We had engine issues before we got to Beaufort on the Neuse River: the exhaust riser cracked and we got delayed at Seagate Marina in North Carolina for two nights before finding a welder in Morehead City. Tripp talked to the boss man on the phone, was directed through three people before getting to the head honcho once there, a huge burly guy covered in tattoos, who looked at the cracked and went “Sheeee-oooooot!” in a southern drawl before switching to a monotone, “Yeah, I can get that done in less than an hour. This update will be a little slapdash just to catch up.
Editor’s Note: For those who remember our accidental jettisoning of the French Press, I forgot to mention that Tripp was out procuring a new one during my laundry extravaganza in. Well, we got to enjoy it in all its glory for about 3 mornings (6 – 8 coffees total) before Tripp dropped the nut that holds the mesh filter together down the sink. So, for the entire duration of this update, making coffee became a kind of dart game where we had to bullseye three parts with un-capped bolt to push it down. It worked great!
Addendum to the Editor’s Note: It did not work great. Then I dropped the bottom-most component overboard and it got even less great!
I really encourage people to read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods now that we’ve finished it, if they want to get a feel for the dynamic Tripp and I have out here.
Now for the update proper, resuming with February 15th.
A beautiful morning of sailing across the Albemarle Sound was to be had on the morning of February 15th. Yielded this poem:
191. At the Mouth of the Pasquotank Rocked on Callipygia's cabin top I am privileged by cliche: Silver waters rolling in Beneath us from the bay. This page is capsized on my lap Pinned by the wind, and spray Flies up into my grateful face: It's warm. It's good today. The menagerie of clouds above: Stratus trooping far in ranks And cumulus that graze behind Ashore beyond the riverbanks Both with gentle shades of grey Their underbellies' subtle hue High cirrus hangs in azure fields A distant texture, faint on blue. While all around and all through-out Are tinges of the rising sun The sound and clouds imbued with light; Just so this farmer's son. And the moment passes. Done.
We sailed to the northern entrance to the Alligator – River Pungo River canal, dropped anchor in Rattlesnake Cove (don’t worry, it’s just a name. It was actually a peninsula), and then hauled up at about 0500 the next morning.
The 16th saw us through the canal, which was pleasant but not quite as scenic as the Dismal Swamp, to the Pungo River then on to the Palmico Sound, where Tripp begrudgingly decided we needed a place to dock before pushing on to Beaufort due to the weather.
So, we took on fuel and water and ice at RE Mayo, a fish and shrimp dock in Hobucken, NC (population: 38) where we stayed until the morning of the 18th. Tripp eventually came around to being there. Betty, who ran the register, was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and Mark, who helped us out with the fuel and ice, was a retired air force guy who used to be stationed in Plattsburgh, so I got to jam a little bit about an area closer to home for a bit. And Penny deserves respect for her adamant refusal, not only to part with any of her collection of bones from the fishermen’s refuse, but even to take a picture of them.
Dinner with the fresh seafood was rice and shrimp night 1 and a beer-battered catfish fry night two. I made the batter, which was dang good, and Tripp knocked it out of the ballpark with our friggin’ temperamental alcohol stove in terms of getting it cooked to perfection.
I’d once had a bartender in the Atlanta airport talk my ear off about how excited he was for his cousin’s weekend catfish fry, only to get feedback from some posh lady about how “catfish was a bottom feeder”, so I was interested to see where Tripp and I fell for the first time having catfish. I’m a cousin’s fish fry guy, Tripp is decidedly not.
We also got to meet other people actually sailing, a couple from Maine and Minnesota with a younger hanger-on who was getting antsy about motoring so much, and an incredibly English gentleman and his South African wife. This gentleman was so polite, we could only gauge from his facial expression and “Well, best enough said about that, eh” the depths of his eagerness to be separated from the other boat, who had only fallen in with them by circumstance. Kind of like a baritone Terry Thomas, for my fellow 70 year olds.
And man, as impolite as it is… I can’t not mention that his wife (who was incredibly pleasant to be sure) had a falsetto aspect to her voice that made her sound like Eric Idle in a dress from some Monty Python skit. It was used to great effect on the boat by the two of us for the next few days. “Well, I’ve had shrimp and grits now and I quite like them. Of course, we call them prawns and yours is rather more like a porridge than what we would have in-”
And so on.
193. To Life and Fragile Muses Flip a coin, dear: Both of us must die. But one will be the first to go While one must live and know A time when the other has passed them by. In the wind, dear: Dandelions sway; Petals turn to clocks of seed; How do they slip the need To cling onto the stalk and fly away? On the breeze, dear: A bubble that I've blown Joins the flowers' journey too. It could be me or you. Grape-scented orb of memory, swiftly flown. When that coin, dear, Lands what way it will: Breathe cypselas out, for me. And if its you, I'll be Alone in wind to cast our bubble still.
The afternoon coming down Adam’s Creek on the 18th was absolutely beautiful, engine issue not withstanding (which became apparent in the Neuse River, just prior). Though we got to Seagate at a walloping 1.5 to 2 kts, which even necessitated me holding the jib with a boat hook while drinking a Modelo (oh no), it had a finish line kind of feeling to it. Dolphins were everywhere, the sunlight and sunset were gorgeous. Not much more could be asked for.
There’s not too much to say about Seagate or Morehead City that hasn’t been said. The staff was pleasant, I had a nice long conversation with a man named Ron who was walking his dog while playing fiddle on the back deck. We stayed there two nights, got the exhaust riser fixed, and then spent one night at dock in Morehead City before leaving on the 21st.
Oh, actually: good conversation, good beer, and good pimento cheeseburgers were had at the Tap & Tackle on the 20th while we were waiting for the weld to be done. The bartender, John, flagged us down when he was opening up with a “You boys comin’ in?”. He could see our stupor deciding where we needed to go. Inside was his incredibly personable yellow lab Hook, who was banging his tail on the stair stanchions like a xylophone waiting to be pet when we walked by.
John, clearly being a man who knows what he likes, had every television set to a different video from a YouTube playlist titled “Bikini Fishing” and grilled us amicably about the boat. When Tripp told him about the speed we were traveling down, the man was aghast. “Pffft! Buddy, I would hang myself with a guitar string. I trawl for fish at faster than 5 knots!”
And he also told us about a local meth head whose inheritance-fueled binges got him banned from the bar when he came in in a fugue state and proceeded to piss beside the bar.
John: “The worst thing is, the guy denied he even did. Buddy, I got 30 4k security cameras in here, I could hear it hit the floor.“
Tripp, “You could have made a 3D model of him.”
That about covers everything up to the night of the 20th. Our plan for the morning of the 21st was to leave the Outer Banks and head out into the Atlantic, to round Cape Hatteras (the Graveyard of the Atlantic) in favorable conditions. So, I sent my paranoid last good byes and readied for a bumpy ride.
Then on the morning of the 21st, Tripp thought better of it and we stayed in the ICW.
Before I say “see you next update”: when we were at the Mid-Atlantic Christian University dock, Tripp was lamenting that there probably wasn’t a bar on campus. I said, “Well, if they’re Catholic, we can at least get wine.” His response:
See you next update!
Hermit Thrush 