Beaufort, NC November 30 - December 3, 2021

      Beaufort is a really charming little seaside town.  It is quite well known to sailors because when you are heading north towards Cape Hatteras, it is the last chance you have to duck into harbor and wait for favorable weather before you try to round the cape.  Of course, when you have just completed passing through from the north, it is also the first place you can stop safely.  We were more than ready for a break from the cold and lumpy sea and a storm was rolling over later in the day once we landed.

Beaufort is really very charming and lies oh so close to the ocean.

     It is quite possible to anchor and avoid paying the marina fees, but we were happy to have a secure spot and didn't regret paying the fees.  There is a fantastic entrepreneur who has converted one building into a restaurant, a pizzeria, a craft cocktail bar, and a shop with ice cream and wine and beer.  Pretty much everything a sailor could want.  Guess which of those was our favorite?

 
Did you guess right?  I bet you did.
 
      Really, almost everything in the town was cute.  The first night temperatures were scheduled to drop down to 30 or something ridiculous.  Remember the repairs that didn't get done?  Chief amongst those was installing air conditioning on the boat.  Why should that matter, you ask?  Because boats are also heated by the same system that does air conditioning.  It just runs backwards.  Later on we worked out a system to run a space heater using dock power, but I thought the smart move would be to take Lisa to a little hotel that overlooked the marina where we could take a 30 minute hot shower and set the heat to 80 if we wanted to.  I grabbed some Mexican takeout, we holed up in our hotel room, played Dungeons & Dragons over the hotel's super fast wifi and we celebrated our landfall.  
Dragonfly at the marina from our hotel room window.
 
      We spent 4 days in Beaufort, mostly just waiting for good weather to move on.  I did take apart the autopilot and determined exactly what plastic part needed to be replaced.  I asked around and was told I would never find the part here.  The consensus seemed to be that we should try in Charleston, where there were lots more vendors who might be able to help.  Spoiler alert: not so much.

     I think this remains one of my favorite stops of the trip.  I don't know that one would want to spend 3 weeks here, but it is an absolutely tremendous destination for a long weekend or a bit more.  We didn't explore nearby Morehead City at all, but we did walk pretty much the entire length and breadth of the town looking for a few items to add to our medical kit.  I do note that despite the fact that one shop had the most amusing sign advising you to mask up, the likelihood of seeing a random person wearing a mask has dropped by 50% or more as we head south.
 


Location: Beaufort, NC 28516, USA

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