June 20, 2008.

We ended up spending 2 nights at anchor in Beaufort. Town was a nice place to walk around and do a little shopping. There are several fine little places to eat along the main drag.

On Thursday morning we were up and underway by 0700. High tide in Beaufort was supposed to be around 0930 so we wanted to get a good start up Adams Creek so we could ride the tide for all it was worth. Raising both anchors went smoothly and didn’t take much more time than raising our usual single anchor.

It was only about a 20 mile trip to Oriental. We averaged 7 knots for most of the trip and just when the push ended we got a good bit of breeze and were able to sail across the Neuse River into Whitaker Creek.

Our friends Ken & Carol live at the end of the creek. The entrance channel has given us trouble in the past, as the depths are just barely enough to keep Veranda afloat. Things went smoothly for us though, as we entered the creek. For the entire length of the creek the water is only a couple of inches deeper than Veranda requires. We took our time and slowly made our way down the creek.

We had to go to the end of the creek and make a “K” turn to approach their dock. There were sailboats tied to the bulkheads on 3 sides of us as we maneuvered the boat at the end of the channel. Just to complicate things a bit as we turned around our keel was ever so slightly dragging across the bottom. It took a bit of backing and filling to position ourselves alongside the dock but things went very well and we were tied up in short order. I was pretty pleased as the area is tight and the surrounding bulkheads are lined with sailboats and witnesses.

Oriental is a first class little town. People are friendly, everyone knows each other and it’s just a great place to visit. The place is extremely sail oriented. There are facilities to get work done along with a couple of chandleries and an excellent nautical consignment shop.


Let me bring you up to speed on our refrigeration woes. When we got back into the United States our fridge was on the blink. We had the refrigerant refilled while we were in Vero Beach. The recharge only lasted about 5 weeks so we realized that our leak was fairly serious. So, while we were in Carolina Beach we called a service guy that was recommended by several different people. Those people must hate us because this guy turned out to be an idiot. He did diagnose the problem but didn’t have the replacement part in stock. So we decided to once again have the refrigerant recharged figuring that we could have the repair done by someone when we finally got to Oriental. The guy hooked his gauges to our system and then discovered that he couldn’t hook his gauges to his own bottle of refrigerant. It seemed that he didn’t have the correct adapter. WTF? It’s his own bottle with his own gauges and he can’t hook em’ together? He finally ran down to the hardware store and bought some plumbing fittings so he could connect his own crap together and recharge our system.

Unfortunately, that charge only lasted 5 days, so the leak was getting worse. So once we arrived in Oriental, Christy called a guy that Ken had recommended. She explained the whole ordeal and Ron was real noncommittal as his schedule was booked solid. 2 hours later Ron called back and said that parts for another job failed to arrive so he had a bit of time and could drop in and look at our fridge for us. He stopped by on his way home and said the part that was leaking just needed to be re-soldered and not replaced, and that he could stop by in the morning first thing and take care of it. So it was decided that to save time I would remove the compressor from the boat so he could do the welding outside the boat in the morning. He showed up on time, repaired the crack in the system and reinstalled and then recharged the system for less money than either of the 2 previous servicemen. Excellent.

So once again my beer is cold, my meat is hard and life is good.