Ship’s Log: Beaufort

May 19, 2019

After having a wonderful morning of sleeping in, it was time to hit the town and explore. It turns out that Jack’s dad was in town so we met up with him for lunch. We all hopped in the truck and went over to the Dock House, a restaurant on the town’s waterfront. There we saw all the boats anchored in front between the docks and realized “why the heck did we just not anchor there?”

Since we had access to a car, we snuck in a quick trip to West Marine to grab an extra stern light. Josh and I returned to the boat to do laundry, clean the boat and install the light. We then tried to go in to town for ice cream, but everything was closed because it was a Sunday. If ice cream wasn’t on the agenda, beer would be. We had heard about a dog friendly bar called Backstreet Pub.  For those of you who go to Beaufort, I highly recommend. It’s a great space with a ton of outdoor seating, but a freezing inside if the humidity of the outdoors gets to you. We spent a decent time there chatting with the bar tender and another patron while we waited for the rest of the crew to meet us there.

One thing we had debated for the past few days was when we would cross the Gulf Stream and head for the Bahamas. Would we cross up there? Would we go down the coast a bit? After looking at passage weather and consulting each other, we agreed that we would spend one more day in Beaufort and then head out to sea. This meant that we would also move the boat the next morning to the anchorage so we wouldn’t have to pay for another night at the marina and take the time to explore Bird Shoal.

May 20, 2019

Knowing that this would be our last access to a shower for a while, we had a leisure morning of breakfast and long showers. We refilled our water and fuel and moved the boat over to the anchorage. That afternoon we explored the island shoal and took some time to relax. Before things closed for the day, we had to get our ice cream at the general store. We decided to stock up on some extra items since we had heard groceries in the Bahamas were expensive. There was some difficulty finding a place with a lot of stock in town since we didn’t have access to a car. Big Daddy Mart had some basics such as propane, sodas and chips. In search of some beer that wasn’t Natty Boh, we went to Fishtown Brewing. Of course, it was closed. Thankfully the market next door was open and we grabbed some craft beer to enjoy on our journey. Although Beaufort is a popular ICW stopping point, it has very little to be desired as far as provisions go.