is the boat performed well on our first day of motoring in the ICW, and Riggs is relaxed on-board the moving boat. He did feel the need to bark at all of the channel markers on the way down the ICW which got a bit tiresome, but that should get better with a bit more exposure.
Captain Riggs is tired from all of his new experiences.
It does look like we may have a window to go into the ocean on Monday morning, but as we’ve watched for these windows for the last week or so we have noticed that they seem to close up as they approach – i.e., the weather forecast gets worse as the days go by. For example, a few days ago yesterday looked like a good opportunity to go out Beaufort inlet and get down to Wilmington, but the forecast got worse as the day got nearer and we decided to wait. We are glad we did given the weather today!
Frustrating? Yes, but not unusual for this time of year. In a way it is comforting that the best weather people in the world still can’t really predict the weather with much certainty. Nature still has a few tricks up her sleeve.
Thanks for reading! David and Mary Beth