We arrived at Morehead City late in the afternoon and found a great spot to dock for $10 a night, right in the middle of town. It belongs to the Sanitary Restaurant, a Morehead City institution, and we ate there that night; it was clean as its name implies, and served great fresh fish and good homestyle cooking. We dined with fellow cruisers from Marathon Key Florida, who were heading north for a summer of cruising the Chesapeake Bay. They have been living aboard their sailboat First Light, for over 20 years, and invited us aboard for a drink after dinner, they were quite an education, full of top tips and wise words. We suffered a little boat envy as it was so spacious and homely. The main reason to stop at Morehead City though was to track down my long lost university housemate Angela, which thanks to google I did. It was great to catch up after 15 years over lunch, and later pizza at her house (being in a house was a novelty too) and we met her sweet son Jack.
We spent 2 nights at the dock, hiked 6 miles to a sprint store to replace dickie’s cell phone that had disintegrated, and left bright and early for a great day of sailing up the Neuse river and Pamlico bay. En route we had a safety drill to make sure we could get our new lifejackets on quick, hopefully they will stay in their current pristine state and will only be used for drills. After 65 miles we anchored in a creek off the Pungo River and had the place to ourselves; we jumped in the water briefly, before dinner and had an early night. Another early departure and a long uneventful day through Alligator river had us at anchor in a sheltered spot called South Lake. It is just south of the Albermarle sound, a wide shallow body of water that is renowned for rough conditions, but we were relieved to find it pretty calm when we crossed it the next day. Later on we stopped at the Coinjock Marina to fuel up and managed to spend a fortune there in just a couple of hours, on charts for the next section of our journey, fuel and oil, food and lunch at the riverside restaurant. We crossed into Virginia and anchored in Blackwater creek in the middle of a marsh for 2 nights as it was so lovely, the frogs at sunset were so loud we could hardly hear each other speak. Along the entire length of the ICW we have noticed that the osprey population is thriving, and it seems that the reason is the abundance of perfect nesting spots on the day markers that line the route. Some stretches of the waterway have nesting pairs on every marker, and so we get a front row seat for their fishing, soaring and screaching.
We got up early the next day, only to found ourselves fog bound, so we had to stay put till it cleared after 10am. Much of the route was a narrow landcut with huge tree stumps and debris on either side, which was fine when we had the canal to ourselves, although it looked rather ominous. Unfortunately while we were waiting for a bridge to open, a tug pushing a huge barge caught up with us, and radioed us to move aside while he passed ahead. CRUNCH went Harmony into a tree log, not the nice soft landing of previous sandy groundings, but a dead stop and we lurched forward, and CRUNCH went Harmony as dickie tried to reverse off the first log. We got back into the channel, once the tug passed on by without a worry, whereas we were worried sick that we had done some damage to the rudder, fortunately all was OK down below. We then caught up with the barge and a bunch of other boats waiting for the next bridge and were relieved to be able to hang back while they all jostled with each other in the narrow basin before the bridge. Another mile or so and another bridge just before a lock, and this time there were 2 barges, a bunch of sailboats and several large motorcruisers all bunched up together; the bridge tender was in a right panic as everyone wanted to get through and then pass through the lock, so we spotted a dock and tied up for the night, till all the chaos subsided.
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