December 01-04, 2000 -- Watch Out Beaufort, Here We Are!

December 1-4, 2000 -- Watch Out Beaufort, Here We Are! Today we looked at our list and discovered that for most of the things that we need to do, we need to buy stuff. So instead, we took the dinghy up to Beaufort to look around. The trip wouldn't be nearly as long if we didn't have to do it at no wake speed, after all it is less than 3 miles there! When we got there, we took a look around the anchorage and saw a number of boats that we have seen in previous anchorages, especially from Wrightesville Beach! In fact, we followed Spice Island Lady's dinghy 'Nutmeg' to the dinghy dock. Beaufort is a quaint little town and we enjoyed wandering around. We had Lunch at Ollie's By The Sea before heading back to the dinghy. As we were pulling out, the folks on Wavewacker called to us, so we pulled back in and talked to them for a little bit. We came back to the boat, and checked our e-mail. Henri called us on the VHF, and offered to take us to the store; we gladly accepted his invitation. We stopped by a boat supply store, then went on to Publix to pick a few things that we are a little low on. On December 2, After breakfast, we took the dinghy into the Port Royal Marina and then walked to the auto parts store. We attempted to find some replacement belts, which turned out to be a bust! The counter help was certainly a misnomer! There was no help to be found there, and it seemed they only had enough intelligence to continue breathing. We returned to the boat excited to start work on installing the fuse holders for our radars. We looked for the fuse holders, and they were missing. After checking every conceivable place, we called Henri to see if they fell out in his car yesterday. No luck. Next we called the Boat Supply store. As it turns out, I forgot to put them in my bag! Charlotte remembered us and offered to drop them off to us at the marina, since she was headed there after work. Once we solved that mystery, Mike set to work prepping for the fuse holder installation while I checked the battery water. At 2:00 PM EST, we decided to head into the marina to meet her. We hung out there for a little bit over an hour. Since we never saw her, we figured that she had been detained at work and we would simply get them tomorrow so we headed back to the boat. After we came back, we saw a brown paper bag sitting on our deck. We checked and it was the stuff we bought at the boat supply store. We must have just missed her in the time it took us to travel from the boat to the dock! We will definitely need to call and thank her tomorrow or Monday! While Mike installed the fuse holders, I performed domestic chores (read unloaded the dishwasher). Then, while I reassembled our lower helm, Mike fixed dinner. We spent the rest of the evening in quiet contemplative repose. Read, there was nothing good on TV. On December 3, we woke up to a rainy icky day. We decided that it was the better part of descretion not to get off the boat today, so we didn't! On December 4, after listening to weather, we decided to move to our staging area at the mouth of the Port Royal Sound. First we headed in to Port Royal to pick up milk and smokes. We headed back to the boat and put the dinghy away. We headed down the Beaufort River and dropped anchor just inside the mouth of the sound behind a shoal. While anchoring, I had a problem with the windlass control. It chafed against the gypsy! Fortunately, it didn't chafe all the way through and we were able to finish anchoring! We spliced the wire back together before settling in for the evening. The anchorage is, in Mike's words, a 'rolly polly anchorage' with the swell coming from the Ocean and the wind waves coming from 90 ° off of the sea swell