October 31st...Friday Oriental NC to Point Lookout Bight NC

The seafood guy here in Oriental is only open on Fridays and Saturdays so we waited around until 10am while Kim and Steve were making final preparations on "Fine Lion." He showed up at about 10:15 but wasn't ready to sell anything at that point. There is a commercial seafood company located across the street and he runs their retail operation on weekends. It was going to take him an hour or so to get over there and collect today's merchandise. We had a nice chat but decided not to wait... there will be more shrimp along the way.

We cast off at around 10:30 ... but not without dinging the outer pier of our slip a couple of times with our anchor, and headed across the Neusse River to Cedar Creek and the ICW. It was only 18 miles to Beaufort but we planned on stopping somewhere for fuel along the way. As it turned our all the fuel docks were tied up so we pulled into Town Creek (Beaufort) and filled up at the marina there.

By the time we were finished "Fine Lion" was there waiting for the 2:30 bridge opening. We had planned on spending the night in Town Creek but had decided enroute to go out into the Ocean and about an hour east to Point Lookout Bight which is an amazingly protected spot. The Ocean was flat calm. Point Lookout Bight is located in Cape Lookout National Seashore and is beautiful in a desolate sort of way. We anchored in about 25 feet of water surrounded by nothing but dunes.

We rowed the dinghy over to "Fine Lion" for some trick or treating and decided to weigh anchors at about 5 am.