October 21^st, 2011, Fri.

We stayed at Coinjock Marina till the fronts came thru and the winds calmed to 10’ to 15’. Forever Friday left early Wed. to try to beat the wind, which is easy for them. They’re a 50’ boat with twin engines and travel a lot faster than us. We’ll catch up again at some point. I don’t think Bob can watch Dancing with the Stars without Chris though and I will miss their joint commentary.
Thursday a bunch of the boats left thinking they would cross the Abermarle in 3’ to 4’ seas, but they got there and they were 5’ to 8’. Most of these are power boats with captains and they said it was bad. They closed the Alligator River Bridge because of the winds also. So now their back at Coinjock with us, plus new boats are coming in from the north. The marina says they’ll be rafting boats off the boats at the dock. There are more big boats then I ever remember, most are well over 45’. The 45’ power boat that was behind us is back and is behind us again, which is scary, cause he almost took off our swim platform and port side of our boat getting off the dock this morning.
Finally, things have calmed down and we’re leaving this morning. They didn’t end up rafting boats off the docks, but it was a full house, specially when the 90 some footer came in.Crossing the Abermarle Sound was OK. Some areas though, still had very confused 2’ seas. We got into the Alligator River Marina around 1:00 and gave Jany K a good scrubbing. It was a quiet evening and of course no TV stations or cell service, or WIFI. Just an outback place

October 22, 2011, Sat.

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We got into Dowry Creek Marina around 1:30. Calm, but partly cloudy and cool. The Alligator Pungo Canal was fine, although you could see a little damage to some docks at the southern end. The canal is more than 20 miles long and straight as an arrow. It runs a little southwest, so you start with scrub trees like at the shore, then the more west they get taller and greener.
Dowry Creek Marina always has a cocktail party or a pot luck dinner for transients. Tonight was pot luck, there was a boy who was celebrating his 13^th birthday today. It was very nice. We met a lot of people and finally met the people on two sailboats we’ve been passing for the past couple days. The one boat is a 30’ Hunter from Chicago and the other is a 42’ Beneteau from Sandusky, Ohio.