Work Day in Oriental

Bob thinks that he has solved the problem of water leaking into the forward cabin. It has certainly helped that we are in a marina and close to services. With the heavy rain which began in the afternoon of the day before and continued through the night, we found that again, the bow end of our mattress and bedding was wet. So we pulled everything off the bed and Bob took off a piece of wooden trim in the cabin. When he opened up the anchor locker hatch and felt a draft in the cabin, he knew there was a hole somewhere. Then he took everything out of the locker, stuck his head as far down as possible (basically stood on his head he said), looked around and found a couple of relatively large holes and some smaller ones. Most of the time, water doesn't get into the anchor locker - except of course in heavy seas and extra heavy rains. Since we have Internet access here, Bob went online for a solution. Then he took a long walk to the hardware store and bought an insulating spray foam which once sprayed on would expand to fill any gap. In the mean time, we stripped the bed, and took off the cover for the mattress to dry everything out and wash the sheets and duvet cover and we put on the heater in the cabin to help dry everything out.

We are also finding that condensation on the walls and ceiling (when we close the boat up especially) is worse in our cabin - probably because there's 2 of us in the cabin all night breathing out moisture. As a result, there is dampness underneath the mattress which is unrelated to the anchor locker problem. At the next stop where we can find a big West Marine, we'll buy a piece of underlay which is made to absorb moisture under a mattress and can be removed periodically to dry out.

The marina has laundry facilities very close to where our boat is so that made it easy to catch up on all our laundry and wash all the bedding. We also walked the mile or so to the grocery store and did a big grocery shopping with the intention of taking a cab back. When Bob asked if they had a phone number for a taxi, the owner offered to drive us back. Nice!

After getting everything back in order - the bed put back together, the laundry put away, the groceries stowed, we went out for dinner. The gentleman who drove us back from the grocery store gave us some restaurant recommendations that were "right good". We went to the closest one and had a feed of "peel and eat" fresh shrimp - Mmm good and very reasonable. I was wishing I had my camera so as to take a picture of the one pound of shrimp on each of our plates. We brought home the leftovers and had a yummy shrimp salad for lunch.

As we travel along we are seeing more and more people going south and since we see them again and again, we have begun to get to know some of them. This afternoon, one couple offered us their bikes to take for a ride. We have bikes but hadn't gone to the trouble of pulling them out. We biked out along the water and into a beautiful housing area with a variety of pretty homes in all shapes and sizes and lots of tall trees and grasses all around. We have decided that when we are docked any place for a day or more, we'll make a point of getting out the bikes.

This afternoon, we have invited 2 couples for drinks before dinner. They were both with us at the Dismal Swamp Visitors' Centre and then again at Elizabeth City. Tomorrow the winds are predicted to get lighter in the afternoon so we will leave later in the morning and move further along the ICW's magenta line.