Belhaven NC to Oriental NC

Start time and hours                        0900                                   3409.91

End time and hours                         1515                                   3416.16

     The weather finally cleared and we departed Forest River Marina in Belhaven NC.  As usual we were the last boat to leave the marina.  As we have said there is usually no reason to get going so early as we all get to the same spots in the afternoon anyway. 

     We cruised with great sunny and almost warm weather down the Pungo river, across the Pamlico river, down Goose creek to the Bay river and down the Neuse river to Oriental NC.  The cruise included wide open waters and narrow canals.  The water for the most part was flat and calm.

     Shortly after leaving Belhaven NC our depth sounder started acting up.  It would register accurate depths for a time and then not.  Then the NOT became all the time.  It was not such a big deal because most of the time we were in open water or wide channels.  When we entered Oriental to anchor in  Green’s creek it was a bit of concern.  We followed our chart plotter and Active Captain directions and anchored in what we believed to be about 6ft. of water. 

     The anchorage was fantastic.  There was one other boat there.  The winds were dead calm and the water was flat.  We went to bed pointing in one direction and woke up pointing in the exact direction.  The boat has rocked more in a marina than at this anchorage.

     In the morning we called Seacoast Marine Electronicshttp://seacoastmarineelectronics.com/ and described our problem to their technician.  He suggested that we move to a marina and call him back so he could come to the boat and diagnose the problem. 

     We pulled up the anchor and moved the .75 km over to the Oriental Inn & Marina. https://orientalmarina.com/ They were kind enough to let us in early to have the boat serviced.  There was little to no wind and no current and we backed in to our slip smoothly.

     I called the technician who I had spoken to and her came down a few hours later.  It turns out that the technician was the president of the company, Peter Waterson.  Pete diagnosed that our transducer was bad and said that he could be back in the morning with a new one and he would splice it into the old line so that we would have not have to run a new line through the boat. 

     After Pete left we explored the town of Oriental NC to see what it had to offer.  There are a few unique shops and some very good maritime stores within easy walking distance.  We found some placards to put our boat name on so that we could hang it off the flybridge.  This is important so that when boats pass us on the ICW, and there are many boats that pass us, they can hail us by name and not just by description.

     We met up with some of our dock neighbors for afternoon cocktails and hors d’vouerve.  After that we enjoyed a wonderful dinner and settled in for the night.