Oriental Bound

Dowry Marina at Belhaven NC is not close to anything but what a beauty.  The location is country, the buildings like on a seashore and well maintained.  The road leading into the marina is lined with pines with minimal streetlamps making it eerily dark when walking Chester at night.  Beneath the feet is the pine needle crunch and the smell is heavenly!   Felt we could only spend a night since the sunshine & warm weather keeps calling.  The next hazy morning we head to Oriental.  The forecast is a sunny mid-70 day.


Looking back at Dowry Marina, Pungo River
 

The haze burns off quickly and it is a beautiful day = peel off layer #1 of jackets and gloves.  We head down the Pungo River which is uneventful even with an earlier warning of possible stumps and logs in the ICW at mile mark 99.5    The Pungo River joins Goose Creek (about 125' to 300' wide) and getting closer to an area of known shoaling.  We cruise along about 6 knots following five other boats when Journey lunges forward and dips her bow ... we are aground.  It's soft so we back off, move to the left of the channel and are on our way.  With 5 boats ahead of us, why are we the ones who run aground?!  Deeper draft or 6" off course?

We dock at Whittaker Creek in Oriental.  Oriental is called the 'sailing capital'.  Its where a large majority of circumnavigators end up.  It is a town of 900 people and 2000+ boats at least.  Marinas everywhere you look.  Friendly people, fun restaurants.  We rode our bikes to the hardware store, post office, thru town, dinner at M&Ms, grocery store and back.  Dark and quiet!  The whole town is 1/2 mile long and maybe a couple blocks wide.  Everything that we've read about Oriental in the boating realm, we anticipated a much bigger place.  However the marinas did not disappoint.

Our really nice camera is sitting at home, oops.    We miss our lenses.