Day 51 @ the Ocean Marine Yacht Center at Portsmouth, VA

We have had great cruising and visits along the waterways.  Here are a few pictures we felt were worth sharing.

Replica ship in the Beaufort NC at Town Creek Marina on May 14.

Photo from our side trip to North Augusta, SC.  Joy and Charles (Amanda's in-laws), Ethan, Amanda (Pat's daughter), Chuck, Amanda's husband), Ellie, and Pat

I thought this would interest my grand daughters, keri and Sarah

Joy and Charles brought us back to Swansboro and loaned us a car to use to get back to Beaufort and use for the duration of out time there.  That was really nice of them and we did appreciate that generous favor from them.  The picture is of one of the reasons we selected Beaufort to visit.  The Salt Shaker was in need of routine maintenance and it required hauling the boat to do the oil changes to the out drives.  There we are in the slings with the propellers removed so the oil could be changed.  Town Creek Marina did a nice job for us.  And we met some nice people while we were there, Terry and Pam aboard the "Cozy Corner."

This is the lowest bridge we can get under.  This one connects Morehead City with Beaufort.  The waters leading to Beaufort are a bit more complicated than most.  We tried the route out that had lots of shoals and ambiguous markings (my story and I am sticking to it) and we could not thread our way thru it without the risk of grounding so we turned around and took the route we used for arrival.  When we hit the intra coastal, there was more confusion and we wound up going the wrong way for a couple of markers before we sorted it all out.

From Beaufort, we went on up to Bellhaven, NC to the Bellhaven Water Marina, which is a picturesque place to spend the night.  It is run by Les and Brenda Porter.  They have just a few slips so it is small.  They have it manicured to perfection.  This was the sunset from our deck.  Kudos to the camera for getting the colors right!

Bellhaven is a really comfortable, layed back kind of town.  This little resturant is about 150 feet from the marina.  We had breakfast there.  The total bill?  Seven dollars and seven cents.  And there was enough left overs that we had it as part of breakfast the next day aboard the boat.

This is the stern of the boat belonging to the person who owns the Alligator River Marina.  Obviously her name is Wanda.  The photo interested us because we have a neighbor across the street from us in Florida who we refer to as Miss Wanda.  And the same applies to another Miss Wanda who worked with us at Clover Electronics, Inc. for many years.  Wanda's marina is a combination fuel facility.  It is a roadside Shell Station, with a convenience store with the marina being in the back.

Alligator River Marina.  I believe the house in the background is Miss Wanda's  It is on the property.

This sign is at the Elizabeth City, NC city docks.  These docks are free to visiting boats.  Of course, first come, first served as there are a limited number of them.  The hospitality sign is no fake.  It was a real great place to spend 24 hours.  Friendly people along the water front,  City festivals, etc.  This is where the Rose Boys made the marina and city well known because they would come to the dock once a day and hand out a rose to each lady on each visiting boat.  They also started the tradition of a wine and cheese party most days for the visitors.  Sadly, they have passed on but the town keeps those traditions alive and well.  We were treated to an upscale blue grass concert, put on at the adjacent resturant from 9 til midnight.  We also met some great folks on a number of boats with whom we shared the trip from Elizabeth City thru the Dismal Swamp the next day.

Elizabeth City was the jumping off place for the Wright Brothers.  Also it has much marine history.  We were able to visit the Marine Museum, which has a great display and program that describes Blackbeard's life and times.  His vessel, the "Queen Anne's Revenge," met her last in the waters just outside of Elizabeth City.  Across the steet from the museum is a wood working shop you can visit that hand makes various kinds of small wooden boats.  At the moment they are building two identical boats which are replicas of the shore boats used by the US Lifesaving service in the late 1800's.  Len Conner, you would really be interested in seeing this!

This is the Dismal Swanp Canal.  It is spectacular.  It is very narrow and very straight.  It is also full of snags and stuff on the bottom that are the remains of fallen trees and other vegitation.  The depth ranged from 6 to 8 feet the day we traveled. And happily we did not get tangled up with any snags or other hazards.  The canal is narrow to the point where two boats passing each other is not done casually.  I believe the canal was concieved by George Washington, but it was built later.  Its commercial purpose no longer exists and it is now just a very beautiful route that small boats can use.  We spent the night at the North Carolina Visitor Center which has a free dock on the canal, once agian "first come, first served."  There is a lot of rafting.  When our flotilla of 5 boats arrived, we had to raft one of them out.  The welcome center is unique in the sense that it is really a standard highway welcome center that happens to be on the Intra Coastal so the state of NC built a dock.  U.S Highway 17 parallels the canal but is mostly hidden by the intense tree forrest.

This is the parade of boats arriving as a flotilla at the "Deep Creek" lock that opens at specific times each day.  The boats are the "Fair Haven," that happened along so we did not know its crew but the others in order is the "Potest Fiere," owned by a couple of folks from Canada, Danny and Susan, the "Karen Anne" owned by Roger and Karen, (who else?) "Monk's Vinyard" owned by Gerry and Linda, and the "Trefil" owned by Richard and Karen.  We all fit in the lock once it opened with room to spare.  Danny and Susan had us all aboard their boat for cocktails and snacks and about 4 hours of real enjoyable fun the night before at the welcome center.

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