Really Raining in Oriental

Monday, November 3rd: Town of Oriental

Along the canal joining the Alligator and Pungo rivers

I have to confess that before we started on this trip, in spite of reading descriptions, I had no clear idea of what the Intracoastal Waterway really was. Now we are experiencing the reality of the connected waterways that allow boats to avoid traveling in ocean waters as they make their way south (or north).

Last night as I was flipping through pages of our charts to find way points, I listed parts of the waterway that we would travel through today. From the Pantego Creek where we were anchored (just outside of the town of Belhaven), we would go back into the Pungo River where we had traveled yesterday, move further along it until it empties into the Pamlico River, then cross the Pamlico to Goose Creek going down the creek and then into a man made canal connecting it to the Bay River, then out the mouth of the Bay River, briefly again into another arm of the Pamlico and finally into the Neuse River where we would stop at the town of Oriental - so - a creek to a river, then across another river, then a creek, a canal and 2 more rivers.

Canal joining Goose Creek and the Bay River

On paper or electronic charts, a magenta coloured line indicates the ICW and when we follow it, we are sometimes winding around the banks of rivers and sometimes traveling down arrow straight canals. This leg of the ICW through North Carolina is quite lovely but we hear that as we get closer to Florida, the ICW is more often called the "ditch" with all the negative connotations that implies. We'll see.

Our stop in Belhaven was brief. We took a quick run into town but everything except an ice cream shop was closed (it was Sunday!). Luckily, the shop had WiFi access so we shared an ice cream, had a coffee and read our email.

We're in shrimp boat country now.

This morning, we left early to avoid the heavy winds and rain predicted for the afternoon. Just after lunch, we were beginning to feel the effects of the coming "front" and the Neuse river was choppy - the Neuse is another wide but shallow waterway where strong winds can make traveling uncomfortable.

The anchoring area behind the breakwater in Oriental is tight so we decided to go into a marina. Now that we're tied up, it's great to be secure, out of the heavy rain and winds, and near facilities and stores - but the tie up process was not much fun. This is one of the 4 pilings with mini dock situations and we still can't figure out how to manage it all. Again, the boat ended up rubbing against pilings and was all askew until we finally got everything in place. How do people do this anyway?? I guess eventually we'll get the knack of throwing the line into the air high enough (and fast enough) to get around those tall pilings as we go into the slip. Why don't they make the pilings a bit lower for people like me?

Typical mini dock - the town dock in Elizabeth City was about half this size.

The dreaded pilings

We are going to the marine store tomorrow to buy another long line - we have always had enough lines for any docking situation on Lake Ontario but here you need at least four extra long lines for wrapping around pilings. Today Bob ended up tying 2 of our shorter lines together to make a fifth long line - to act as a spring line to run back to a rear piling. The idea is that you wrap the line around the piling and bring it back to the boat so that you can easily pull it in as you leave.

While the wind blows hard, we'll use the next couple of days for boating chores - laundry, groceries and boat clean up and fix-up.