Danielle thought I didn’t put enough picture of New-Bern in our last post so here are three more pictures showing the beautiful houses you find in the historic district as well as one more picture of the gardens of the Tryon’s Palace. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed inside the Palace so we cannot show you what it was like but if I have to describe it I would say it is luxurious with many high ceiling rooms but, strangely enough, the rooms were relatively small by today’s standards.
We got all our parts delivered at the UPS Store in New-Bern. However, the interesting thing about this is one of the item was a new folding bicycle for Danielle. We bought her a folding bicycle at Canadian Tire before we left but it is just too hard on her legs for long distance rides. It was cheap but you get what you pay for. For me we bought a Dahon Mariner D7, a much better and expensive bike that would fit my height. So we decided to buy another Dahon for Danielle and got it delivered. The UPS store is about 6 Km from the boat and if we use our bicycle to get there, how do we bring the new one back? Well Danielle took my Dahon and I walked. It was a hot and sunny day but walking was too slow so I started running, which I did on and off all the way; that was quite an exercise. The day after, we were stuck at the anchorage because the bascule bridge closing the path was broken so we were running out of water. We borrowed a bunch of jugs from our neighbor boat “Kite” and carried 50 gallons (500lbs) of water in the dinghy from a close marina to our boat. Finally, when the bridge reopened we went to the only fuel station in New-Bern to get some Diesel but the pump was broken. They had a working pump for the trucks but it was about 200m from the boat so I had to carry by hand 40 gallons (~250lbs) of diesel from the pump to the boat. I don’t know why but I think I lost 5lbs while we were in New-Bern!
Resuming our travel we motored down to Beaufort NC and left the day after for an overnight on the ocean that took us to Georgetown in South-Carolina. This was a 165 nm (305 Km) ride and it took us 32 hours, which was our longest leg so far. During that ride we encountered our first dolphins, once a couple came to see us as you can see on the picture but a few hours later a bunch of about 10 came and swam in front of the boat as dolphin do. Unfortunately, it was too dark for pictures.
At the office everybody has a picture of a sand island with a palm tree in their background. Well, this is maybe not a palm tree but this is the best we got so far!
Here’s a picture of Georgetown as we get closer to the waterfront. No anchorages available here close to town as all the good spots are taken by mooring buoys. We anchored a bit off town pretty much in the channel leading to town. This is a situation we encounter more and more as the local marinas are taking all the good spaces and leave nothing for the transient boaters unless you pay them to stay. The good thing though is that we can get free internet quite easily; thanks to our 22” antenna and bridge we installed few weeks ago.Once we are done here we plan to motored through the ICW to Charleston SC where we hope to visit some plantations but we’ll see how we manage that with our Turbo folding bicycles.
