As we made our way up the ICW from Swansboro, headed towards Morehead City, I realized it was the last leg of our journey back... Wow.. what a journey it has been...We arrived in Morehead around noon and docked at Morehead City Yacht Basin, where we started back in November... and greeted by the same sweet , dedicated staff there.. They are awesome and truly professionals!!! We had lots to do with little time to get the car back and get it tagged , etc.. Geez, I think it was more difficult to come back than to leave.. So much "stuff" to get done...Anyway, got the car and settled back in for the nite... Next day, errands galore again... Made it over to John and Deborah's for an awesome dinner... reflecting on our trip and what has been going on back here in the USA...The next morning we left the Yacht Basin and headed for Taylor's Creek, in front of Beaufort... Found a good spot and dropped anchor.. The town dinghy dock was just across from us, so that made it convenient to run to town and use the car, which we had parked just up from where we were anchored.... My good friend Michele and her daughter Caitlin joined us for hot dogs on the SeaVeyor.. We had a good time catching up!!! We, the girls, decided to go for a dinghy ride and try to get some pics of the horses, which were grazing just across from us on the creek bank... That was a blast... until I thought something was wrong with the dinghy motor.. so, we got paddles out and used them to get back to the SeaVeyor, it was going well until we hit the current.. Had Dwayne not thrown us a rope, we may have made it to Harker's Island by dusk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ha.. duh me, it had slipped out of neutral when I was trying to crank it... LIVE AND LEARN.... BUT WE STILL HAD FUN AND LAUGHED ABOUT IT
When Michele and Caitlin left, Jim from S/V "Bees Knees" stopped by... We had met him on Cat Island down in the Bahamas... We keep seeing so many vessels that we saw as we cruised... Everyone coming back to ride out the upcoming hurricane season..
Monday and Tuesday, both rainy overcast days... Tuesday, I finally decided to do what was right and take cats to cottage...at least two of them...Patches and Black Cat... I know they will be happier, get more exercise, and be well looked after back at the cottage with Jack... It was hard, I cried that nite and the next day.... just hope they understood why I left them.... I have Monkey Butt still on board, he's young and I hope he learns to adjust.. he seemed to be the happiest of the three....
The next day was Dwayne's 50th birthday... It was raining... Mother Nature did not get the memo for a beautiful, sunshiny day... Later in the evening, Pat and Lorrie from GodSpeed came over to help celebrate D's birthday.. Pat did excellent ribs!! And Dwayne had his favoirte dessert.. Rasberry Cheesecake! We all crashed except for Dwayne, he ususally stays up late to read... He said several porpoises surrounded the boat and were having a blast feeding on bait fish.. said it was awesome to watch.. Hate I was asleep and missed it..........
We left out Friday for Cape Lookout bight and anchored there thru Sunday...The boys hoped to catch some Cobia but no luck.... Lorrie and I walked the beach and then clammed on Saturday afternoon.. That was fun and tasty too!!!!!!!!!! GodSpeed and Oh Canada came over to eat clams, wings, and munchies that evening.. and Jamie played music on his guitar.. Very fun evening..The next morning, Sunday, D and I got in the dinghy around 11am , I wanted to see if Lorrie wanted to walk a little on beach, found everyone on Oh Canada having an awesome looking Brunch!! Wish we had been invited.. it looked really good! Anyway, D dropped me off on beach and he fished for about an hour more.. still no luck.. So, we said our goodbyes and pulled anchor around 2pm and headed back to Taylors Creek... found our same spot... Sometime during the night we lost our refrigeration.NOT GOOD! Hopefully, it will be a motor replacement and not the compressor... So, all stuff had to come out of frig and go in the big Icy Tech cooler with lots of ice............Left freezor stuff alone ... We were hoping we could get everything down to Carolina Beach without losing any of it... Had to speed up all of our plans!
Michele, Lord love her, met me at DEMA (thanks DEMA!) and I dropped the car off in the back parking lot, instead of leaving it in downtown Beaufort.. then Michele drove me back to the dinghy dock....So, off we went.. stopping at Mile Hammock for the evening ( this was our first anchorage spot on the ICW on the way down!!)
Pulled anchor around 6:30am on Tuesday June 1st... left Mile Hammock and made our way into Carolina Beach in the POURING rain....Made it into Joyner Marina around noon or so.. The tide/current getting into the marina, the pouring rain all made for an interesting dockage.. But, Dwayne proved his skills yet again... Perfect dockage.. Whew.. but very tight!! Very nice marina with excellent staff also!! You can pull it up on the internet and see their home page... Wonderful place to be....
Barry and Soula, our good friends here, stopped by to welcome us and we took our frozen goods to their home, until we can repair our frig/freezer...they also loaned us their car to go back to Morehead City to retrieve ours... What wonderful friends we have... so, got the car, made our way back to Carolina Beach , had a great Boston Butt dinner with Barry and Soula..
It's time to settle in and make repairs, clean the SeaVeyor and maybe, just maybe relax a little??Seems like we have been on the go since November....
What's next??? We are not sure... Dwayne is planning on posting his thoughts on our entire trip... he's the technical person and wants to explain, in detail, what it takes to cruise... this should be interesting!!!!!!!!!!!! Stay tuned.. more news at 11 ................................
