milepost 104
03/30/2009, Alligator River, NC

In trying to decide how far to go today, we looked back at last year's logbook and saw that we went all the way from Oriental to the other side of the 20 mile long Alligator-Pungo canal, so that was our goal today. We managed to get out of our tight slip at the marina in the calm before dawn. Winds today were mostly 20-25 knots from the west and northwest making for a fast bumpy ride and then wound down to 10-15 knots in the late afternoon. We sailed when the winds were with us and motorsailed when they were against us. We are now anchored at the end of the canal in the North Carolina marshes with no other boats or houses or lights of any kind in sight.

Florida Keys - 2009

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03/29/2009, Oriental, NC

Ed took a picture of this dog, who has been everyone's friend here at the marina. Ed still says "no" to getting a boat dog (or cat), but he does miss Holly. We both do. We expect the people on "Imagine" have a good vacuum cleaner on board.

Florida Keys - 2009

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milepost 182
03/28/2009, Oriental, NC

Sometimes you have to get as far to the side of the channel as you can depending on the traffic coming the other direction. NC seems to have more commercial traffic in their canals than other states.

Sometimes with a catamaran, you have to squeeze into a slip that feels like a tight pair of jeans. We are snugly tied up to a dock in Oriental waiting for a storm system to pass. The marina said the slip was 20' wide. Our beam is 18' wide and we have less than a foot of clearance on both sides of the boat, so either we got more boat than what we paid for or the marina doesn't know the exact size of the slip. Anyway, we are here to wait out a storm system that has winds predicted to be 25-30 knots from tonight through Sunday night in Pamlico Sound accompanied by thunderstorms and tornados. We'll see - wind at the moment here is calm.

Florida Keys - 2009

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