Beaufort (pronounced BO fert, not BEW fert which is the one in South Carolina) is a delightful stop for sailors.  In two of the three trips we’ve made around Hatteras we kept on going further south because we had crew on board.  In the other, everything had gone wrong and we more or less fell to the ground and kissed it when we landed.  This time the main factor driving us into port was weather and hoping that the cats would adjust to life at sea more quickly if we kept the sailing trips fairly short.  When we checked in with the dockmaster, he told us in a disgusted tone that the town was full of pirates and we had picked a terrible time to stop.  He told a tale of raucous debauchery and streets filled with thousands of miscreants not much better than motorcycle gangs. Beaufort is one of those tiny little seaports where you can tie your boat up right in the center of town and be in the thick of it.     The truth was a bit differe...

     Pretty much everyone knows the legend of Diamond Shoals and Cape Hatteras.  Every year a few boats sink rounding this famous little point of land and 95% of the time my Mom asks me if I heard about the latest tragedy.  In a world where every square meter of land and sea is meticulously mapped, the Shoals appear on the map in a kind of “Here there be dragons” way.  No government agency maps it because it literally shifts with each wave, building and receding seemingly at random.  The shoals really want to extend offshore further, but they run into the mighty Gulf Stream which draws a line that they cannot pass as any sand that ventures too close gets swept away.  Unfortunately, the Gulf Stream runs into the wrong direction and moves nearly as fast as poor Dragonfly can travel, so traveling in the stream is not an option unless we enjoy standing still. Pretty much everywhere on the globe has these little numbers indicating the depth of the ocea...

    You may not know this if you somehow have only followed our journey via the blog because we are somewhat lazy at keeping it current (I’ve made a vow to do better which should last at least a few months), but three of the four previous years we have gone south to the Bahamas for the winter season and returned around July.  In the past, we have always just got someone to stay at our house and watch the cats for us.  This year we are returning to the boat about the same time as ever and making the same initial journey, but everything feels different.  Everything is different.    This year, we don’t plan to return home when the winter sailing season is over and hurricanes start to roll into the picture.  Making that decision created a cascade of difficult changes that included selling virtually all of our possessions barring those that fit onto the boat and a small handful of things that have sentimental value which we are stuffing in a storage u...