Day 13, Year 11: Passage to Little River, SC-Offshore
Date: Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Weather: Overcast, Wind NE <10
Latitude: 34 26.715 N
Longitude: 076 56.135 W
Location: About 21 Miles Southwest of Beaufort
Total Miles Traveled: 671 Nautical Miles (4:30 pm)
The decision to go offshore at Beaufort (pronounced Bow-furt, not to be confused with Beaufort that is further south and is pronounced Bue-furt) was made after listening to the weather this morning. Beaufort is sitting right under a trough that should start to dissipate overnight. When a trough is sitting on top of you, it is difficult to predict the wind as it depends on EXACTLY where you are. The weather predictions are for a wider area, so our northeast wind, what little we have of it, might turn to the southeast. Or we might just get light and variable wind. Or we might get southeast wind 10-20. Nothing indicated that we should have rough conditions, so that made the decision. We could get a few squalls overnight, but again, nothing with very strong winds. The seas are 2-3 feet, so not bad. Because we currently have less than 10 knots of wind behind us, we are motor sailing. But we would have been motoring in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) for three more days. With this decision, we will be in Little River tomorrow afternoon, two weeks after leaving Cape Cod.
We arrived in Beaufort’s sister city, Morehead City, a little after noon today. All you see from the water is industry, but just before we reached the city, the scenery along the ICW changed to sand and marsh grass. We had finally left the swamp and low country of North Carolina behind us and moved into the marshland. We will re-enter that when we go through the Little River Inlet tomorrow, but for tonight all we will see is open ocean. We got a great send-off from Beaufort as we started seeing pods of dolphins right away. And finally one pod came to play in Windbird’s bow wake. These are Atlantic Spotted Dolphins (Stenella frontalis) and there were all sizes. There were a couple of calves, a few subadults, and a couple of giant mommas. Some were jumping and slapping their tails on the water. We were so glad that James got to see such a great show.
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| 151104 Day 13 Passage to SC–Offshore at Beaufort |
