Sorry to say we still don't have much to report from the Oriental, NC area. I left my camera out in the rain a few days ago and I was hoping it would dry out and be OK. Unfortunately, I believe it is fried and I'll need to replace it. I should have a new phone in a couple of days as well.

Nancy and I took our first 1/2 day sailing lesson from an instructor here at the marina. I spent 5 hours at the helm while Nancy had to pull and tug on the lines. The Nuese River is almost 5 miles wide around here and the depths are fine for sailing. We had good winds as well, running from 12 - 18 knots. As we were heading back in, we were caught in a brief storm but we came in just fine. Part of our lessons is to practice docking in heavier winds and we are becoming more comfortable with that as well.

The sailing instructor has offered to loan us his car so we are planning a trip to the town of New Bern, NC which is about 36 miles from here. We may decide to move to that town toward the end of August since it has a little more to offer than does Oriental.

Oriental is not a bad little town. It does have just about everything one could need. However, we've noticed the water just doesn't seem to be as clear and pretty as other areas we've been though. We have even avoided swimming since we got here. There are several small, neat homes and a lot of very friendly people in the town.

 On this past Sunday, the entire town was invited to Faye Bonds house for a watermelon cutting. He family has been cutting watermelons for the town for 44 years and, of course, it's become a family tradition for them. Her sons and daughters were there cutting melons as well. I have no idea how many melons they cut, but as for me, I had two slices!!! The entire town wasn't there but there was sure a lot of people pigging out on melon.

We have accomplished fixing several more things on the boat since arriving. I think I finally believe I have the dinghy leaks stopped. Now, we can paint it and make it a little more presentable. With the help of the sailing instructor, I found the voltage regulator had a broken wire and we didn't need to replace the $385.00 regulator. We have ordered in a new hatch to replace the broken one and we should get it installed next week.Nancy has readjusted the Mack Pack lines and it should now work better. We found our main sheet line to be way to short and I found one at the local marine consignment shop to replace it. We'll put some new reefing lines on and talk with the Auto Helm company about it's problem next week and should be all set again.

We've eaten out several times since we've been in town and find our favorite, so far, to be a place called M and M's. Very nice  meals and very reasonable prices. There's also a place in town called Silos that serves meals but specializes in pizza. On Tuesday nights, it 2 for one pizzas so we eat one and bring one home for lunch.

My youngest son, Jon, is currently stationed in Colorado Springs, CO with the Air Force and will soon be going back to Shreveport, LA for 3 years. He and I have done several road trips over the past years and he has asked me to come to CO for one more before he heads to LA. I'm trying to find a flight from here to Denver so I can join him on a Jeep trip through the Rocky Mountain National Park area at the end of August.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!!!

Just wanted to let everyone know that our posts may be few and far between for the next 3 weeks. Here in Oriental, NC, town of less than 900 people, the WIFI connections are not the greatest. We will try to post from time to time but we can;t promise anything.

Yesterday we traveled 73 miles, a few more than we had planned and ended up just 8 miles shy of Oriental, NC which is our current destination for the next month. This ends the first leg of our trip, which so far has been 885 miles since leaving Ft Lauderdale at the end of April. Not bad, especially since we were on the hard in Savannah for 6 weeks of this past 3 months. Once again, we cruised through some very scenic areas including the Marine base, Camp Le June. We ended the day with a beautiful sunset and started out about 10:15 AM to do the final 8 miles.

Our first glimpse of the Oriental area!!

I hope everyone had a good weekend and next week is even better!!!

Since leaving Beaufort, SC at about 2:00PM on Sunday, we have done about 226 miles on our voyage to Oriental, NC. We actually made 65 miles today and even left later than usual. We originally were only doing about 30 - 40 mile days but after spending the 6 weeks in Savannah we decided to dead head to Oriental.

On Sunday evening, we stopped at the Steamboat Creek Anchorage in preparation for going outside the next day. Then on Monday morning we headed out the North Edisto River Entrance to the Atlantic.The trip from there to Charleston Harbor was pretty uneventful except that the winds were not very strong at the beginning and we didn't make very good time. Then about the time to drop the sails and head into Charleston Harbor the winds increased to about 18 knots. This made getting the sails down, for us, a little difficult. But, we did arrive safety.

The pictures below is of the sails when the wind was directly behind us at one time and we went "wing on wing". This means that rather than having the sails both on the same side of the boat, we had them opposite each other, picking up more wind.

The following show Captain Bligh, aka Captain Nancy munching on a plain bagel (the only thing she and I felt like eating due to a little queasiness) while first mate Tom, in his off shore harness was out tending to the rigging. After finishing my "harrowing" tasks on the boat, I was allowed a similar bagel and glass of water!!!!

No, I'm not doing what you might envision!!!

As we entered Charleston Harbor, we saw Ft Sumter off our port side and a tug pulling a barge. Then, we saw a container ship that, at first, appeared to be coming right down the channel toward us. Fortunately, he made a turn and I made a turn and we passed smoothly.

The next day we stopped off for a short visit to the Capers Island Heritage Preserve and took a short walk from the ICW to the Atlantic. Saw several birds and one alligator. It was a pretty dissolute beach except for the folks that were dropped off by a tour boat for a little beach combing.

Yesterday, we stopped in Georgetown, SC and got some fuel and water as well as dumping our waste tank. We did a short walk of the town, which is a tourist town but wasn't too touristy!! We also had a nice lunch in a small Bistro. As we were leaving town, we passed the local steel mill and paper plant. So, Georgetown is also a factory town.

 

Today, as I said we did 65 miles and Nancy had the helm most of the way while I worked most of the day. We arrived about 7:00PM at our anchorage and enjoyed a nice, homemade veggie pizza. The ingredients were prepared, by me, while underway and popped into the oven after anchoring. It's a lot cooler here, by the way we crossed into NC earlier today, and the wind is blowing pretty good. Should be a good night for sleeping!!

We found the northern part of SC, just below Myrtle Beach very pretty and made a note to do a possible land trip there sometime.

I do have to mention, what I call a tale of two bridges and our governments wastefulness. In the picture below, you will see two bridges. One is the old swing bridge which has to have an operator to open and close it. The other one is a 65' vertical height bridge which most sailboats can pass under. We saw this on 2 different occasions in north SC. It seems the new bridges were built to eliminate the old bridges, the operator and a waiting to open time for cruisers. But, the locals decided they didn't want their old bridges torn down so they managed to get them on the National; Historical Register. Now, the new bridges have been built for, I'm sure, millions of taxpayers dollars and the old bridges are still there with an operator and can't be destroyed. Our government at work!!!!


                                       

One last comment. Not all boat's fair well or are as loved as TW2!!

I hope everyone has had a good week so far.