We left the Broad Creek anchorage this morning after a good nights sleep, only disturbed once when the wind suddenly started gusting from the North (as opposed to the South). This caused a shift on our anchor and much clanking of chain and creaking of snubber. I jumped up and stood in the cockpit for a while but it was apparent all was well and we were not dragging our anchor, nor were any of our anchorage mates. We had some discussion this morning as to whether it was advisable to leave or not as 20+ knot winds were forecast and we had to face crossing Albemarle Sound with it's reputation as one of the roughest stretches of the ICW. We decided to leave and pulled anchor once it was light enough. Almost immediately the depth sounder started to do it's "thing" and give us totally random readings! A depth sounder is one of those things you think you can manage without.....until you have to manage without! We don't like not having a depth sounder one little bit! Thankfully we were able to follow our "breadcrumbs" out of Broad Creek and once we got back onto the magenta line that is the ICW, navigation was very straight forward. Once we left the anchorage we could appreciate how much protection we had had. Thankfully the winds were behind us and so we were literally surfing across Albemarle Sound. Once we crossed the Sound we had a discussion of our options and decided to call it an early day and head into the Alligator River Marina. What a great choice this turned out to be. We arrived nice and early in the day and were the first ones in. This meant I got first dibs on the washers and driers and managed to get four loads done before other cruisers started appearing. In the meantime Tom gave Osprey a well deserved rinse off. The weather is slowly deteriorating with rain forecast for the next few days. Hopefully we will be able to push on despite this.

Cruiser's Notes: Alligator River Marina, convenient location just before the Alligator River Bridge. Bargain at $1 a foot. Very friendly and helpful. Good showers and laundry and like Pete from Prim said - "don't use the drier on the end"!