April 11-13

First thing in the morning we walked downtown to Mitchell’s hardware shop.

An amazing place full of antiques and lots of other stuff, including gardening items, buying seeds by the ounce, giftware, sauces and of course hardware items.  Here are some pictures.

who knew there were so many kinds of mustard greens!

We left the marina and New Bern at 10:05 and proceeded down the Neuse River, going back 23 miles to Oriental where we had gone for supper the previous day.  We continued several more hours and entered the Bay River.

I hadn’t realized the Neuse was so wide—you can hardly see the other shore at this point. 

Here’s the marker indicating where the Bay meets the Neuse.

We entered Bonner Bay and went up Long Creek and anchored—but it was breezy in this spot, so we went farther up the creek and tried again.  Our anchor hardly moved through the night.

In the morning, we had this sunrise, but it soon clouded over.

There was a swarm of mosquitoes outside the boat, some were caught in our friendly boat spider’s web,

but others were annihilated by the coil we lit in the fly bridge.

 

We left our anchorage at 9:00, and returned to the Bay River. We reached mile marker160, at 9:52 and entered Goose Creek.

We followed this boats for most of the morning, and met 2 tows.

There was a light rain falling.  We reached these fishing boats near the Hobucken Bridge and the coast guard station at 10:16.

At 11: 20 we left Goose Creek for our 5 mile crossing of the Pamlico River.  There was some wind and wave action as we crossed that tossed us around a bit.

At 11:55 we entered the Pungo River and went down it about 5 miles before turning off into Slade Creek where we were going to anchor.  The creek had many crab pots, but the captain darted around them and we anchored a mile or two up the creek sheltered between Neal and Becky creek at 12:55.  The rain continued to fall. With an early quit, the captain had time to dipped the tanks and catch up on paperwork.  He figured we are getting about  2.6 miles per gallon, and  have gone 4860 statute miles which converts to 4227 nautical miles on this trip.

On Wednesday morning, we got up and the wind was blowing.  We left our anchorage at 10:00, and went back out to the Pungo River.    We had about a 7 mile trip to the River Forest Marina in Belhaven—short day!  However with the winds, current and crab pots it made it stressful for the Captain.  We were tied up to the dock by 11:30.  In the afternoon, I did laundry and visited with other boaters.    Tonight we went  out for dinner with Doug and Norann from Nebula to the Spoon River restaurant.  Amazing food!!

Here’s the dessert we shared.

According to the waterway guide Belhaven means Beautiful harbour, the town was established in 1868 and was originally called Jack’s neck.    Belhaven considers  itself  to be “the birthplace of the ICW” .   This is because in  September of 1928,   when the Alligator River -Pungo River canal was completed it  was the last remaining link in the ICW between Norfolk and Miami.  Something like the last spike in the Transcanada railway!