Morehead City, NC - 7/22/11

Shortly after 8 a.m. this morning while I was on the helm getting electronics up for our trip today, I heard a noise over toward the marina building and this is what I saw.

Most marinas have a place where you can put your boat to be lifted out for dry storage and they use a big fork lift to pick it up out of the water. This marina has 2 units mounted on land that lowers a cradle into the water and they float the boat onto it, then it lifts the boat.

Then the fork lift picks it off the cradle and sets it in the dry storage rack. Pretty slick.

We finally let the marina at 9:45 after Skip filled his fuel tanks. The wind was still blowing us into the dock so it was a little challenging to pull off. I had to use the Ohio River method of putting the bow of the boat against the uprights and reverse port/forward starboard to get my stern out into the water. Our course took us up the Bogue Sound for most of the trip which is virtually open water for over 20 miles and it did get a little snotty with white caps.


Our destination was the Sanitary Fish Market & Restaurant just 24 miles away. They have a floating dock that will hold up to 4 boats our size for just $25 per night, no power or water.

This place seats 600 and when we left there was a waiting line of at least 30 people. The food was great.

It was so hot we didn't walk very far around town, just across the street from the restaurant.

Of course grandma found the kids book store. Anytime she wanders off she is normally found looking at something for grandkids. I am thinking about getting her one of those bracelets that tells me her location!

When we returned to the boat and was preparing for docktails on Quest, several folks were walking the dock and talking to us. They just can't believe you can get here from WV & Chicago. While we were talking to a couple at Skip's boat I notice black smoke billowing from our boat and yelled to Ricki, who was inside, to shut down the genset. After it cooled down I started problem solving and discovered a plugged air filter. Problem solved. Now it runs like a charm.

A few stats on our trip to date:

307 days since leaving WV

89 days actually traveling

4216 miles

.97 cents per foot avg dock cost

$3.69 avg fuel cost

1.6 avg MPG

Tomorrow we are moving less than a mile to Beaufort, NC which is supposed to be a historic type town.

Our position here is :

N34 43.181

W76 42.512