October 24th...Friday Washington, NC

Happy Birthday Matt!


Randy was here before 9am to take Betty, Cathy, Mona and me to Walmart for an hour of shopping. There were 7 items on my list but ended up with about 50. When we returned to the boat and unloaded. It took a few minutes to put things away and then we were off to the laundry. Again Randy came to the rescue and loaded the girls and dirty laundry into his van and drove them the 6 blocks to the Laundromat.

Al, Tom and I walked to West Marine to look around and make a few small purchases before joining the ladies and toting clean cloths back to the boats.

We had lunch at "Bill's Hotdogs", a highly regarded take out place off Main Street. The dogs themselves were soaked in something red and had a little bite to them. They are best "all the way" which means a dollop of white chili, mustard and onions. They may not have been the best ever, but were tasty and different.

Later Kathy and I wert back to town and wandered around looking for birthday cards. In the afternoon we watched the Bar B Q contestants set up their cookers and tents for the evening's cooking.

In Catskill, NY they had decorated cats around town, here it's crabs

The eight of us went out to eat again and then strolled Main Street (which was closed for about 5 blocks) listening to the various music groups.


October 25th Saturday Washington, NC

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

It rained most of the night, but by morning was down to a drizzle. I was up early and out to watch the Bar B Q judging at about 7:30. There were four judges who walked from tent to tent to check out both presentation and taste of the pork. The whole process took about two hours...with the judges spending about 10 minutes with every entry.

After the judging the contestants immediately boned all the pork chopped it finely and deposited it to the folks who were set up to sell sandwiches. All proceeds went to local charity.

There was car show, a 5K race, a stage with music all day. Unfortunately, the day was a drizzly, windy, cool day until about 4pm. Our two free nights at the dock were over and were prepared to head out to ancho,r but I spoke with the dock master who informed us that we could stay where we were but had to pay $.75 a foot for the night. I handed over the money and we didn't even have to untie.

We crews of Sapphire, Third Star, Perseverance 2, Inspiration and Rigamarole got together at about 4:00 to discuss plans for the next few days. We had a nice chat and returned to the boat for some dinner.