10-31-2015 – 11-3-2015, Pungo River Anchorage North to Belhaven, NC Guest Dock West

Saturday, 10-31-2015, at the Pungo River Anchorage North, up at 8 AM, anchor up 8:20, back to the main channel by 8:40, after passing a new set of boats in the Pungo River Anchorage South, which is closer to the channel. Very sunny and cool, a beautiful day. We motored less than 10 miles down to Belhaven, where we stopped at River Forest Manor and Marina for fuel and water. The marina is under new management as of a year ago. They are very friendly, and they have nice new docks and the best fuel prices. The “Manor” is being renovated. The outside looks nice, but the inside is not yet fixed up, it’s still very much “under construction”. It will be a beautiful event venue someday.

Belhaven is a very cruiser friendly town. They have a (second) new set of guest docks, which, I think, were not yet built last year. We decided to check them out. We pulled up to the guest docks “West” and tied up on the T-head. There is no electricity or water, but the docks are new and well built, with room for several boats. We met our neighbors on s/v Gypsy Queen, a young couple traveling with their 4 ½ year old son. The dad is working from the boat, he works in software. It seems this year that several people are working from their boats, and they all work in software. It also seems this year we are meeting a lot of younger cruisers, younger than the typical “retirees”.

New Belhaven Guest Dock West

Chuck and I took our foldable bikes for a ride to the downtown area, where we went exploring. We had lunch at “Farm Boys”, a casual take out restaurant, which was delicious, but a little more deep fried than we are accustomed to. We visited a craft shop by the water and the Belhaven Museum, which contains what was once the contents of one woman’s house! Then we rode off in the other direction, to the Food Lion (where they gave us Trick or Treat candy at the checkout!), and visited the cotton field right next to the store.

At Farm Boys, "No Cussin!!"

Lunch at "Farm Boys"

An interesting chair in the craft store

At the Belhaven Museum

I had never been in a cotton field before. The cotton growing on the plants looks just like…cotton! Like the stuff that comes in medicine bottles, or in bags of puffs. It’s still a mystery to me how it turns into clothing and sheets and thread.

Cotton plants

Cotton Field

Sunday, 11-1-2015, still enjoying Belhaven. We rode our bikes to the various dollar stores to see if we could replace the plastic cutting board that I had used to patch the dodger, and to see if we could score some post-Halloween candy on sale. Either we got there too late in the day, or they are on to us, there was no candy. (Just as well!)

We rode through some neighborhoods as we discovered a short cut that would keep us off the busy road. In the cemetery we saw decorations I had never seen before: names, spelled out in large letters made of flowers. I wasn’t able to get an explanation.

We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Yummy!

Chuck stopped at the auto parts store to get some oil to change our engine oil, which we realized was overdue, unless we did it during the summer in the middle of all of the other boat projects and forgot to write it down. It’s important to keep track of all of the maintenance. Both the engine and generator should be oil-changed every 200 hours, but they don’t get used at the same rate, so the changes are rarely done at the same time. This is unfortunate, because it’s a messy job that uses the same equipment for each engine, so it would be efficient to do it all and clean up once. But it doesn’t work that way.

We had some light rain in the afternoon and were expecting more the next day.

Daylight savings time – ugh. Now it gets dark an hour earlier at night. So we’ll need to be all anchored and set for the night no later than 5:30 PM now, instead of 6:30.

Monday, 11-2-2015, a very rainy day at the Belhaven Guest dock. 3 new boats came in, others have all left. We didn’t get to meet anyone, since it was pouring outside. Chuck changed the oil in the engine. I read, wrote and cooked. We watched a DVD.

I set up a fruit fly trap. Now that we have plenty of fruit from our productive trips to the Food Lion, we have fruit flies. I make a trap by putting some fruit peels in a cup and covering it loosely with plastic, held on with a rubber band. I poke a few tiny holes in the plastic with a toothpick, and they fly in and can’t find their way out (like a miniature lobster trap).  Sometimes, to make it even more enticing to them, I put a few drops of wine in the cup. They love the wine-fruit traps the best, the little lushes.

It rained all day and we didn’t leave the boat at all.

Unfortunately, on this trip, we didn’t get to see our local friends George and Shelby, who were tied up with work and family obligations. But as a result, we took the time to explore Belhaven on our own, and we really enjoyed it.

On Tuesday, 11/3/15, another grey, damp morning, we left the dock at 8 AM, and headed for Oriental, NC. Fortunately it was not cold, and we saw a few other boats moving. Everywhere I looked the scenery was grey. I felt like we were inside an old black and white photograph, a reminder of times past, and all that is permanent. The sky, the land masses and the river are probably not so different than the way they were on a grey, cloudy November morning 100 years ago.