New Bern to Dowry Creek NC

4/4/2017

We spent the bulk of the day Tuesday preparing for our son and his family to arrive from Idaho. I had last minute room organizing and bed making to take care of before our guests arrived. We expected them to arrive around 8:00 at night. Unfortunately, we got a text message in the morning that their plane had problems. Finally, after a multi-hour delay, they continued on their way.

Clark received a phone call from our friends, Ralph and Linda from Mazel Tug, whom we met on the loop. They made arrangements to stop by to see our new boat and then go to dinner together.  We went to Prohibition Drinks and Desserts restaurant for Taco Tuesday. The outside dining area was overflowing with boaters from the marina who had come to socialize over 3 for $5 tacos. We found Nancy and Carey from Tug LeeLoo as well as Dick and Pat from Dream Catcher at the restaurant ahead of us.

We pulled together a table for the eight of us to sit together for dinner. However, with so many boaters to meet, I had difficulty getting Clark to sit down at the table. I called him over long enough to get his order from him then he was gone again. I told the waitress what he wanted. Eventually, after the food came, he managed to take a seat.

After dinner, we went back to the boat to await the arrival of Jeff, Devon, Sierra (age 3 years) and Violet (age 4 mos.) Clark watched television as the hours ticked away. I finally fell asleep on the couch at 1:00 a.m. The family arrived at the marina at 2:00 a.m. when we walked up to help them carry luggage and children back to the boat. We spent little time saying hello. We all fell into bed as quickly as possible.

4/5/2017

Before leaving New Bern, we walked into town to show Sierra some of the bears. Having gone to bed at such a late hour, none of us moved too quickly in the morning. By the time we had eaten breakfast and got ourselves together, we had less than an hour to see the sites before we had to leave the marina for our next destination.

The one place that seemed of interest to Jeff was "The Birthplace of Pepsi-Cola", so we headed there. On the way we passed "Bear Plaza" and found a bear there to photograph that we did not have in the blog from two days ago.

After checking out the bears at Bear Plaza, we continued down the street. Clark stopped to take a picture of the family mid-street, and a passerby asked if we would like her to take a family photo. She suggested we take the picture at the Pepsi birthplace. Since that was our destination, we rapidly agreed and she walked with us to the site, looked for traffic, then stood in the street, and took a family picture of us.

Clark, Ev Devon & Sierra, Jeff & Violet

With rain followed by heavy winds forecast for Wednesday night, we decided to make a move to our next destination before the weather arrived. With weather chasing us and a marina closing time of 5:00 at our next destination, we had little time to spare. We shared a couple of Pepsi floats and then headed back towards the boat.

Along the way, we passed Mitchell's Hardware where they had a "tin man" in the window.

Tin Man at Mitchell's Hardware

 Outside the store, we found "Mitch" the bear mascot for the hardware store.

"Mitch" Bear at Mitchell's Hardware

With pleasant weather and calm seas, we all sat on the flybridge to enjoy the ride to River Dunes in Oriental, North Carolina.

Jeff with Violet on flybridge

We had overcast skies on the trip, and Clark kept looking behind him to see dark clouds following his path east to Oriental. As we traveled, we passed under a bridge with interesting architecture.

V-shaped Bridge Architecture

We did not quite make the 5:00 closing time, but someone waited at the marina for us to arrive shortly thereafter. As soon as he had us tied to the dock, though, he was gone.

The area surrounding the River Dunes Marina is somewhat surreal. Numerous streets with newly-constructed homes are located near the marina. Rarely does one encounter a person in the area however. As we walked the streets to explore the area, we agreed that the "town" could be the setting for a bizarre horror movie about an abandoned village.

Clark pointed out the small chapel located on site so we walked over. When we looked in the window, it looked like a lovely little church, perfect for a wedding. We could tell, however, due to the weeds growing between the paving stones, that no one had visited the church recently.

Chapel near River Dunes Marina

The predicted rains and winds arrived as expected. As we walked back to the boat, we felt the first drops of rain. After dinner, we put on a DVD movie for Sierra and had to turn the volume way up to hear the movie over the pounding of the rain. The howling winds arrived after we turned in for the night.

4/6/2017

When we woke this morning, we had to make a decision on travel plans - stay put or make a run for our next planned stop of Dowry Creek Marina in Cumberland, North Carolina. Knowing the ride would be rough, we still decided to make the run to Dowry Creek. Jeff and Clark sat together on the flybridge while us "girls" stayed down in the cabin. With wind and salt spray on the fly bridge, it did not seem like the best place for small children.

Depending on our heading, the waves pushed and shoved us around from different directions. A couple of times the stabilizers could not compete, and we ended up with some items shifting in the cabin. This trip was the roughest I have experienced on board the new boat.

Although Clark later told me we followed another boat for most of the trip to Dowry Creek, I saw no other vessels out on the rough waters with us. I did, however, see a massive number of sea gulls and terns who thought we were a fishing boat. I told Devon it made me think of the Hitchcock movie "The Birds". I wondered if they would become aggressive and attack when they discovered we had no fish on board.

Birds following Sunset Delight into port

Birds - too close to the stern for comfort

We arrived at Dowry Creek mid-afternoon. With Jeff's help, we got the boat tied to the dock. It took a while to position the boat and set fenders due to the fixed-dock design. Our first arrangement precluded me from exiting the boat as I could not jump the ravine required to reach the dock. With some shifting and retying of lines, we managed to make the leap manageable. After securing the lines, we learned from the dock hand that marina has a new owner whom Clark later met.

On our tour of the grounds, we discovered that the washers and dryers were free, so Devon decided to do laundry. With an infant, she already had enough to make it worthwhile. Fortunately, Devon has long legs because with each trip she took to the laundry room, the distance required to jump to the dock increased as the water level dropped.  There is no tide change at this marina. The change in water heights is due to the wind blowing water in or out depending on direction.

At some point Clark took a sunset picture of one of the buildings at the Dowry Creek Marina.

Dowry Creek Marina Pool and Captain's Lounge Area

We discussed our travel plans for tomorrow but have no decision on what we will do. Weather will truly determine whether we move or stay. Today on our travels, we saw wind gusts of 40 to 45 knots. Tomorrow we see predictions in the range of 35 to 40 knots.

Where today we had no physical obstacles standing in our way, our route tomorrow takes us under a bridge that does not open when winds are greater than 30 knots. If the bridge does not open, we will not be able to get to the marina where we plan to stay. Traveling 45 miles only to find out we cannot pass under the bridge would be tragic. Clark will need to check weather and make phone calls in the morning to determine our plan of action. Traveling 8 to 10 hours to end up where we started from would be a bad situation for sure.