Beaufort NC

We had a nice sail from Palm Beach, Florida to Beaufort, North Carolina. It was a 550 nautical mile trip that took 79 hours, with an average speed of 6.9 knots.

If you followed us on the map you may have noticed we didn’t sail a straight line, instead we made an S. The reason I did this was to stay in the Gulf Stream as long as possible. That’s also why you may have noticed we were going over 10 knots at times. Taking advantage of the Gulf Stream shaved an extra night at sea from our trip.

Being in Florida this time of year you can expect afternoon and evening thunderstorms. Both the first and second nights we encountered a line of heavy thunderstorms.

The first night was by far the worse. It was a slow mover with lots of lightning. We were watching it slowly catch up to us, hoping it would dissipate or that we might out run it. I was also using our radar to see if there were any holes we might sneak through. I checked the weather reports using the satellite phone and saw it had high winds associated with it so I brought the sails in, fired up the motor and turned it over to Sue. My shift was up and I needed to get some sleep.

When the storm did hit, there were high winds. Sue told me the winds were sustained over 30 knots. The biggest problem was they opposed the Gulf Stream and when you have wind vs current, you get very bad waves. We were bouncing around so much so that I kept getting woken up by stuff flying off our shelves and hitting me. Boy, I was glad it wasn’t my shift.

The second nights storm did hit on my watch. Again I used the sat phone to get the latest info on the thunderstorms. The winds were not reported as high as the previous night so I put a reef in the sail but left it up. When the storm hit, the winds were strong enough to force me to run down wind for a while, but I was able to keep the sails up.

This storm seemed to have even more lightening than the previous nights. Lightening is very unpredictable and is one of my biggest concerns at sea. I read up on lightening at sea and also went to several lightening seminars before we left. So, I did all I could do to prepare. I started our motor and I put a backup set of electronics in the oven.

Our diesel motor, minus the starter, is completely mechanical. If we take a lightening strike and all electrical is fried, our motor will keep running. I wouldn’t be able to start it, but it will continue to run.

The reason I put the backup electronics in the oven is because the oven will act as a Faraday cage protecting them from the lightening… well, that’s the theory at least. I hope I never have to find out.

It was a new moon, so the lightening was especially bright. Enough so, that I was losing my night vision. I tried to keep one eye closed to preserve my night vision, but I wasn’t able to do it. I need to get a pirate eye patch. Now I see why they wore them.

The third night we were well north of Florida and had no storms but, I could see lightening in the distance to our south.

We finally pulled into Beaufort on a Sunday night around 6PM. We tried to call a couple of marinas but they were closed. I had forgotten that it’s Memorial Day weekend so the town anchorage was full. I ended up going down Taylor creek further until I found a deep nook I could anchor in. Closer to shore than I’ve ever anchored before, but the current kept us safe.

The next day Sue called our preferred marina and got us a slip for the week. It’s very nice where we are and we’ve got all kinds of activities planned.