Arriving Beaufort

After an uneventful night (not counting the Dolphins, the Lightning show, and the star filled sky, we arrived at Beaufort Inlet around 10:30 Friday morning. It turned out the last few miles of the trip were the hardest

First, the weather turned miserable with clouds, wind, scattered showers (scattered over the boat) and a low fog. But we were motoring along to the first marker of the inlet when I heard "Priority" being called over the VHF radio by "Warship 24". I answered and was told that they were an aircraft carrier heading for the same inlet and would we mind standing by while they went ahead. We looked around and sure enough, coming out of the fog, was this aircraft carrier

What do you say when a really big ship asks if I'd mind?  So we hung around in the rain, the cold, the wind, the bouncing seas while they went into the inlet, stopped to pick up a pilot, and continued on into Beaufort. We followed at a respectful distance behind. 

By the way, the reason they knew our name is that we had our AIS ship identification system on. They didn't which is how they snuck up on us. 

At any rate, we arrived at our slip in the Morehead City Yacht Basin at 1 pm, tied up, took showers (it had been three days) and went for a walk  it's a little sad to see all the for sale signs in what seemed to once have been a bustling town. Not sure why it's gone downhill, but it has

Just before we got to our slip we stopped at the fuel docks to refuel. We took 48 gallons and when added to the 15 gallons we had added while underway we used a total of 63 gallons, so while it was good to have the extra fuel, we really didn't need it (our tank hoids 85 gallons