New Friends

Tuesday we repaired the head at the Atlantic Basin Marina at Great Bridge and were away by 10 am and travelled to Coinjock (40 ish miles?).

There we met up with some new friends all going south in sailboats. 

A half hour out we were hailed on the radio by John & Deborah aboard Java  a Jeanneau 36 who had introduced themselves to us back at ABM. 

They invited us to stay at the Midway Marina in Coinjock for a beverage and we were joined by Diana and Ross aboard a  Island Spirit 400 Catamaran "One White Tree" we met on the dock at Coinjock and Diane and Jan aboard a beautiful and gleaming  Passport 40 "Nora" that John had met earlier. 

We all had dinner in the restaurant which opened up just for us...great meal, reasonably priced. 

We decided to sail together next day.

Nora  has an older engine and is a heavier boat so ended the day at the Anchorage at the entrance to the Pungo Canal.  The rest of us pushed on.  Good day Wednesday …put in about 70 nautical miles from Coinjock across Abermale Sound, the Alligator River, where all the Alligators have already gone south, through the Pungo Canal to an anchorage just off the ICW in the Pungo River.  The last 10 miles were a bit of a drag as as our little flotilla got stuck in the canal behind the Philadelphia Belle, a large paddle-wheeler party boat which is making the trip south to new owners in Louisiana. She was dubbed the Canal Plug/Hog and various other names by those 10 or so boats following her who were all forced to anchor in the dark at the end of the run.

Thursday we did another 40+ or so miles and reached River Dunes, Grace Harbour in Broad Creek near Oriental NC.  This is an oasis in the middle of nowhere but check it out - http://www.riverdunes.com/spring.php - fantastic. Very luxurious 5* facilities- hotel, cottage rentals, homes available, excellent dining facilities, spa, 5 personal jets in the showers etc,etc included for us for the $1.25 per foot(reasonable price). Here we all went to dinner together and were joined by another cuople we met Lisa and Val aboard Rising Star a Valiant  40.

Higher winds and waves and cold temperatures today(Friday) forced us (haha) to stay another day at this place.  We took the coutesty van to shop in Oriental a town with 500 residents and over 3000 boats!  Tomorrow we are all heading out together towards LeJeune past Beaufort NC about another 70 mile run.

We learned from Diane & Jan about the spot satellite messenger  gizmo which is a cool GPS tracking system that allows us to press a button and update the girls(and all blog followers) on our whereabouts complete with a link to a google map with 7 days historical data on our trip co-ordinates.  It also has an "oops button" (distress) button to call out SAR (search and rescue) or a help button for less dramatic help such as a tow.  We were able to link that directly to Tow Boat US the equivalent of CAA which I had purchased in Deltaville for $200 or so. Just follow this link to see our location updates:
https://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=1qdKkOi91fIOEB4pfpnGboQiuixO2fffv
The password is: TANGO
If the link doesn't work, try copying and pasting it to your browser's address bar.