We're in Beaufort, NC. "That there's pronounced Bow Fort, son...." It was a really short trip up the ICW becaue we want to stop here for a day to wait for the waves to calm down in the Atlantic so we can try going to Cape Lookout, which we may do the day after tomorrow. Check out Cape Lookout on a map. It's the very southern cape at the bottom of the Outer Banks that ring Pamlico Sound. It looks really interesting and it's a national seashore that you can only get t0 by boat. Inside the hook shaped cape, there's calm water for anchoring and you can dinghy around to see the beaches and lighthouse.

Beaufort, NC is a quaint little seacoast town, but not as little as Swansboro yesterday. We're at the town docks marina which is right in the middle of the historic downtown waterfront district.

We visited the North Carolina Maritime Museum, which is interesting now, but it has plans to become very large and much more interesting.

This is a display of a "menhadden boat", a large wooden fishing boat used locally to catch menhadden fish in the first half of the 20th century. They were over 100 ft. long with 3 large 12-man rowboats that went out to net the fish. They would find a large school of menhadden by watching for seabirds above the school and then quickly row a purse sein net around the school of fish and the big boat would come over to help contain the nets and all 4 boats would haul the nets and "bail" the fish into the big boat's hold. It would only take one good catch to fill the entire boat with fish and then they'd quickly head back to port where the fish were turned into fish oil and powdered protein for animal feed.

I liked the boatbuilding part which was not a museum, it was people building wooden boats like they used to before the days of fiberglass. This is about an 18 ft. skipjack sailboat with a small cabin. These boats were very common 100 years ago, but are almost gone today.

So here's my Great Loop Route map. The red line now includes two more states and is definitely more than half complete. We are within days of where we planned to be when I did the original cruise plan 2 years ago. What an adventure!