June 16 — Wide open water

Trip from Oriental, NC to Dowry Creek was completely different than what we’ve experienced on the ICW so far. Instead of narrow channels and frequent daymarks across  wider spots where you had to watch the depth constantly, we were in wide, wide, wide open water with plenty of depth. Day marks were far apart and our destination at Dowry Creek required that we leave the ICW and head into the marina.

Often the cruise felt like we were on Lake Michigan — endless water to the horizon. Bit difference, of course, is that we could see land even if at a far distance for the entire trip. I’ve mentioned our electronic charts before and the “magic” magenta line that keeps track of where the ICW is. For today, it was less important to be “on the line” than to know what day marks, often placed at quite a distance away, you were passing.  And, of course, there were those tricky changes from Red Left Leaving to Red Right Return and a couple of day marks sporting both red and green. You gotta pay attention even when you’ve got plenty of water!

We took a dip in the marina’s salt water pool after we finished our cleaning chores. It is hot here and the cool water felt wonderful. This marina is relatively new and everything is in great shape. The marina store is fully stocked….including Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey ice cream. We’ve resisted (so far).

Dowry Creek Marina is VERY rural. It’s got the best wifi we’ve had so far….we guess that some millennial run the place. It’s quite nice.

It is near Belhaven. Lovely name. Skip it. We ended up dining (I use the word loosely) at a Chinese place in a grocery store mall.  The person at the counter seemed surprised that we didn’t want take-out and whose grasp of the English language was pretty iffy. C’est la vie.

Boat names are interesting (or not). Lots and lots of girl names (Laura Belle, Lady Gina, Anastasia Rose, etc. etc. etc.). One I really liked was “Winterlude” — on a 68 foot cruiser. I, alas, did not get a photo of it, but will be on the look out for clever ones to share on the blog!

And, of course, there are houses grand and quirky to look at along the way. In this stretch of the trip, we were pretty far away from shore. These were taken with Cliff’s telephoto lens.