Another long day today as not so great weather is forecast for Saturday/Sunday. We’ll spend a few days in the small town of Oriental to avoid the weather and check out the town. It was highly recommended by Ursula & Jeb who were here last year on their trek south.
We had planned to leave at sunrise as it was a 38 nm day but the weather had other ideas. It was dead calm last night and we woke up to heavy fog. Luckily it was to be another clear sunny day so as the sun got bit higher it burned off the fog and we were on our way shortly after 8:30.
Bob had been warned to wear gloves, the same ones we used on the slimy lock walls, when pulling up the anchor anywhere in the Chesapeake. He hadn’t needed them so far but yuk, he sure needed them this morning.
There was hardly any wind today but we had the main up for a little while. For Bob, alas, just motor sailing. One really has to pay attention to the charts on the ICW. Today we were both on fairly wide rivers and a canal but always made sure to stay in ICW channel showing on the chart plotter and kept track of all the warning notes on the Garmin GPS on the iPad, as we were moving along
A larger sailboat flying a Canadian flag passed us on the canal. Within an hour we saw it slow down ahead of us but a bit off to the left and then stop. Bob radioed over to ask if they were ok and got a quick reply “don’t come over here, we’re stuck”. They had veered off the channel and in this area it was immediately very very shallow . That did show on the chart so I guess they just weren’t paying atttention. We heard them on the radio ask a passing motor yacht to give them a lot of wake but it was so shallow there it didn’t help.
There are lot of fairly big commercial fishing boats in this area. We saw a couple on the Neuse River with huge flocks of birds following them but the birds really only visible with the binoculars – I left my real camera with a good zoom at home – not intentionally – so no pictures!
We got to the Oriental Inn & Marina around three and are now on the overflow long dock. We’re moving to the very protected Inn dock tomorrow morning – rotten weather coming in, not as much tomorrow but definitely on Sunday. There are a lot of the large fishing boats docked here among the sailboats and motor yachts/trawlers – will take pictures.