MONDAY JUNE 21ST

Left Oriental early so we could make it across Pamlico Sound and River before the wind picked up. It’s nice to be traveling on big water. And Pamlico Sound is big water! For one thing, we can use the auto-pilot. It’s also good to be back on the wide-open water again, rather than stumped lined canals. It also gives us the opportunity to run the engines up for a while.

Before arriving in New Bern back in May, we noticed the speedometer wasn’t working. There are little wheels on the hull of the boat that spin and calculate our speed, but not when they are full of critters and gunk. The freshwater killed that stuff off and our speedometer is now back in business. Running fast every so often also knocks crud off the bottom of the boat and we actually pick up a few mph at he same rpm once we do this.

It was a long day of travel and very hot.  The scenery has changed again. We now see many stands of pines.

This F-18 entertained us for quite a while. Practicing low runs and steep turns. Their speed and the sound they make is something else!!

This is the gross picture of the day, so be warned. The flies have been back. Ross nailed this trophy sized one. Hey, it was a long boring day.

We arrived for the night at The Alligator River Marina. It was not at all what we expected. As you can see, it’s a gas station with a dock behind it. At this point of the day, we didn’t care. And the dock-master told us they had good burgers inside and cold beer. That works!


Went up for supper and ordered our burgers.

Many people came in and ordered food. Turns out it’s a very popular stop. Soft shelled crab and sea trout are specialties. We didn’t know that till after we ordered the burgers. But it turned out the burgers were good too.










Guess we don’t get around all that much because we’ve never seen bowling pin beers. We grabbed a couple of them out of the cooler to have with the burgers. Only $1.09. Cheaper than the pop!!

We ended up eating dinner with Ben Fulton from the sailboat, Loon. (he had the sea trout and said it was fantastic) He is from Annapolis and offered to mark up our charts with places to visit in the Chesapeake.

Shortly after Ben arrived at our boat to share his knowledge of the Chesapeake with us, the gal from the gas station appeared outside our boat. Seems Ross and I skipped out on the check!!! We each thought the other paid when we ordered, and they never gave us a check. We felt like a couple of dorks. The gal was nice about it, but I’m sure she was thinking, “dumb Yankees”.