Every Foot Counts

 David got up at 3am to check on the water level, still rising but not enough, back to bed.  Both of us woke up at 5am, we looked at each other, checked the water depth, it had gone from 4.6’ to 6.25’. We draw 5.5’ of water so we should be back to having about 9”-ish of water and we should be floating again.  We got the big rumbler turned on, got the dock lines back onto the boat and off we went, slowly, slower, even slower yet, crap, stuck again!  David gave it a little extra throttle, the boat gave a little and we started trudging forward an inch at a time, a little faster and then halle-fricken-lujah, we were out of the mud and going forward.  That had been a stressful 24 hours.  I guess it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but it was the domino effect.  We now had 2 day’s worth of miles to go, hoping the good weather window holds, so we can get up to the Chesapeake, so we can get to the boat yard to get our stabilizer fixed, so we can get somewhere that Southwest Airlines flies to so I can get home to meet my new grandson, phew! It was a smooth ride for the most part, a little bumpy at times, which makes for great naps.  We pulled into the marina about 4pm, the dock hands were there to help us get tied up.  They kept telling David, back up a little more, a little more, still more, stop, perfect.  We literally stand on our swim step and reach above our head to touch the boat behind us anchor.  The dock hand told us, every foot counts!  Man, we are bumper to bumper here, no exaggeration.  We had met some people at the last marina, saw them again and decided to go to dinner with them.  Earlier in the day, when double checking our dock reservation, we had reserved our piece of prime rib for dinner.  This little town is known for the great prime rib at this place.  The gal on the phone told us she didn’t think we needed to reserve our piece of prime rib, as is the standard procedure here, because it didn’t look very busy.  We laughed and told her there were  a lot of people headed their way.  Very puzzled, she asked where we were, we told her we were on a boat and there were about 15 boats all headed her direction.  Dinner was as good as the stories we had been told about it.  When we got  back to the boat, we both checked the depth gauge, 13.0 feet of glorious water and 0.0 knots of wind.  The planet is turning on the right axis again, life is good today here in Boatland.  Thanks for coming by.  Headed to Norfolk tomorrow.  Today we went from Belhaven, NC to Coinjock NC, 78 miles, 10.5 hours.

Swing bridge.

 Beautiful  scenery today.

Big mambo boat passing on our port side.

Prime rib dinner 32oz cut, we shared!

Lovely, peaceful day.

Sunrise.

Sunrise.

David organizing the lines after departure.

David thought this looked like the boat from Waterworld.

Every foot counts.  It was like this for 1100 feet.