Day 4: 10/14/07 Belhaven – Oriental (49 miles)

After a delicious breakfast of smoked trout, cream cheese, capers and boiled eggs with Bavarian sweet mustard on whole grain toast, we cast off at 0800 and headed south toward one of our favorite destinations: Oriental. Seas were calm so we had to rely on motor power once again.

We cruised down the Pungo River to its confluence with the Pamlico River admiring the huge houses on the western bank, crossed the Pamlico up Goose Creek and through the Hobucken canal past the Coast Guard station and a bunch of shrimp boats. This is prime shrimping season and we saw many shrimp boats of all sizes either pulling their nets or heading out to deeper waters. From the canal we emerged into Bay River and then downstream until it met the mighty Neuse River. We then motored up the Neuse to Oriental.

In Oriental Buck and I enjoy staying at the Oriental Inn and Marina. This is a well run small marina tucked right behind the Oriental breakwater and between large shrimp and fish processing plants. It has fuel, good showers with towels and toiletries, a decent restaurant and an outdoor tiki bar where are the locals gather. There is also a good coffee shop across the street and a marine store within a block.

Immediately after tying up, Buck and I headed for the marine store as my chart-plotter chip did not go any further south than the Neuse River. Given that we planned to head further south to Beaufort and given that that the channels into Beaufort are quite tricky, I wanted to get a chip (The chip has electronic charts of an area which are displayed on the chart-plotter with your current satellite verified location of your boat supered on the chart.) which included Beaufort. The store did not carry the chip, but was nice enough to call the local West Marine for me. After determining that West Marine had the chip, the store loaned me a bike for the 3 mile trip to West Marine. After purchasing the chip and a 6-pack of beer at the grocery I biked back to the marina and installed the chip. I breathed a sigh of relief when it installed correctly.

Given our experience with the restaurant in Belhaven, we decided to dine on board today.

I slow cooked a pasta sauce with a base of Newman’s Own Italian sausage and pepper tomato sauce to which I added a couple of chopped-up leftover pieces of meatloaf, and sautéed peppers, onions, garlic and scotch bonnet hot pepper sauce. After this simmered for an hour, I started the pasta. While the pasta boiled, I added a lb. of mussels to the sauce. Believe it or not the entire concoction tasted wonderful and we stuffed ourselves, accompanying the pasta with a glass or 2 of Spanish red wine straight from the box.

We ate our meal at the table in the cockpit (it's hard getting Buck to dress for dinner!) and spent an hour or so people watching before retiring for the evening.

I sure am happy that Buck has dish washing duty on board….