November 24th, 2018
Beaufort
We had a lovely day in Beaufort which is a very picturesque and welcoming town. Linda volunteered to give us a lift back to the boat with a ton of shopping. On top of that there is a great little Maritime Museum that is free and features Black Beard who lurked about theses parts. In fact they have just discovered his flagship in the entrance to the harbour. The picture of Pearl is taken looking back at Beafort from a nature reserve that we explored in the afternoon.
November 20th, 2018
Beaufort
We arrived in Beaufort on a lovely sunny day and a stunning anchorage. As we sat in the sun in our shorts we watched Egret feeding in the reeds as dolphin cruised about the good ship Pearl. Just magic and a fitting end to our Alice in Wonderland like dive into the ICW. What a great five days.
November 20th, 2018
Fishing
As we closed Beaufort and the coast we started to see the fishing industry - love the atmosphere in this picture for it captures one of the many facets of the ICW
November 20th, 2018
Commercial Traffic
Although there is nothing like the commercial traffic that must have used the ICW back in the day you do come across the odd barge.
November 20th, 2018
Fresh morning
We found a lovely quiet anchorage halfway through Pamlico sound and woke up to a stunningly clear and crisp morning. Theres nothing like bowling along at eight knots with a morning cuppa and a bowl of porridge with bananas and raisins on a day like this.
November 20th, 2018
Pamlico Sound
One of the rare 44ft bridges encouraged us to take a diversion through the Pamlico sound and we shall be ever grateful for we had two days of lovely sailing. Having sailed round Cape Hatteras we knew it was a long way out and pretty boring so decided to avoid it and have a sniff at the ICW. Here we were sailing through an amazing bird sanctuary with all sorts of things to keep us occupied and on top of our game. There is a saying around here that there are two types of boaters. Those that are aground and those that are going to go aground. Whilst its not that bad you do have to remain vigilant and so what might have been a boring grind outside became a pleasure that whisked the day by before we knew it. I think the most impressive sight was squadrons of Pelican flying about in formation just above the water. What was amazing was that we had the place to ourselves which only served to make us feel all the more privileged to have stumbled across this unexpected gem.
November 20th, 2018
Bridges
There are many bridges along the ICW with swing and lifting being favoured in the past. Apart from a couple of outliers all the new ones are 65ft and fixed so we can just scrape underneath them. That said the optical illusion from the cockpit is enough to give us a heart attack every time we approach.......so far so good.
November 20th, 2018
Inter Coastal Waterway
The ICW is the most amazing piece of engineering in that it stretches 4,800km from Boston to Brownsville Texas. In so doing it served as a protected maritime artery up the east coast of the US. It has many guises as it follows the path of least resistance utilising at times pretty open water. Sometimes the engineers had no option but to get dredging and as you can see from the picture its on a big scale. In this case ploughing through seemingly endless forest.
