From beaufort

Wednesday

Departed from our mooring at the dismal swamp visitor centre at 7am arrived at the bridge and lock at the exit of the canal  for the 8.30 opening. 

The Pasquotank river into which the canal flows is beautiful very isolated , swampy banks and tall trees. The water is clear but stained brown from tannin in the trees, a bit like sailing in beer or black tea. It gets bigger and bigger finally we ended up in Elizabeth City, A friendly small town. A guy we met took us to the local supermarket in his car so we stocked the boat with food . Mooring was free on the city wharf , included use of a portaloo! That was the only part of the Elizabeth city experience I would not recommend.

Thursday

Out down the river into the Albemarle Sound , a light breeze took us across under sail, very odd to be almost out of site of land yet be in only 18 foot of water.

Alligator river

The lower reaches of the alligator river are boring! 3miles wide and a dead straight course for about 10 miles, unfortunately the light breeze was right on the nose. I'm writing this whilst at the helm. It's that boring

Now the upper reachers are not boring , they are intimidating , you can see the banks clearly and it looks like no one has ever placed a foot on those banks since time began, I think 'Deliverance' may have been filmed here.  We anchored at the top of the alligator river just at the point were the Alligator Pungo river canal starts. 

Sunrise alligator river

The pilot paint a dim picture of this canal with stories of sunken trees and shallows but it passed by without incident. Auto-helms a are wonderful however if you are not too careful you could hit one of those red posts that mark the channel , the likely hood is very small and thank goodness I looked up just in time! 

Friday

So the Pungo river followed and after crossing the Pamlico sound and once again we are moored at the top of a very remote river.

6.30 start tomorrow. 

Here is Saturdays route.

The most notable thing was that as we got closer and closer to Moorhead City and Beaufort traffic on the rivers got larger faster and more frequent. Moorhead City is a big boating centre and we stop for two nights

Sunday

Dear friend John and Joy drove from Raleigh to see us , they arrived at midday and we started with coffee and updated each other on family, number of grandchildren etc. then we set off for a bit of site seeing to fort Macon . This is a fort much like fort Widley near Portsmouth it was built in the civil war. At the fort we met a volunteer guide called Rich he was very knowledgable and gave a fine tour. He was a sailor and had done the trip to Bahamas, he also flew and had a light aircraft at a local airport in which he offered us a flight! So off to the airport for a wonderful flight over the Outer Banks Harpers island and Bogue sound. First Vince and i then Joy and John A wonderful experience and he wouldn't accept a thing in payment. A wonderful guy, you don't meet people like that very often. 

Monday 

Weather forecast not so good, it's going to rain and blow a bit.