Preparing to Leave

We are still on track to leave Beaufort, NC tomorrow and head for the Bahamas. Yesterday we borrowed one of the five loaner cars available at Beaufort Docks. It was a 20+-year-old Buick that had seen better days. Several things were falling off of it but it got us to the grocery store and back so we aren’t complaining. The weather has been cloudy most of the time we have been here so we finally gave in and plugged into the shore power for the first time in over a year. Our solar panels and lithium batteries work so well that we haven’t needed to plug in before now. 

We should have plenty of wind for sailing when we leave tomorrow but it is supposed to drop off fairly quickly and remain light for most of the trip to the Bahamas. We will most likely have to do a lot of motoring so we have extra cans of diesel just in case. We expect the trip to take about 3 1/2 to 4 days. 

I am a little nervous about getting out of our slip. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of large boats here. The sailboats on either side of us extend beyond their slips so I will have to be careful not to hit them when I exit our slip. Not too far away there is an extremely large motor boat that extends at least 20 feet into our fairway. A person in the office told us that boat will be leaving first thing tomorrow morning. I certainly hope so.