Return to Winter

Arriving in North Carolina, we have finally caught up with the tail end of winter. The deciduous trees are still grey and bare of buds, the flower baskets show straggy winter pansies and ornamental brassicas, the first spring bulbs are starting to peep through the grass, the air is cold with a bite to the wind. The wintering seabirds are preparing to leave and occasional swallows flit overhead on their way north.

Still winter in North Carolina

Beaufort is “the gateway to the Caribbean” and well used to cruising boats. There are several liveaboards anchored with us and the residents are all friendly and keen to visit us. This sort of cruisers camaraderie is something James reminisced about during his passage from Australia to the UK, and is something we’ve not seen in the Caribbean with its tendancies to charter boats. A family has invited our children to play among the wild ponies on a nearby island whilst another has a offered use of his bike for trips to the stores. A third couple, Linda and Mark fromToronto, have been restoring a Hans Christianson and are excited to be finally heading south this coming weekend. We have finally found a real sense of commnity here.

Our luck has continued poor with more injuries to the boat. On arrival, we noticed an unusual and bad smell from our cabin and dog house. James investigated and discovered a fuel leak on the injectors on the engine. Whilst we were ashore to track a Ford engineer, the smell onboard had intensified. James treated the bilge to no effect, but then noticed the starboard quarterberth was unusually warm. One of the four house batteries had started to boil and was at risk of exploding as it vented sulphuric acid. James had to douse the offending unit in seawater overnight to cool it down, so now we have had to call out a mobile diesel engineer and order a new battery.

Fixing a fuel leak at Beaufort

Beaufort itself is a ‘historic’ town. In America,this seems ot mean that the wooden buildings are (gasp) over 100 years old. We walked among the weatherboard with signs outside the ‘restored’ houses stating dates as far back as 1856, whilst the tourist board offers sightseeing aboard a London Routemaster bus (still right hand drive, I’m glad to report). Eventually I managed to track down a house as old as own own non-historic cottage in the UK, proudly dated 1840.