Tuesday 1 Nov '11

Sunshine and calm seas helped mitigate the 53 degrees. We arrived at Beaufort Docks (ouch!!! $2.30ft, $4 pwr per night) just in time to spend our wooden nickels and have dinner with Carol and Jack on 'Tribute'. Stayed long enough to stretch our legs, have lunch at the 'Grocery Store', buy a few provisions at the market up the street and scour Kelli's 'rocking chair bookstore' for additions to my collection - great little independent!

We anchored in Hammock Bay, N34 33.068 W77 19.507 for the night. The holding is not the best so we put out lots of chain in anticipation of the heavy rain and gusts to 30k expected during the night and into the morning of the following day. Unfortunately not everyone did the same. Stella Blue dragged down on us at 0705 and we had gusts to 50 and all that rain to contend with. Ken took the helm to try and steer Faring into the wind so we wouldn't drag, too. We were soaked to the bone as we left the cabin in sweats and slippers. We both lost and retrieved our glasses during the fray and Heather is out one very warm slipper but aside from that all aboard both yachts were unhurt and neither boat was damaged. We thanked our lucky stars and got the hell out of there.