Getting Rocked in North Carolina

On Tuesday morning (May 13) we left Snead's Ferry for the cruise to Morehead City.  Not long after getting underway, CARIB II was rocked by the fast--and close--passage of three armed river boats with Marines in full combat gear. Talk about a bad time to NOT have the camera on me. It definitely got our hearts pounding.

It was much more impressive close up and at speed . . . . 

  As we cruised through Camp Lejeune we saw lots of reminders of the active military presence.

Warning sign for Live Fire 

Evidence of target practice in Camp Lejeune

The rest of the cruise was uneventful, which is a good thing when you're on a boat. We spent the evening in Morehead City, one of the larger towns on the NC ICW and an active port. Its neighboring town, Beaufort (BOW-fort), is the older of these two southern "Twin Cities" and is supposed to be the more picturesque of the two, but with both of us being under the weather on Tuesday we didn't have the energy to investigate first hand. Morehead City has made some effort to preserve its history, even if it is just in the form of commemorative signs that only note what used to exist and not what currently exists.  We found the "stood here" signs rather humorous and wondered why they bothered.

Morehead City is a big center for sport fishing and hosts a large annual marlin fishing tournament. The evidence of the fishing culture was everywhere.

The first purple hulled boat we've seen

"Marlin" on the Morehead City Dock

Better name than "Unsanitary Restaurant", but not by much

The Portside Marina in Morehead City was nice except that we were moored on a face dock that was exposed to the wake of boats entering and leaving town. We have found that many of the captains of the large fishing convertibles don't seem to know the meaning of "no wake zone", so we were hit by some substantial wakes until sunset and again early on Wednesday morning.

We had gorgeous cruising weather on Wednesday (May 14); too bad it was a relatively short trip (around 25 miles) to our next stop, the village of Oriental, NC. We had originally planned to just stay one night, but with wind and a line of thunderstorms scheduled to be in the area Thursday and today, three nights seemed a better idea. Lon took advantage of the time to do some needed preventive maintenance on the boat (oil changes) and I took Zipper to a local vet for a blood draw to monitor her thyroid condition. And then it was time to "rock and roll" as the wind picked up. The fixed docks didn't stabilize us very well, and I had to leave the boat for a bit Thursday afternoon because I was getting queasy.

Whitecaps on the Neuse River

The wind continued until lunchtime today, and after the clouds moved on we had a glorious afternoon and evening. It's so nice to have a stationary floor under our feet! Zipper even dared to venture out, something that she definitely would not do yesterday.

Crab pot retrieval at sunset

Brave Zipper

We are starting to encounter larger bodies of water in our cruising, which makes weather a bigger factor in our day-to-day planning. Wind speeds that wouldn't cause a problem for us in some of the narrower ICW channels could make cruising rather uncomfortable in the larger bays, sounds, and rivers. It will be interesting to see what the ratio of weather days to cruising days turns out to be.