The weather obviously died down during the night with much less wind. This morning even the smaller fishing boats that are tied up around us are venturing out for a days work. I got up a couple of times through the night as is my habit and they all happened to coincide with some activity outside. Either a fishing boat was getting ready to pull away from the dock, or a pusher tug was coming by shoving their load ahead of them and shining their spotlights on the bank, or in this case, us, to give the coxswain an idea of the various obstacles in their path. We lie right in a sort of crossroads of waterway, the Goose Creek Canal and Jones Bay and there is a very slight turn just past where we are docked. It must be interesting to say the least for the tug crew to maintain bare idle speed to go past the docks and then get the RPMs to make that slight turn when their load is almost half the distance from the dock to the nearest bank at the turn.

This morning we woke and got ready very early to get off. Charlie from RE Mayo had gone into town and bought me two new oil filters for the diesel; I put an oil "diaper" down under the engine to absorb and detect any fuel leaks from my last filter change; we checked the weather one last time; battened down the hatches and set off. The first part of the trip was absolutely calm and beautiful, but then all too soon we came out into the Neusse Sound and the wind picked up with a heavy chop. We flew the No 1 jib only and hammered along at 7.5 knots making the 25 mile trip in about 3 hours. We did have a small equipment failure when the sheave on one of the jib sheet cheek block crushed under the load. It was old, original equipment with the boat, so it didn't owe us anything, but still it was startling. It also prevented me from trimming the jib as our course came closer and closer to the wind so eventually we simply furled it up.

We had taken the precaution of calling ahead to one of the marinas in the Oriental area so they were expecting us and there was a space reserved. A word of caution to fellow cruisers coming down this way - Skipper Bob's books are great to give you an idea of the relative cost to stay at any particular marina, but not particularly accurate for the actual dollar amount. For instance, the Whittaker Creek Marina is in Skipper Bob's book as costing $1.50/ft with no charge for electricity and a discount to $1.35 for Boat US members. The reality was $2/ft plus electricity and $1.50/ft including electricity for Boat US members. A pump out cost $17! That is not the way to discourage people from sneaking in an overboard discharge in a no discharge zone. Other than that the marina is a nice place. There is a small ship's chandlery and repair shop, swimming pool (closed - of course - it's winter here) and the town of Oriental is really quite small so you can walk just about everywhere - 20 minutes to the grocery store and West Marine; 40 minutes to downtown as an example. Every general goods store seems to have a marine section and there is even a boating consignment store where we bought a couple of more robust replacement speakers for the ones in the cockpit which I have stomped on more times than I care to remember; another push to contact switch and Barb found a pair of Keen sandals, anatomic footwear, that fit her perfectly for $35! Although we will be eating dinner aboard the boat tonight we have reccced out a place called the Oriental Steamer where I will take my sweetie for dinner tomorrow night.

We also made contact with a few of other Canadian boats that we have been crossing paths with over the last couple of weeks: Southern Cross is here at Whittaker Creek with us and and Sounds of Silence II and Whisky Max are both down at the Oriental Marina right down town next to the Oriental Hotel and the Seafood Plant. We have also discovered that there is a town dock that will hold four 30' boats and is free for 48 hours. Also there is a harbour cam on the internet that we could watch and wait for when one of the boats currently there leaves, and then rush down to grab the spot. That is the current plan. After staying here for 2 or 3 days, we'll try to get on the town dock and failing that we'll anchor out and dingy in for another two days. That should bring us to the 10th of November and if there is no sniff of a tropical depression anywhere we will take the gamble and head down to Beauford for the 11th and 12th and then offshore to points south if the winds will permit. We will skip the ICW for the first 100 miles or so as we have heard that the dredging funding hasn't made it up to that far north as yet and several of the inlets have silted up the ICW to the point that boats with 4.5' draft were running hard aground.

Tomorrow will be predominantly a work day on the boat with us trying to catch up on stuff that we hadn't had a chance to get finished plus a couple of new jobs.