Day 43-44 Alligator River & Broad Creek

Tonight (Friday) we are safely anchored & tucked into Broad Creek, just 4-5 miles North of Oriental, NC. Our trip here was uneventful thank goodness. We left the Alligator River this morning and travelled 22 miles through another canal but this was wider and deeper than the dismal swamp. We then travelled across Pimlico River into Goose River and through another canal. We were going to stop after apx. 50 miles of travel but the anchorage was so exposed to the winds we had we kept going another 12 miles or so into the Neuse River. The wind picked up to 18K and the waves increased also. We finally anchored with about 25 min. of daylight left and are now reading after a warm dinner of chicken curry. All together we travelled 72 miles today.

Yesterday was another story!!!! After leaving Elizabeth City dock (free!!) at 07:00 we motor sailed through the Elizabeth River into Albermarle Sound. There is a huge Coast Guard Air station along the coast. We saw blimps on the ground and a large CG plane was buzzing around for a while.

The weather prediction was wrong, of course and we encountered clouds, 25k winds and lots of short choppy waves because it is so shallow here. To top things off our engine started sputtering at 09:00 hours. Holding our breath we hoped for the best and got the worst. Our engine quit an hour later. We did not have conditions for Peter to change filters so we sailed across Albermarle Sound into the Alligator River. After 3 hours of this Peter turned the key and the engine started up so we motored through a swing bridge and made it to our anchorage in the river just before going into a canal. Thank goodness. Peter took an hour off to de-stress before tackling the filters. Then our battery monitor went haywire so Peter was able to check the battery charge and reset it. By the time we got to bed at about 10PM the wind was topping off at 25k in an anchorage with 10 boats and not much wind protection. We were up periodically throughout the night to check our position and Peter went topsides to check the anchor rode 3 times. The only one who slept was Pretzel. Are we having fun yet???

Anchorage in Alligator River...boats we travelled with s/v Meredith and s/v Mystic

The good news today was seeing some leg! It became so warm we finally put shorts on for the first time since leaving Annapolis. Oh and we now have mosquitoes again at night! Fun.. Fun.. Fun!!!! Bahamas baby....can't wait to put this behind us.