Sunday, 9/27/15 River Forest Marina in Belhaven, NC
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| River Forest Marina |
In view of the weather forecast, we decided to spend Sunday in River Forest Marina catching up on our blog and doing laundry and other boat projects. It pretty much blew and blew all day between the rain. Not a good day to travel.
We did have some new neighbors arrive on their 125' yacht. Showtime was an older boat that was sporting a brand new paint job. Quite beautiful!
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| Showtime |
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| The captain had run this boat for 16 years. Quite a long time! |
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| A perfect night to watch the eclipse |
Tonight was to be the night of the "blood moon". We had great seats to watch most of this magnificent spectacle. Though clouds blew in part way through, we did get to see much of the lunar eclipse and even caught a glimpse of the full eclipse as the moon turned red.
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| Just starting |
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| An awesome eclipse |
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The moon was so bright, it was tough to
capture the eclipse. This was taken at about
30% eclipsed! |
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| We caught the blood between cloud banks! |
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| Mostly full eclipse |
Monday, 9/28 - Belhaven to Morehead City
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| Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning! |
Though the wind was down as predicted, the rain was still in the offing - as predicted. Argghhh. However, we needed to travel so off we went.
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1 of 2 Navy transport ships we followed for several hours
until they ran aground. More on that later! |
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| Commercial fishermen don't care about the weather. |
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| This fleet wasn't moving much, though. |
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The cruising guide basically said, "good
luck" if you can find anyone here at the
fleet's headquarters. |
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| The fleet even had the latest style in bathrooms. His & hers. |
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| You call fishing in the rain fun? |
At a particularly notorious and difficult section of the intracoastal waterway, we watched in disbelief as one of the Navy transport ships we had been following for the past couple of hours suddenly went hard aground! The other one did a prompt U turn to come to his aid and also went aground! Oh boy, are we in trouble now! The wind was up, it was raining and the channel was verrry narrow. We quickly put on the brakes and laid back, trying to stay in the middle of the little channel. With 1 eye on the depth sounder, 1 eye on the Navy ships and our other 2 eyes on the sides of the channel & wind, we held our breath.
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The ship on the right is hard aground. He is NOT supposed to be on the
right side of the red marker in the middle of the 2. The 2nd ship soon ran
aground also! |
We could only get 1 picture as it was all hands on deck trying to make sure we stayed in the narrow channel and out of their way as they backed out of the mud. They appeared to be flat bottomed and therefore not very maneuverable in tight quarters. However, their large engines were able to grind their way back to deeper water.
Once out, they both headed for a deeper section of the river where they moved over and let us go by. Talk about hair raising!!!
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| Another tight turn |
Next challenge was in a tight, windy section of the river where, just as we rounded the bend, a tug pushing a barge showed up, taking up much of the area we needed to be in. Of course, there wasn't much deep water in the area at that tight of a turn!
After talking with him, we goosed Samba & quickly crossed in front of him as he came round the bend. There wasn't room for both of us and he couldn't alter course.
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| Phew, made it! |
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The scenery in this part of N. Carolina was pretty.
Too bad it was raining so much. Tough to enjoy it. |
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| Lots of marshy paths on the side |
