Happy Birthday Sis - I love you and hope it's a good one! I have a sunset to share with you - hope you like it :)

The last couple of days the weather has been building.
My connection keeps coming and going and with our battery charger on the fritz I'm never sure if I can charge my computer (once again).
We're anchored on Broad Creek - 2 anchors out to keep from dragging. At 7am N/NE winds 20-35 and gale warnings are up for later today at Pamlico with gusts over 40 mph and coastal flooding near high tide here. Expected levels should be 2-3 ft above high tide around 4-5pm with 6-8 foot breakers along the coastline up to Cape Lookout today. The 1500 are out there now and a tropical depression looks like it's building to welcome them to the Caribbean - I hope they fair well.

Needless to say we're staying put until things settle down. Coming into Broad Creek from the Newse River was bumpy and uncomfortable so we'll wait for the winds to change direction and calm.

Our position is at 35*05.424 x 076*37.594 and we're anchored in about 8 ft of water in a very pretty location. I still can't get over how they call these bodies of water "creeks". They're rivers with strong currents and tides...

We fiddled with the davits, then Wayne changed the oil and did engine maintenance, while I cleaned up from the rains (buckets) hanging out things to dry (hand towels, rugs, etc...) and then we started looking for places in our books and charts (cruising guides) that could work on our battery charger that also had shopping nearby. Sam's Club would be great but the closest on to Oriental is over an hour away by car. We did find Whittaker Creek on the chart and it looks like there's a service facility there (Deatons) that works on Yanmars and has electrical maintenance. We'll have to contact Carol & Ashley to see what they recommend in the area and see if we can put in at their marina while we get the battery charger fixed.

The left over pie from last night tasted much better to me tonight - the flavors must have melded together more overnight, then "Boinnngggg" - a very unknown, unwanted sound from up top, starboard... the starboard intermediate shroud line (one of the rigging lines that holds the mast up on the right side) came loose, or a fitting broke while we were sitting after dinner. We went topside to investigate it with our flashlights, but couldn't see how or where it came loose. It will have to wait until morning. Wayne hooked the spare (spinnaker) halyard to the toe rail closest to the loose shroud line for the night.

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Well the anchor alarm didn't go off until this morning, so we shifted position and dragged about 254 ft - not to bad. After resetting our anchor and dropping another (calling for gale force winds this evening) I made breakfast and tried to get online to find out what's going on in the world. Sometimes I don't mind being out of touch, others I do... No cell coverage - but I didn't really expect to have any. Depending on where I am, I can sometimes get my broadband to work - it comes in and out then gives me an error message. At least I can still charge my computer battery from our boat batteries though even if I can't quite connect, once we come back into range my computer will be ready J. Plotted a course on the chart plotter from here to Adams Creek, then from here to Oriental. Not sure exactly where we're going. We'd like to take to Carol & Ashley over at Whittaker Creek to see if they know of anyone that can look at our battery charger in Oriental & if so, we'll pull in there, if not then we'll move on to the next large port. We're thinking that Oriental is probably the place to go, and as I remember it's a nice place.

This is the first time I absolutely do not have a clue as to how the campaigns went during a presidential election - and a historic one at that. We had a woman vying with a black for president during the democratic primaries, and we will either have our first black president, or our first woman vice-president chosen at the end of the day today. Election day and we're sitting here at Broad Creek with no news. I feel out of it, but that's not all a bad thing. Tried my hand at making pork meat pie for dinner tonight with salad. I didn't like it as well as the beef or ground sirloin but Wayne liked it. This time the crust came out terrific though

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Started out foggy about 52 outside. We calculated our gas consumption and compared it to the reading on the fuel monitor and decided we'd better stop for gas. It's rough when you're not sure how much gas you have. Unfortunately the gas stops are few & far between right here but there was diesel at a place called RE Mayo Co. near the Hobucken Bridge. They appear to be a fish/shrimper facility where the shrimp boats dock and load supplies and unload their catches. When we pulled in, there were several large shrimp boats tied at the dock but there was nobody around at the dock. We circled and called out and someone dragging a bushel heard us "do you have diesel?" "yup over there" so we pulled in. The guy dragging the bushel was sorting fish into bushels, hosing them off and putting them in a big warehouse building that looked temperature controlled because it had those long plastic curtains separating the building from the outer concrete area that he was working in.

It was an interesting setup there and the gas was for the commercial fishing boats. They made sure that we had a commercial I.D. before they'd sell to us, then we had to watch how many gallons we put in and report back to the office to let them know how much we took. According to Skipper Bob's manual they also have dockage if you need it, but probably ONLY if you really NEED it. The major focus here is on fishing/shrimping commercially (I'm thinking). Definitely worth a stop and it gives a local flavor for the shrimp industry here. Nice folks. It was odd that while I was calling out to see if anyone was here originally nobody was here, but as we were leaving, 4-5 guys appeared out of one of the shrimp boats. Later in the day while we were fighting larger waves one of the shrimp boats caught up to us and passed us. It came pretty close, I figured for a look see at us, and rocked the heck out of us, but I got a picture of it anyways.

We pulled into Broad Creek around 4 and anchored in 7-8 ft of water towards the back of the creek near a boat called Blackfoot (Pam & Frank). They motored over to say hi before going to meet some friends on shore and to tell us about a new marina here (River Dunes Marina) that they were going to be going to the next day along with an Island Packet that's anchored nearby. Everyone is putting in for the next couple days due to the weather that's heading our way. There's now a small craft advisory in effect until Thursday morning so we're going to leave the chart plotter on to use its anchor alarm.

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