Day started a little cloudy but the fog moved in within an hour. The Sedan Bridge boat was gone when Candy and I came out for our walk at 6:10. As we were finishing our walk I noticed that Phoenix was leaving the marina. He is headed to Dowry Creek Marina for the evening. He is looking for some crew to go from Norfolk to New York City, with no stops, on the outside.
We sat around till about 8:30 when it appeared the fog was lifting. The marina got in touch with me because Phoenix was aground in the marina channel. I talked to him on the VHF and he said he was soft aground but unable to move himself. I told him I would give it a try.
We approached him and he was actually out of the channel but he said he had 5′-0″ of water where he was. I backed up to him and he had rigged a bridle to his rear cleats. I attached the line to my rear starboard cleat and slowly floated forward and when the line came taught I put it in gear and he put his engine in reverse and his boat moved and came back into the channel. Mission accomplished.
We moved out into Broad Creak and as we turned toward the Neuse River the fog appeared to get a little thicker. We had the radar on and I could see a reasonable number of targets that were staying relative to us. We traveled up the Neuse River to the Bay River and about 4 miles onto the Bay River the fog did lift.
It had actually been comfortable when it was foggy but with the sun out it warmed considerably. I think the temps got into the low 90’s for the day. There was not much wind and it was at our back so as we moved north we could not feel any wind.
There were quite a few boats out and we passed several sailboats and a couple of trawlers. It turned out that a lot of them were headed to Dowry Creek also. There was a large group of Sail boaters from Oriental that were on a 10 day trip.
We had a happy hour at the marina and most of the transients attended. It was a good time and a way to meet some of the other boaters. Talk about small worlds. The gentleman on Phoenix arrived late in the afternoon and he met an old friend on the dock that he knew from Vermont. This friend and his wife are living on the boat in the Dowry Creek Marina. Neither one knew the other would be there.
We are staying over 1 day to do laundry and rest a little before making the next push north. The next section is the Alligator River and the Albemarle Sound which were somewhat of a problem last year. The winds for the rest of this week are predicted out of the south and light to medium so that would be good if true.