Thalia's Voyage

After a layover day in Oriental of grocery shopping Mike Johnston and I decided to head to Beaufort, NC (340 42' 59.64N 760 39' 59.87"). Doing the ditch to Beaufort from Oriental is basically a 4-6 hour motor along the Intracostal Waterway (ICW). No sailing to the contrary on the ICW with a boat that needs 6 feet of water (Thalia's draft) you constantly are on the verge of running out of water. You may park it on the bottom and require a tow. The captain has close personal experience with the low water phenomena and knows some of the shallow places. He curses them each time he passes the edge of them.

So on Monday morning after checking over the engine and oil level Mike & I fired up the Mercedes checked the exhaust for water flow. Using Mikes new midship control line we backed out under amazing control letting the midship line slide around the piling. For once all the other boats and pilings were safe from Captain Pats careening around the dock area! Out of the harbor we throttled up to 5 kts and headed to the mouth of Adams Creek. Blue skies with big puffy cumulus clouds, a 10 kts breeze and 70 degrees greeted us out on the Neuse river as we approached Adams Creek. Really lovely cool morning in the Neuse. We turned to port at the Adams Creek buoy and headed into the ditch. Passed some lovely homes (see ICW-Beaufort album) and on to the Adams Creek bridge. Bridge clearance is basically 57-65 feet depending on water levels and Thalia needs 62 feet. The first time we came thru her I asked Judy to watch the mast clearance. She responded it was hard to watch from deck level! Hmm...perhaps I might suggest the bosun chair the next time for a better view. With 60 feet of water we cleared the bridge and motored on towards Beaufort. As we approached the transition from the Adams Creek canal to Core Creek we came upon the Beaufort Belle with her barge heading to Beaufort. After many minutes of following her Captain Pat decided to pass with permission. Radioed the Belle and asked to pass on her port side. It seemed like a sensible decision.....but...on further reflection there are a few truisms about tugs pushing barges on the ICW! First they are very wide and take up most of the channel. Secondly, they are not going to move over to where you think the edge of the channel exists. They are the classical immovable object. Captain Pat has now learned these new pieces of nautical wisdom. We started to pass the Belle but did not have enough speed to pass quickly. The passing rapidly became a slow pass! AND we were approaching one of those known shallow areas about 500 meters ahead. So...just as I was throttling back down to 1-2kts and calling the Belle to tell here we would be falling back behind her we did it quite magically with help from the bottom. The only good thing about running aground is the bottom is soft here and I was at 1-2kts. We were able to back off into the channel with new nautical knowledge for the Captain.

Onto Beaufort following the tug and barge. Well have lunch and follow her into Beaufort! The Belle pulled in at the commercial port and we continued on to the Beaufort channel. At the channel buoy I swung Thalia hard to port and as we passed pony island I radioed the town docks for a slip. We tied up and went to the Town dock bar to celebrate that perhaps Captain Pat had learned something about tugs and barges.