Wednesday, October 13, 2010 – Swansboro, NC (ICW mile 229.0)

Double yuk! The boat was covered with dead mosquitoes when we got up. At least we didn’t get the green slime all over like the fish fly hatch. We were counting on the breeze blowing away most of the carcasses, but we were still in need of a good fresh water scrubbing to get the boat cleaned up properly.

We were on our way by 8 am and heading out into another lovely day. It took eleven hours to travel sixty miles with a stop in Beaufort (say: ‘BO-fert’) North Carolina for fuel and water. We had hoped to take about two hours in Beaufort to walk around the city and get a feel for its history, but during the afternoon we set up an appointment with a mechanic to meet us at the Masonboro Marina on Friday morning at 8 am with a cold engine. The only way we were going to make it to Masonboro by the time the marina closed on Thursday was to keep moving.

We arrived in Swansboro as the sun was setting and dropped the anchor just outside of the channel. There was a lot of current and we had some difficulty getting the anchor to set. Finally, at 7 pm we had good holding and made our dinner. The lights in town were very pretty at night and the traffic on the waterway died down after dark.