Voyage 2006-2007: Chapter 2

25 Oct 2006, Day 9-11: Waiting for Weather in EC, 36 17.995 N/ 076 12.685 W

We have stayed here at Pelican Marina many times in the past and have enjoyed the stay. This trip is no different. We were too late for the Rose Buddies on Saturday Moony had been cooking while traveling and we were awarded a great meal of German meatballs and onion pie ... our favorites. The next day, we wandered around town, checked out Hurdle's hardware, visited the Muddy Waters cafe, and started off to visit the Rose Buddies' wine and cheese.

Not everybody got to go. Bob had a business call which evolved into a one hour conference call. It was getting cold as the sun sank below the town scape. At 1700, th conference was over and Bob rushed to the Rose Buddies party. Not too late. Fred Fearing and his gang were still there as were many of the cruisers. Ann had her yearly picture taken with the Rose Buddies while Wolfgang helped Fred pack up the 'stuff' for tomorrow's party. Bob and Denise drank another glass of wine. We waited one more day for weather. Ann and Denise did laundry while Bob and Wolfgang did the eternal boat chores.

26 Oct 2006, Day 12: EC to Alligator River Anchorage, 35 14.530 N/ 076 35.430 W

It is still very, very cold as we left EC at 0715 with jib up. Winds were NW with a promise of 15-20 kts with higher gusts. Moony put up a reefed main and reefed jib. Jule III thought that was too much trouble (we are lazy). As we entered the Albamarle Sound, we started to get a taste of the weather. Winds were gusty but on our port quarter. As we lined up for the trip to the Alligator Bridge, we jibed and had the wind nearly on our beam. Wish we had that reefed mainsail up now. Moony's speed was better than ours but we were doing 6+ knots. We turned our new autopilot on to see how it would do. It did great handling the puffs and lulls with minimal change in heading. Much better than Bob could do. We passed through Alligator River bridge at 1241 as we noticed that the wind was decreasing. We decided to motor sail (as did most of the neighboring boats). Even Moony started to motor sail. We arrived at the anchorage at 1520 just 15 minutes behind Moony. The weather gods decided that we need more winds as it blew 20-25 kts until nightfall.