Thursday June 24, 2011

We left the City Dock at Beaufort at 07:50 today and circled Radio Island to bypass the bascule bridge in the Russel Slough that was closed for "morning rush hour". We had our first critter sighting of the day when we saw some of the wild horses on Shackleford Island.

Shortly after Beaufort, we entered the Adams Creek Canal portion of the ICWW.

Along here, we were told we may see some bald eagles but the closest we got were some turkey vultures.

We encountered our first barge traffic in the ICWW canal (other than in major shipping ports), a load of wood chips bound for a paper mill.

We left Adams Creek and headed into the Neuse River which is a fairly open body of water. The smoke from the brush and bog fires really started to get bad again as we passed Oriental NC. At least I think we passed by Oriental which is somewhere in the smoke....

Visibility < 1/2 mile

We got to become accustomed to navigating by GPS and watching the radar for other boats which included some commercial traffic and large yachts.

The "blips" are other boats

Dragging for shrimp

A big "blip"

After about 15 miles of navigating in the smoke on the Neuse, we entered a canal that took us to the Pamlico River. The visibility started to improve. We passed by a shrimp fleet moored near the Hobucken Bridge and we got to see how they processed the day's catch.

The Pamlico River is about 5 miles wide at the point where we crossed it and headed up the Pungo River to Belhaven. The first marina we tried was terrible with rickety docks and not enough room to manoeuvre so be did a quick abort and headed to Dowry Creek Marina, a few miles further along our route.

It was very nice with friendly dock staff who helped Captain Brian execute his first "stern into a slip with pilings" docking manoeuvre. It was very hot and humid again it didn't take us long to get into the refreshing pool.

Our friends, Alec and Sharon from Chocowinity NC, came by to visit. They brought us a gift of some breathing masks as it appears that we have not yet passed the worst of the NC brush and bog fires. Apparently they need a hurricane or tropical storm to extinguish them. We all went out to supper in Belhaven at the Fish Hooks Cafe. Great fresh local seafood!

While we were eating, there a terrific thunderstorm passed by. By the time we looped by the Food Lion for some quick re-provision, it had passed but entertained us with a fantastic lightening show as it passed over Cape Hatteras.

Our cumulative totals:

Distance travelled = 1169.3 nm

Travel Time = 164h 34 m

Fuel Burn = 1081.6 US gal