4 days into the journey - Belhaven, NC

Our Big Adventure has begun!  

We finally left at 10:00 am on Tuesday, October 11 (my Mom’s birthday), a day later than we had been originally planning.  Hurricane Matthew gave the Hampton Roads area quite a soaking, but we were certainly lucky compared to a lot of other places south of us.  This ICW sign was in the Great Bridge Lock our first day, reminding us of how far we have to go:

After four days of traveling and near perfect weather, we have made it the city of Belhaven, NC near Mile Marker 135 of the ICS (NERD ALERT:  Mile Marker 0 - the official start of the intracoastal waterway - is in Portsmouth, VA).  Lots of other boats around us heading South - most much bigger and faster than ours, so we get passed often (which makes for fun gawking at all the huge, beautiful yachts as they slowly pass us).  Much of North Carolina where we’ve been is very remote - only passed one “town” since leaving Great Bridge and until now - called Coinjock, NC (it’s really a stretch to call it a town).  Have had very intermittent and poor cell phone coverage, thus the delay in making this first underway post.

Our first night was spent, ironically enough, at the base of the Great Bridge draw bridge after a 30-mile journey from our marina in Norfolk’s East Beach.  We were close enough to home that Mark rode his bike there to pick up a few things we’d forgotten.  The storm apparently had disabled two of the drawbridges south of Great Bridge on the intracoastal (Centerville Turnpike and North Landing bridges), so quite a few boats had been “stuck” in Great Bridge for about a week, unable to keep moving South.  Luckily for us, both bridges were again operational the next morning (Mark’s luck is amazing sometimes).

Our second night was spent anchoring on the south side of Buck Island, along with about 20 other boats, as Coinjock marina was completely full.  For those we’ve told the story to, this was the exact location of last year’s Great Midge Swarm attack (midges are non-biting flying bugs that look like mosquitoes that emerge/hatch from the water in giant swarms) - and we had been lucky enough to anchor right next to one of these thrilling events last year.  Needless to say, we took extreme precautions this year by keeping all doors and windows closed and having no lights on (which we didn’t realize last year had attracted them - arghh).  Thankfully, there are no new swarm episodes to report (and here’s hoping we can continue to report that!!!!).

Last night (our third) we anchored by Tuckahoe Point, just on the north side of the Alligator-Pungo Canal (which is a narrow 22-mile man-made canal connecting the Alligator and Pungo rivers), which we passed through this morning.  Some very nice “neighbors” invited us to dinner aboard their boat - we had a good time trading life/boating stories, and we’ll likely see them periodically as we journey southward.  I took this picture of Quality Time from their boat - it was definitely a beautiful sunset!  The second picture is of the canal we went through today.

Our “Boredom Meter” has been low so far, mostly because the weather has been so amazing.  Mark has already finished one book and is onto his second.  I am about halfway through my first book, having learned that I need to take frequent breaks from reading in order to stave off motion sickness (I can’t read in the car either without feeling sick).  And knock on wood - there have been no known equipment failures or malfunctions to date (I’m hesitant to even type those words in case it curses me).  Mark has developed a daily system for checking things like the fuel filter, oil levels, battery charging rates and levels, etc.; so far so good on all those things as well.  

And I just have to give a shout-out to my awesome friends, whom I already miss much more than I hoped I would - I’m so lucky to have y’all as friends and look forward to staying in touch during our journey.  And hopefully even meeting up with some of you along the way!!!!!

We’re headed off now to explore the town of Belhaven by bike - it’ll be great to stretch our legs a bit.  Thanks for checking in, and we hope all is well with you - we’ll be in touch down the "road"   : )