Passage to Pamlico

Well almost Pamlico. We are at Oriental North Carolina which is on the Neuse River at the south end of Pamlico Sound.

We left Bald Head Island on Friday morning after being there a week. We had a great time going to the beach, climbing the light house and just hanging around the marina. We met two couples that also own Island Packet yachts. Both were from Canada. They had been in the Bahamas and were heading home to Nova Scotia. We all got together for happy hour on Tuesday evening, had drinks and hors d'œuvres. We all told of our sailing tales and laughed at them all. It is amazing how many other couples have very similar experiences as we do. I had mentioned my taking evasive action from the moon rising. One of the ladies said she was trying to hail the planet Mars on the VHF radio. She though it was another sailboat that had come close by. As one other sailor we met says, "There is some weird S#@t that goes on our there at night".

From Bald Head Island we went north to Wrightsville Beach. It was only 28 miles so it was a short day. There were a couple of tricky areas on the ICW with lot's of current that made my adrenaline flow. We stayed at the Wrightsville Beach marina for the night. On Saturday we arose early in order to get through the Wrightsville Beach bascule bridge. The bridge only opens on the hour from 7AM to 7PM. We asked for an opening at 6:30 AM and were on our way to Swansboro N.C. This was a long day covering 54 miles. We had 3 other bridges to get through also. One of them only opens on the hour and we arrived just 10 minutes past so we had to hang out for 50 minutes before we could get through. We had quite a bit of current against us in the morning. Once we past Brown's inlet we had the current going with us and saw speeds up to 8.5 knots. This helped get us to Swansboro by 4:00PM. We were pretty tired so we ate leftover spaghetti and went to bed. On Sunday we knew that there was some bad weather moving into the area and had 48 miles to cover to get to Oriental. We again departed at 6:30 AM. There were no bridges to wait for on this leg. We had the current going with us the entire way from Swansboro to Morehead City. At one point just before the Beaufort inlet we saw 9 knots. Once past the inlet we slowed to 4.8 knots. What a let down but we knew it was coming. The rest of the trip up to Oriental was pretty boring. The route wound it's way through Adams Creek to the Neuse River. There were thunderstorms to our south that were building. We could here the thunder. I checked the weather radar and they were moving to the northeast away from us which was a relief. I could see additional rain moving our direction from New Bern to the west. I was hoping to get to the Whittaker Pointe Marina before the rain reached us. It was a close race. It started to rain just as we were pulling into a slip.

There is some really bad weather heading our way and should be here Tuesday thru Thursday. One forecast says there could be winds up to 65 knots. More likely 30-35 though. I think we will stayed tied to the dock until it passes by. We will leave sometime late in the week and continue north. Our destination is Hampton Virginia where we will take a slip for a couple of months. We plan to explore the Chesapeake Bay from there.

Once in Hampton I am going to fly to Mobile Alabama and pick up our Expedition and bring it up to Hampton so we will have ground transportation. There are lot's of nice land trips we can do in that area.