Saturday, June 21, 2014 (Morehead City to Dowry Creek): This is a late blog post. The date is actually May 19, 2015. The website was trashed sometime during the last Fall. With the diligent help of Jennifer at Rooted ID in Charleston we are back online. As we travel we keep a careful ship's log and a diary. Reconstructing the weblog from now on is not contemporaneous but reproduced from our handwritten logs.

As Sabbatarians (Sabbath observant), we prefer not to travel on Saturdays. Of course, we have an excuse. Last night the weather was terrible. Thunder rumbled and crashed and lightning shows lit the depressing landscape. This morning, it is depressingly gray. The weather maps show us caught between two cold fronts. The one that went through last night stalled offshore and the one behind it is expanding and losing its punch. All things considered, we believe that we can make Dowry Creek before the nighttime display of sound and light.

Today, we are bound by the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. Out we go on a rising tide, which will make the shoaled channels more passable. We have never gone outside, either northbound or southbound, in this stretch. Cape Hatteras is a morass of shifting shoals and unpredictable surface conditions. I would need more waterline and range to deal with those circumstances. Moreover, going around commits us to going as far as the Chesapeake, some 250 miles against inshore currents swirling off of the Gulf Stream. There are no places to hide along the way as the major inlets are impassable to us. Oregon Inlet would give us a shortcut but it is closed. So, inside it is.

The cuts through eastern North Carolina (above) are narrow and shallow but well marked for a change. The Neuse River and Bay Creek are calm and picturesque although we have seen this land- and waterscape many times. The sun even comes out to light the way. By the time we round the point at Oriental towering cumulonimbus clouds cover the western horizon. As we tie up to the dock at Dowry Creek we can hear thunder in the distance and the freshening breeze smells wet.