My Boating weekend

The plan for the weekend was to go fishing with my BIL and FIL. I arrived home from work on Friday around 19:20 and packed for the trip as well as ate some dinner and hung out a bit with Carol. I left for Goldsboro around 20:00. I needed a new fishing license so I stopped off at Dicks in Garner. That’s when the evening went to pot. Instead of getting back on 70 East, I got on 40 East. The road was looking odd and I finally realized what I had done. I ended up getting on 210 which cuts back over to highway 70 (sort of). I knew I should have taken the GPS… I won’t make that mistake again. 210 ended up dumping me onto business 70 in Smithfield so the territory was new to me. There’s nothing like being in a strange town after dark. One of the intersections I came upon had no damn Street signs and 4 different ways to go… I was like WTF!
I took a road that was paralleling hwy 70 for a few miles and ended up in Selma. Yet another town I had not been to and yep… you guessed it… another intersection with no damn street signs or none that I could see in my current state and the time of the night.

I end up making it to Goldsboro around 10:30 I think. I helped load the boat at that point. After the loading process we checked the tires on the trailer to find two of them low on air. We crank up the air compressor and attempt to pump the tires up. We end then find out that one of the tires has a rotted valve stem. We promptly pull that tire off and put the spare on. All fixed! NOT! The other tire on the same side also has a rotted valve stem.

At this point, we know our 0600 departure time is now pushed out until at least 0800 as we need to find a tire shop open in the morning on a Saturday. By the time all this happens, it is almost 23:30. We were tired and went to sleep.


The next morning we called around and found out that Firestone opens at 0700, so we show up at their door around 0650. They promptly take care of us and we head home, bolt the tires to the trailer and are on our way. We get to Beaufort and drive down the road to the ramp we’ve used for years now only to find that it no longer exists. It’s been sold to a condo developer. RATS!

Never fear… there is a wildlife ramp a few miles down the road and we launch the boat.

We saw about 12 wild horses on the islands. That's them waaaaay in the background.



We saw Dolphins.





I hooked a huge amberjack but it broke my line.


Here's a short video of the run ack to the dock.

Here's the crew and captain



Myself and my FIL