SC to Elizabeth City, NC

 May 13 – May 22, 2010

 

It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated the blog, and I realize that I have forgotten much of what we did in the past 2 months!  I’ve decided to split it into 2 separate entries, so here are the highlights.

 

Once we got back to Georgetown, SC from 2-1/2 weeks in Indianapolis, we met up with the Godins (Potest Fieri) and the Campbells (Jejuda) – friends all the way back to our “Carp Captive” days.  The weather for the next 2 weeks was nearly picture-perfect.  Our first stop was Myrtle Beach, SC, where we docked right next to the Outlet Mall.  How convenient!

 

Our next big stop was Beaufort, NC.  In North Carolina, it is pronounced “BO-fert”, compared to South Carolina, where that city is spelled the same, but pronounced, “BEW-fort”.  It was a challenge keeping the cities straight by their pronunciation.  In Beaufort, we borrowed a loaner car from the marina with about 235,000 miles on it and a trunk that had a difficult time closing when we made our run to the grocery store.

 

We continued on up the Intracoastal Waterway with Danny & Susan from Potest Fieri and stopped in Oriental, NC, where we saw a dog with a Mohawk haircut and his master “walking” him down the street while he motored along in his golf cart.  

 

As we traveled up the Intracoastal Waterway toward Wrightsville Beach, we could see the Outer Banks on our starboard side.  I wanted to pull over (like we do in a car!) and just drop the hook and swim in the crystal clear water.  But we kept heading north.

 

We stopped in Elizabeth City, NC for 2 days, where boaters are so enthusiastically welcomed that the town treats them to a Happy Hour and serves beer, wine, cheese and crackers, if 5 or more boats are tied up to the city dock.  After maneuvering through a “minefield” of crab pots, we had to back into the slip with about 5 different people shouting 5 different sets of instructions to us from the dock.  The slips were so narrow that we couldn’t even put our fenders down and the docks were so short that I worried about one of us falling in as we contorted our bodies between the stanchion and the piling every time we got on or off the boat! 

 

E-City was a nice stop and Jerry and Linda from Monk’s Vineyard, people we had run into periodically along the Great Loop, traveled with us also.  We went to a small farmers market on a Saturday morning and I bought basil and mint plants for the boat.  This was the friendliest stop we’d ever made.  The townspeople came to the docks to see the boaters and were so interested in hearing about our cruising life onboard our boats.  

 

It occurred to me that before we started this trip nearly a year ago, we were those people who walked the docks and wondered what the stories were behind the boats that we were slightly envious of.  And now we ARE those people – lucky or crazy to live this kind of lifestyle?  Maybe a little bit of both!