Month: April 2021

Friday, April 30, 2021.
Temp: 80/71, Humidity: 78/29%, Top Wind: W 19, gusts over 25 mph , Precip: none, Miles Traveled: none

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I think that people who live and cook on their boats are probably among the creative chefs of the world. Sometimes you look at what you have and ponder, hmmm 🤔 what can I do with that?, because you can’t just run down to the store to get missing ingredients. Such was the idea for breakfast. Somewhere along the way, I had purchased a box of strawberries. Then I forgot about them in the fridge. Then I remembered them, cleaned them, and put a bit of sugar on them. They went back in the fridge. Then I remembered them again. But what to do with them? I know!! We bought those biscuit donuts in New Bern, and let me tell you – they are DENSE! They get the donut 🍩 name because they are round and fried and glazed. But there’s nothing fluffy about them except maybe the calories that fluff your midsection when you eat them. So I broke one up into pieces, warmed it up, topped with strawberries and a bit of cream….. YUMMM! 😋🍓. THAT was a good breakfast and a great way to use those so-called donuts!

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Thursday, April 29, 2021.
Temp: 78/66, Humidity: 86/58%, Top Wind: SW 22, gusts over 30 mph 😬, Precip: none, Miles Traveled: 37

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The map says we’re near Whortonsville. The weather apps say we’re near Oriental. The mailing address for the marina is Oriental, so I guess that wins. But let’s go back to this morning. It was beautiful! We got up at 6:00 to make sure we didn’t miss our 7:00 bridge opening. We got everything ready to go, and were just sitting and waiting. At 6:30, a big boat came out of the fairway and moved to the bridge. We thought WHAT?! Can we go now? So Kenny went upstairs and got on the VHF13 to the bridge and asked when the next opening would be. He was told 7:00. Whew! OK. So then we watched the big boat tread water in the wind, and we were thankful we were still tied to the dock. It was breezy, so it wouldn’t be fun to have two of us going in circles out there!

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Wednesday, April 28, 2021.
Temp: 83/60, Humidity: 93/46%, Top Wind: S 17mph, Precip: none, Miles Traveled: 6 miles on shoes 😳

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Biscuit Donuts. Two words that can make my man smile and will get him to walk farther than normal. Kenny found this place on the map so we made a plan to go scope it out. How can you go wrong with biscuit donuts?! There were lots of pickup trucks in the parking lot, so that means it’s good food with the locals, right? Kenny had biscuits and gravy, I had an omlette with a biscuit. The food was good!

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Tuesday, April 27, 2021.
Temp: 76/46, Humidity: 100/22%, Top Wind: SW 18mph, Precip: none, Miles Traveled: a few foot miles

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We got a text last night from John on Free Spirit. He’s the nice man that I met in the laundry room at Homer Smith. They are here in New Bern at a different marina and asked if we’d like to meet for breakfast or lunch. SURE! So we set up to meet them at 12:30 at the Baker’s Kitchen. Kenny got his tastebuds all set on biscuits and gravy. 😉. I also got a text from Denise on Island Office, my other laundry room friend. 😁 She sent me a picture that she took of us as we were cruising up the Neuse River! They passed us along the way, and are on another dock here in our marina. We were pushing a few more RPM’s than usual due to the waves and water conditions, so this is what we look like going about 1300 rpm. Our butt sits pretty low in the water at that speed. 🤔. Cool how Denise got the seagulls in the shot.

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Monday, April 26, 2021.
Temp: 76/46, Humidity: 100/22%, Top Wind: N10,S10 mph (Yep – both!) , Precip: none, Miles Traveled: 44

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We were not in a big hurry today, so no alarming get up. YAY! 😉 Although it seems I’m developing a consistent puzzling habit of getting out of bed before 8:00 nowadays. 😳 Today we‘re headed to New Bern and will be there for three nights, so we’ll have plenty of time to explore the town. We have been there by car and found it to be a neat place, so decided to tack it on as a side trip. It’s 25 miles each way off the beaten track, but we have time, right? Heck – it’s still cold up north!

I went upstairs to check on the visibility, and wouldn’t you know it – the only windows that are soaked with dew are the front ones? I wiped them down inside and out, and opened them to get some air circulation, then headed back to the galley for some coffee. At about 9:00, we pulled our lines and headed out. The weather was cool and sunny, with a little bit of north wind in our face, so we closed the front windows. Here is looking back at Homer Smith Marina.

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Sunday, April 25, 2021.
Temp: 69/47, Humidity: 93/57%, Top Wind: S25 mph, Precip: light short sprinkle, Miles Traveled: nope

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The only thing that happened today was looper connections! I did some laundry, since the washer & dryer are free here. But there is only one set, so when I went up this morning, there was already a load in the washer and another in the dryer. Darn! So I sat and waited and worked on yesterday’s blog. Just after the timer on the washer was done, a nice man came in apologizing for getting there first. Hey – that’s how this works, it’s OK! He introduced himself as John, a looper on Free Spirit. His Kadey-Krogen in on our same dock and they are planning to do the full Erie Canal route. Cool! He was a very nice man and we had a nice conversation. When his loads were done, I put mine in, and soon a lady named Denise came in. She is a gold looper who lives in Florida. They’ve done the AICW several times and they are on their way to Maine for the third or fourth time? Their boat is a Back Cove 37 named Island Office. We also had a nice conversation! So there’s two new loopers just this morning, courtesy of the laundry room! 😉👍. We’ll probably bump into both of them again on our journeys.

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Saturday, April 24, 2021.
Temp: 69/47, Humidity: 93/57%, Top Wind: S25 mph, Precip: light short sprinkle, Miles Traveled: 3 on foot

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A relaxed morning with not much going on, so we figured we’d go find other Loopers. R&R is a pretty 460 Carver, just across the fairway from us, so we went there first. They were home, but on the phone with their daughter doing wedding planning. We chatted with Rick for just a few minutes, but Rhonda was busy. We may catch up with them again, since their home port is Holland Michigan, they still have a ways to go. Then we wandered over to the Beaufort Yacht Basin next door, but once again, nobody was home at our two previously met boats there (Irrational Exuberance and Hallelujah!). So we headed into town, which is just a few blocks away. This sign made us ponder…just what kind of worm is a blood worm?

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Friday, April 23, 2021.
Temp: 66/37 SERIOUSLY!, Humidity: 86/27%, Top Wind: S15 mph (while docking!), Precip: none, Miles Traveled: 82

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This was going to be a long day. We planned to go all the way to Beaufort (Boh-fort) NC, which would be about 80 miles. Ordinarily I would split this into two days, but there has been wind, and more wind coming, so we only want to travel today. And where-ever we go we’ll be for a few days because Saturday afternoon and night are forecasted to be nasty. We set the alarm for 5:30 so that we can leave at first light which is supposed to be 6:00am. Sunrise is at 6:30. It keeps getting earlier the farther north we go, and the closer to summer we get. 😉 We were up, tossing lines, and left the dock at 5:55! YIKES! That’s a record for us so far. Getting up before the sun is for milking cows, not for retired people! 😴
Kenny noticed a strange moving light in the sky, and we were trying to figure it out. It was bright like an airplane coming in for a landing, but it was moving away from us, going to the north 🤔. It wasn’t until tonight that we realized it was actually the SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral!! WHAT?!

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Thursday, April 22, 2021.
Weather: Temp: 63/40, Humidity: 55/20%, Top Wind: N21 mph (@ 1am), Precip: none, Miles Traveled: 3 by foot

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The cold front got here! It was pretty chilly when I got up and turned on the heaters this morning! 🥶 The humidity is way down, and the wind continued to blow all day, although not as bad as yesterday. Our little weather gizmo showed this at 10:00 this morning…. still only 49 degrees outside, and wind gusts to 15mph. Brrr. And it says it got down to 41 last night. Yikes! No wonder we were cocooned in the blankets!

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Tuesday, April 20, 2021.
Weather: Temp: 67/48, Humidity: 88/49%, Top Wind: E9 mph, Precip: none, Miles Traveled: 29

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We had a leisurely last morning at Bald Head Island. It was fairly calm but cool so we had on long pants and sleeves. I timed our departure based upon the tides for our travel and destination today. We weren’t going far, but there would be some shallow places that we’d rather do with extra water than without. And since we weren’t going far, we could sleep in and wait to leave until mid morning. I figured leaving here at 10:30 would give us the best water depth. We’re only talking about about three feet of tide here right now in North Carolina, but every three feet matters when you draw nearly four, right? We waited for the 10:30 ferry to come and go before we pulled lines, so we wouldn’t meet it or have it pass us.👍

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