4/28/18 Saturday: The greasy spoon breakfast only took about a half hour, so we were just fixing coffee when the gang came out of the gas station and were getting ready to go. We pulled away from the dock at about 7:20 this morning to just a slight chop on the water. We trawlered out to the ICW and ran at about 7 knots until we cleared all of the markers to the Albemarle Sound. Then Captain rolled her up to a nice 16 knots or so to cruise across the Sound.
The water here in the sound is a green color. It is a really large body of water, but only about 20 feet deep! We were very thankful for such a nice weather day to cross it!
From the main body of the Albemarle Sound, we went north up the Pasquotank River. They do have some funny names here! The yellow parts of our path are where we went fast.
As we approached Elizabeth City, we saw this huge building. Kenny joked that it looked like a blimp hangar. Guess what!? He was right!!! This was a World War II era LTA (Lighter Than Air) naval air base that used to house blimps that would patrol the coastline in search of German U-boats. There used to be two hangars. Due to steel rations during the war, only one steel one was built, and the 2nd one was wood. The steel one still remains, but the wooden one burned down in 1995, leaving just the 4 large pillars (on the right). Each of the hangars had the capacity to house 6 airships at any given time. The steel hangar building is currently used by a private company that builds blimps! Who knew?!
Elizabeth City is also home to a very large and diverse Coast Guard Air Station. It is the largest and busiest CG Air Station in the U.S. and operates missions as far away as Greenland and the Caribbean. In this picture, I tried to get the airplane right after it took off, but I was too slow, so it’s in the upper right corner. I read that they operate Hercules aircraft and Jayhawk helicopters from here.
We dodged crab pots the whole trip today. The crabbers use all different colors of floats, and they are not all easy to see! I think black ones should be free to anyone who can find it. They are SO hard to see! As we came into the northern crook of the Pasquotank River, we were in the Elizabeth City harbor. This is one of the greatest boater friendly towns anywhere. They have several free docks – it was just a matter of scouting them out and figuring out where we wanted to be. We had a couple of recommendations from friends, but as we were trying to match up which docks were which – straight ahead of us were some slips with tiny finger piers. There was a fella waving at us to come there and pointing to a slip. So, captain turned us around and we backed into one of them, and we had some help from a neighbor looper boat. Sure enough, these are free! They are deceiving to come into, because the piling are kind of angled, and the finger piers are shaped like a piece of pie, so it’s hard to guage what is square in the slip. But here we are, right on the promenade in Elizabeth City. In our slip by 10:20 am! These slips have steps up to the promenade. Some of the flat dock walls have no easy access to the walkway – you have to climb over or through the fence. I texted a message to Ned Pepper and Total Eclipse to let them know where we were and that there was room for them. They got here about an hour after us.
This town has a long history of roses for boaters. Way back in 1983, a couple of fellas named Fred and Joe decided to host a wine and cheese party for a group of boaters. And they presented each of the ladies with a rose from Joe’s garden. A tradition of giving a rose to the ladies on all visiting boats began. Joe passed away in 1987, and his rose bushes were transplanted to the park next to the wharf. They are really beautiful!
Fred continued the tradition with the help of some friends known as the Rose Buddies. Fred passed away in 2007, but the tradition continues. I was given a rose by a very nice man.
When we were binocularing the town looking for a place to dock, I did see that there was some kind of goings-on in the park. Not quite a farmers market, because there were lots of car and truck hoods up, which looked like a car show! Sure enough -this is way better than a farmer’s market in the Captain’s book!
We walked down to the park and cruised around the cars and trucks. They had all kinds of cars and trucks – old and new – nice and nicer.
This 68 Firebird caught Kenny’s eye. He restored two 69 Firebirds when we lived in Puyallup. He talked with the owner for quite some time. This was a very unique car. It actually came from the factory with a FORD (FOMOCO) transmission! The guys had a fun time sharing restoration stories.
We enjoyed a Carolina BBQ chicken lunch in the park, all proceeds to a children’s Christmas organization. Carolina BBQ is not a smokey tomatoey sauce, but rather a thin vinegary sauce. It was tasty, but not what we think of when we hear BBQ. Back at the boat we found lots of people enjoying the park. And then, there must have been a high school prom in town. Lots of kids in formal wear coming by and taking pictures by the boats. We enjoyed watching prom kids last weekend in Beaufort, too! There were also lots of people coming by who were doing a Pub Crawl/Scavenger Hunt, sponsored by the local micro brewery “Ghost Harbor Brewing Company”. The brewery was already on our list of places to go, but this really got our interest. I couldn’t get Captain to go sign up to do the crawl. One of the things on the scavenger list was to give a rose to somebody not doing the crawl. So everybody was coming to the rose garden to clip a rose to give to someone. I had a lady give me one and then had her picture taken with me to prove it. They were all having such a fun time.
The weather was fabulous today. I think I sunburned my neck and arms! Whoops! I had promised Captain several days ago that we would be in a place with a brewery. So, it was time to go check out Ghost Harbor. There weren’t many people there when we arrived around 5:30. But when we left around 7:00, it as standing room only!
This picture just shows the bar and a couple of tables. There were more inside, and there were tables out in the alley. There were a couple of tables of guys that looked like Coast Guard – nice haircuts. One table was playing “Rockem-Sockem” – a funny plastic boxing game for kids, and another playing Jenga. Our kids would love this!
This is the alley. You thought it sounded weird, huh? But it was actually quite nice out there!
The brewery did not have food, and we were needing some dinner by now. We walked past a couple of places, but nothing sounded great. So we just headed back to the boat, and the chef whipped up a couple of nice chicken salad sandwiches with our left over chicken from lunch. We don’t have any shore power here, so we’re just running our lights off of our batteries. With our stern to the promenade, we didn’t want to start the generator to use the stove, so sandwiches worked out really good. There is music coming from somewhere this evening, and there are still people coming and going around the park. It is cooling off nicely, so we should be pretty comfortable temperature-wise. It was quite windy and rough around 4:00 this afternoon, but now it has calmed down and I think we’ll be fine. Whew! I had visions of rockyrolly like we were back in the Beaufort(SC) washing machine. Tomorrow we are going to go up the Dismal Swamp. I think we’ll try to time it to do the whole thing in one day, which means we are getting up and leaving the dock before the sunshine is fully awake in the morning. 😳 Sheesh! What is with these early mornings!? I don’t like to boat in the dark, so this one will probably be the earliest for a while. I hope.