Harbour Village, Beaufort and Oriental - Loop Trip Days 148 - 153

Tuesday was about 40 degrees and sunny, but very light wind.  There were tugs, barges, a container ship and several freighters moving about as we headed back down Cape Fear River. The most interesting thing was how the water in the channel was running. Since this is a major shipping channel, that portion is dredged much deeper than the surrounding area and it must be that feature that funnels the current. The channel looked like rapids in a mountain stream and all of the rest of the  water is calm. Bad weather these past days has created a crowd on the Intracoastal waterway today.  It gets narrow out of the shipping channel and it took a while to get past the slower vessels and right after we managed to do that, we had to stop and wait for the Wrightsville Beach bridge to open. After that, we made pretty good time the rest of the way to Harbour Village Marina arriving at about 12:30. This was a fuel stop and an overnight to break up the leg to Beaufort.  Track and photos - www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/1013433

Last look at Wilmington 

Harbour Village

In our slip

The first thing on today's trip is a swing bridge 6 miles away that opens only on the hour. We left to get the 9 AM opening and joined about seven others who were doing the same thing. All went well here and now it's a race to the next bridge that is 20 miles further north and opens on the half hour. I managed to get around three boats in front of us and then ran hard to get the 10:30 time. A long stretch of this area is adjacent to Camp Lejeune and the waterway passes through their firing range. They do have some signs that say "Flashing lights indicate live fire", but who knows for sure if they check the bulbs in those things!  We made it through so they weren't shooting, but we did see Marines doing some sort of exercise along the way. Once past here is Swansboro and a larger inlet, then comes the south end of Bogue Sound. The wind is picking up and the sound is getting rough so I kept our speed up to get to Moorehead City as quickly as we could and that took about an hour and half!  Finally, we get there and you are almost immediately entering the shipping channel with freighters, tugs and barges while looking straight out the inlet to the Atlantic Ocean.  This is just about two miles to the marina. So now is when it starts going south, suddenly I have alarms going off on the console.  Regina points out an engine alarm on the Smartcraft and I see the starboard engine overheated which means shutdown right now!  I call BoatUS on the radio and, by the grace of God, their boat is literally right behind us. In the channel with 20 mph winds and all these big ships, I've got one engine and have to get through a railroad bridge to an area where the tow boat can get lines to us and start the tow into Beaufort. One engine on a twin engine boat makes it want to turn in a circle so that was about the longest 500 yards you could imagine. The tow must have taken more than an hour, but we finally got there and the marina had about 8 people there to help us (or watch the crash) get in. Once in, I go to the bilge to see if there is any visible indication of what happened. Hoping that I would see nothing, which would indicate that an engine impeller is all that failed, was not to be. As soon as I opened the hatch, you could see that the serpentine belt on the engine had basically exploded and this is something I can't fix - mechanic required. After a long day, we walked into town for dinner at The Spouter Inn for a little decompression time. Track and photos - www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/1014254

You really never want to see this in front of your boat

At least we are floating and not aground on the edge of a marina

I had picked Beaufort Yacht Harbor for our stop here and I'm so happy that I did. Turns out that there are a lot of live aboards here and many of them are boat mechanics. The harbor master hooked me up with Rich who is on a boat two slips down. He came over to take a look and instead just went right to work. The serpentine engine belt had completely disintegrated and the mess was terrible. This thing is like a car fan belt, but over 5 feet long with steel wire reinforcing and nothing longer than an inch of rubber or maybe four inches of wire as left.  Rich unwound pieces of wire from the pulleys and determined that the spare belt I had was a good one. Soon everything was back together and declared good after a test at a cruise rpm. For normal stuff, it was a laundry day and we went to the Beaufort Grocery for lunch while the washing machine was running. The name is deceiving and the lunch sandwiches were incredible. We even had a slice of pecan pie to finish that had the biggest pecans I have ever seen. After doing more laundry, we went to the Backstreet Pub which is a historic landmark.  The building dates to 1881 when it was a bakery and has been in continuous use for different businesses and converted to a pub 40 years ago. While there, we met a man and his son who were in taking the captain's certification course. Lots of things to discuss with them!  Just down the waterfront from the pub was Front Street Grill, where we stopped in for a light dinner. This place is nice, if you visit the town, check it out. 

Backstreet Pub - the old oven is right behind the ship model

Looking down the spiral stair

Life rings - if you need one

On our second day here, I started another load of laundry as I borrowed the courtesy car to go to the drug store and Ace hardware. Turned out that both were close, but too far to walk. When the dryer cycle was done and all was put away, we went to the North Carolina Maritime Museum. The coolest things they had here were artifacts from the Queen Ann's Revenge which was Blackbeard's ship. Totally amazing how these things are found, recovered and preserved!  From here, we visited a few shops before going to Finnz to see if Susan and Robin, who we met at The Spouter, would show up.  They did and we found out more about the town.  On their recommendation, we went down the street to Aqua for dinner. Great suggestion!  After some flaming desert, it was over to Cru for a live performance by Dick Knight who, over the years, had played with James Brown, Otis Redding and Gladys Knight just to name a few. This was really quite a lot of fun. 

Whale skeleton at the Maritime Museum

View on the other side of Beaufort

Desert is burning!!

Regina got a Captain's hat

Saturday meant it was time to move on. The day was sunny and a bit winder than forecast. We left about 10:30 and headed out for Oriental which was roughly 20 miles away. This was a big weekend in the town and I had gotten one of the last slips available. After getting in, I washed the salt spray off and filled the water tank before stopping to watch the Vol's spring football game. For dinner, we walked over to Toucan Grille near the marina office. This was where all the action was!  A wedding reception was underway in the courtyard, they had a band playing and the New Bern Yacht Club had done a weekend cruise to the harbor. This had everything and everyone turned topsy turvy as it was obviously well beyond their normal activity level. Anyway, after a short wait, we had a tasty dinner before returning to the boat. Track and photos - www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/1014254

Oriental Harbour

Sunday in Oriental was a quiet day. Probably like most days here. The wedding reception was over, band was gone and so were all the boats from New Bern Yacht Club. It was just us and the locals!  We walked around to look in some shops and ended up finding some fun foodie items at Nautical Wheelers. The owner was in the store and we ended up talking to him for a long time. Interesting guy and a really neat little shop. After that, we walked down to O'Town to sit on the deck and enjoy the sunshine. The deck overlooked the marina and it was fun to watch the boats coming and going on the river. We had been told that M & M's was a good restaurant and it was just around the corner, so we tried it. When we arrived, it was almost empty and we just sat at the bar to eat. Well, it wasn't too long until all of the regulars started coming in to take their usual positions. We were in the middle of the gossip of the day and the exchange of town business. This is really a place where everyone knows everyone and all about them!  Tomorrow we move on to Bellhaven. 

Our side of Oriental