The rest of the trip was surprisingly pleasant. We weren’t as cold (partially due to heading south, but more due to Jace helping Paul fix the heater).
The Abermarle Sound, with it’s nasty reputation, was calm as can be. Paul and Jace embraced calling me “Smash Squirrel” (their commentary on my steering abilities). Boaters on the radio had good southern manners (“Good morning, Captain! Thank you for the slow pass!”) We anchored a couple nights in wide, open remoteness – just us and the stars, with water smooth as glass…. plus the occasional military jet overhead or duck hunter zipping by. Each night we anchored, I’d sit outside after dark and just listen to the silence.
A boat named Dror, who had chatted with us on the radio in the Alligator River, talked us into docking at Downy Creek Marina in Belhaven, NC – several boats stayed there that night and it was fun to meet some other people. This was also our first courtesy car experience – some marinas have a vehicle you can use without charge, but they’re often pretty sketchy and this one was no different. Jace departed us here because we would have nowhere to drop him off the next day. Hgot a ride to the Enterprise rental car, which was an hour away. I tried not to rub it in when we got to put sails up the next day after having motored every day he was aboard.
We left the boat at Northwest Creek Marina in New Bern, NC (very friendly staff, excellent monthly rates). We took the sail to Omar Sails to repair the reef point blown out the same day as the water pump incident. Our sails are homemade (by a previous owner) SailRite sails – the sailmaker was quite impressed with how good of shape the mainsail was in for its age and was really fascinated that it is so old school that you can’t even buy the tools to make them that way any more.
It was so weird to say goodbye to the boat. I wasn’t quite ready to leave. We’d been on the boat almost every weekend for almost 2 years. Now I wouldn’t see her for 2 months. In addition, I had to go back to home and work and start to think seriously about saying goodbye to people there. I had to prep for not seeing Paul for weeks while he worked in TN. All the ups and downs of doing something like this were no longer worries or fantasies – they were now realities.
