S/V Sweet Liberty : Sunday May 15th – On the way to Alligator River Marina

This is the day we have to transit the entire Alligator River because there is nowhere to anchor that getting ashore is safe – alligators and snakes!! So we transit all the way from Belhaven, NC to the Alligator River Marina where we can safely get Gracie ashore. We did this exactly the same way going south. I am writing this as we are going along the Alligator-Pongo River Canal. It is basically a straight ditch 21.2 miles long!! Last night we stayed at a new place for us in the Belhaven area – we anchored in the Upper Dowry Creek – right next to the Dowry Creek Marina. We elected to go there because of the winds we were ending Saturday with (SW at about 12-18 kts) and then turning around with a cold front coming through to NW at about 12 kts. It was a great location for the overnight winds which ended up being more calm than predicted. We made a deal with the marina to let us use their docks to land for Gracie as well as we had friends come to join us. So now I have to take you back to the week's journey up to yesterday – Saturday May 14^th.

Last Wednesday (May 11^th) we left Wrightsville Beach trying to make the 7am swing bridge opening on the ICW. Unfortunately we had to proceed a bit slowly because it was dead, dead low tide not to mention that we had current against us. We would not probably have made the bridge but when we went soft aground at the exit of Motts Channel our chances of making the bridge were definitely out! We actually got off the soft mud easily by backing up and coming closer to the southern green marker for the channel getting through Motts fine. However, now we had an hour to wait for the next bridge (actually on about 45 min due to the grounding , ungrounding time.) It was during this wait that we were joined by another Irwin 38 – Nor'East Gyspy owned by Gary and Barbara Robitaille who had lived in Shelburne, VT and sailed Nor'East Gyspy on Lake Champlain for six years. The really wild part of this story is that I had helped to sell them this Irwin 38! It had been owned by Capt Paul Shaw a marine boat surveyor who had done the survey on our boat 12 years ago. (I figured if a boat surveyor owned an Irwin 38 it had to be a pretty good boat.) So Capt Shaw gave the Robitaille's my name as a reference to call about how I liked our Irwin and I told them that if they liked the boat and it was in their price range that they could not pass up buying the boat because I knew it would be in great shape! They bought the boat and brought it up to Lake Champlain in 2006! Gary and Barb had moved the boat off the lake in 2010 and have been sailing out of Washington, NC on the Pamlico River. So we connected with them and traveled from Wrightsville Beach up to Swansboro on Wednesday the 11^th.

We were on the dock at Caspers Marina that night and the next day (Thursday the 12^th) traveled a long way all the way up through Morehead City to Oriental, NC where we went to another really inexpensive marina at Whittaker Pointe. (I was able to get an additional $.05 discount per foot because my name is Whitaker!! hahahah! Whittaker Pointe Marina was a beautiful spot with new docks and what seemed to be a brand new club house building (which had the best showers we have been to all trip – until the next night!) We happy hour-ed with them an talked about their quick trip down the ICW in April for a brief trip to the Abacos in the Bahamas. They had a very rough crossing!

We woke up the next morning to south winds about 13 kts blowing right at us on the docks with no protection from the south so we decided to make a quick departure for a more protected harbor. We had intended to stay another day because of severe thunderstorms that were predicted for Friday the 13^thso we decided to go “around the corner” (about 10 nm away) to perhaps one of the most protected harbors anywhere – River Dunes. River Dunes is actually a planned luxury resort community near Oriental that has built its own harbor. It was expensive at $1.90 per foot but was worth every penny to see this facility. (Not to mention that we were in a hurricane hole for some wild thunderstorms that evening.) The Robitaille's decided to try to make it to their home harbor in Washington, NC which they did with only some rain storms.

Oh by the way – guess who was also staying at River Dunes? Remember Katydid? Yep – they had also come in to River Dunes and were planning to stay for a couple of days!! We didn't get a chance to spend much time meeting them because we had use of a courtesy car in the afternoon after we got there so we could take a trip in to see Oriental, NC which we had not actually seen yet. Oriental was a disappointment! It boasted of itself as the “boating capital of North Carolina”. Perhaps is was once but there are lots of stores that have closed and it seemed rather depressed. There is a very small harbor with enough room for a few boats to anchor and there are about 8 spots for boats to go on some free docks. There is a little marina in the harbor and some large shrimp boats but it was not a vibrant thriving harbor. River Dunes sits like a jewel in the area.

Our new crew member Mr.?????? (soon to be revealed) keeping an eye out!