Beaufort and sail home after 3000 miles

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We are now headed home to do a little work before our next trip. I understand why Moitessier abandoned the first Golden Globe race and just went on sailing.

I see the story I told about the fisherman who fell overboard and was rescued three hours later is in ‘The Week’. Who got the story out first?

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As expected the town is beautiful. I wouldn’t rave about the marina though. The location is excellent but its pricey and despite previous reviews a month ago about the state of the showers and toilets, they still failed to renew the toilet paper and also had no courtesy cars or ways to get to the grocery store.

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We toured the houses on the horseback tour. That middle house was the one used in The Great Santini. A movie I must watch now. Tom Hanks did a lot of filming Forrest Gump there and it seems charmed the whole town with his friendliness. In the chocolate box scene, he didn’t like the brand of chocolates that they used, so he got them to replace the chocolates with the local chocolate shop. They now send him a box of chocolates for his birthday even year. Barbara Streisand was also here for a movie but apparently kept herself totally secluded.

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We did the usual tour of Museum and Fred told us all about the history of Beaufort as our very own personal guide. He had been in the Marines and army and attended The War College which implies he was at least a General. Fascinating man.

The graveyard ( you must know by now my morbid fascination with graves). has a number of British, Confederate and Union flags.

I was sooo tempted to pull the bell but I guess I’m getting more mature and resisted.

Chrissy our bar tender was a delight. While we were there someone came in for their credit card that they had left behind. She took out the collection that she has acquired so far. She said that she feels she can’t throw them out. Guess I’m not the only one who has done this.

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Some pretty big boats parked beside us and intriguing artwork on the houses.

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The beauty of the trip has been the lack of schedule and sometimes that’s essential to sailing. The weather was not great so we stayed another day and in fact we made such good sailing that we were going to arrive too early in the middle of the night so we ‘hove to’.(to the non sailors that’s just really parking the boat without anchoring.) and played a few games of Mantanga. Pat is winning hands down cause its a numbers game.

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The sunsets and cloud formations are something else out there. Sometimes a bit frightening as you see lightening passing close by. I was saying to Pat how lovely it was to have our dinner of Gammon and Cabbage and watch the sunset. (Gammon is a ham steak or big bacon bit) and how we will eat at home a lot more and the food is just as good as restaurants. He didn’t seem that enthusiastic and I heard him mutter something about variety as he went down to clean up.

The Moon was setting early at night and the view of the stars was incredible as it was so dark. This was made even better because there is a meteor shower in August and the best nights are the 12 and 13th to see it. Lots of shooting stars.

Difficult to reef in the dark though! Just saying. And in the morning we would have flying fish on deck that somehow missed their landing. It’s lovely to see about thirty of them suddenly fly out of the water. Unable to photograph them or the beautiful diamond sky with shooting stars.

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We must have been near the Gulf Stream because the water was so clear as you can see form the dolphin pics. A few times pods would join us at the bow. I would have expected the current to slow us down as it heads north but we remained at a steady pace with SOG being the same as STW.

This is just Au Revoir as I love writing the blog and Florida is so beautiful and eventful.