Cheryl's Notes:

We have spent the last two nights navigating the Pungo/Alligator Canal. The canal itself is full of deadhead logs and obstacles. The rivers are better, but you have to navigate through all of the crab pots. Evidently there is no law that says they cannot be placed in the main shipping channels. We spent Wednesday night in a small anchorage with five other boats. There were a lot of deer flies, but because of winds, no mosquitoes. Or so I thought. I woke up Thursday morning rubbing my feet together like a cricket, trying to get rid of the itch. I counted twelve bites on one foot and fifteen on the other. I have been alternating between cleaning them with witch hazel and covering them with Benadryl gel. I then take a Benadryl tablet every night to help me sleep through the itching.

Our second night on the river, we stopped just short of the Albemarle Sound. We spent all day fighting 15 to 25knot winds and two to three foot seas. We didn't want to cross the sound in those conditions, so we stopped at the north end of the Alligator River. We spent the night anchored among the crab pots and duck blinds built on stilts over the water. We spent a rocky night because of the wave action, but it was so cool we actually needed a blanket.

John's Notes:

Our fist night out of Belhaven was only about 30 some mile trip. We had followed another guy that was anchored next to us in Belhaven. Anchoring was a little difficult because of the wind. We wanted to get as close to shore as possible but leave enough swing room. Took about 15 minutes but we settled in fine and figured it was time for a cocktail. Less than an hour later we look around us and we have all the basics for a small marina. Not sure what it is about the East Coast. It looks like if two boats are anchored about 50 yards apart, the next guy to arrive assumes that there is plenty of room between us for him to drop the hook. It's not like there weren't plenty of other places to anchor. Maybe one of these days I will figure it out. No matter where you go, most people seem to anchor the same way...............WRONG. As we watched what was going on around us, Cheryl and I began to wonder if we were probably the most heavily insured boat in the area. Some of the other boats had lots of wear and tear on them that may have something to do with their seamanship abilities.

When we raised the anchor the next morning we had another interesting experience. I noticed that the anchor was really heavy when she was about to break the surface. Probably mud. Not. The anchor was under about a 2" cable. Damn thing looked like a hawser on a tugboat. I got the anchor to the surface but had to figure out a way to get the cable off of it. Took a boat hook and finally lifted the cable above the fluke of the anchor, but now I have the boat hook caught in the cable. I figured worst case I loose the boat hook but as luck would have it I got the boat hook free. I'm learning......................Stay tuned.

What was fun, the last couple of days, was watching the Marine pilots out of Cherry Point engage in mock dog fights. The area we were traveling in, the Alligator-Pungo River Canal, is very sparsely populated so the planes can make all the noise they want. We were faked out several times because by the time you heard them, they were gone. We watched as the pursuit plane got closer and closer to the other one. They would make all kinds of twists, turns, go vertical, etc. Not sure what they fly, F-15's I think. It was quite a show for sure.