Elizabeth City to Oriental

We are in the anchorage in Oriental, NC...the "Sailing Capitol" of the USA!! We had a pretty "boring" run down the ICW from Elizabeth City. Elizabeth City is a very cool place as they have free slips available on a first come first serve basis. We had waited out weather at the last lock on the Dismal Swamp and the day we left we did not expect to get a spot in Elizabeth City as the Harbor Master said all of the spots were full...we left anyways figuring we would anchor and hopefully be able to lauch the dinghy to get some much needed laundry done....well when we arrived (along w/a couple of other boats) we were able to squeek along side the wall and get all of our laundry done without having to launch said dinghy!! For those of you who don't know about Elizabeth City it is home to the "Rose Buddies". They meet and greet each boat and once day offer a free wine/cheese party along with a rose (for the firstmate) each night in season. Each party includes a factoid about Elizabeth City...our being that all blimps with the exception of the Good Year Blimp are made in Elizabeth City.

Here is where they are housed and built..wish the day was nicer but it was still very overcast and kind of early in the morning when we left. Also while we were in Elizabeth City we visited their Dinner Theater, for $6.00 per person you get a movie in a beautiful theater (first run) we saw Pride and Glory. Dinner and drinks - which of course are extra include anything from a steak dinner to chili dogs!! We splurged with a couple of other boats and had a great time. The next morning we moved on to cross the Albarmale Sound and get to the start of the Alligator River Canal.

We ran the Alligator River Canal which was about a 50 mile run in pretty good time considering we lost our engine when we came out of the canal and into the Pamlico River. We were pretty hard over as of course we were beating to weather so we think we sucked up some air. The engine shut itself down and refused to run until we had beat ourselves up the Goose Neck Creek - a very tight channel in winds on the nose of about 15-20K once again we are very glad to have a boat that is easy to sail. Once we had the anchorage in site the engine decided it would run long enough to get the anchor down. We went through all of the systems and checked our fuel and could find no obvious problem. Just to be safe our old friends, Mark and Alison, on "Angel" "loaned" us 5 gallons of fuel with a promise of a cold beer in the Bahamas. We never saw one alligator in the "Alligator River" only this Eagle taking a much needed rest!!

After arriving in Oriental today, Dave did an oil , we lauched the dinghy and went to shore to get some provisions as we are thinking of moving onto Beaufort, NC and jump outside to Charleston, SC as the weather looks good for this run, no chicken soup this time but we will try a Shepard's pie instead, hopefully we will be able to spend more that 1/2 a day somewhere and get some "nice" pictures downloaded to the blog!! Will keep you posted...more later!!