We are in River Dunes Marina, near Oriental, NC. We spent two nights in Beaufort (pronounced bowfort!), at the City Docks Marina - right in the middle of a very quaint downtown. Great restaurants & shopping - and a great double-decker bus tour on a 1997 London bus with wrong side driving!
We slipped the dock lines at eight am and headed up, and through a very narrow channel called Adams Creek to the Neuse River. Passing Oriental, NC to the south we headed in here. It is a lovely marina with great facilities, arriving at about 1:00 pm. Got the boat washed down, the laundry done, and all hands took showers. Today we drove the loaner car to Oriental for lunch and a bit of grocery shopping. Not really much to this town that we can see.

It is hard to believe that in a few days we will have been living on Red Sky for six months. We approached this adventure wit some wonder and a bit of trepidation. Would we be bored traveling down this narrow waterway? No! There were too many neat towns ant then there were the dolphins most of the way (even in the Chesapeake) as well as all the different birds from cormorants to majestic pelicans. We passed quite a few inlets that gave us a glimpse of the Atlantic and we wondered if we were up to going out there. Well, we did! We left Ft. Lauderdale and headed into the ocean turning south and later that day west. While anchored in the Key we were woken by what sounded like a freight Train. The wind was howling at 30+ kts. and our anchor was dragging. The wind did not let up all day and fairly pushed us further west. It caught us broadside as we turned north into the gulf. We gained some respect for the soundness of Red Sky and our skills as sailors. And then we got to spend two glorious months in beautiful Marathon.