Four Nights in Belhaven - 2018

Nov 9 thru Nov 11

—Blogpost written by Bob

We arrived here in Belhaven NC at noon on Thursday, November 8, after transiting the Alligator River-Pungo River Canal. We are staying in a slip at Belhaven Marina, which is adjacent to the downtown area of the small town of Belhaven.  It is a small marina with great facilities and friendly management.  Since the sky was overcast and rain threatened, we were satisfied to get (fantastic!) showers and do laundry (it is free!) at the marina in the afternoon.  Tomorrow, we will be venturing into town to explore.

The weather forecast from Thursday, Nov 8,
on our Weather Underground app.

Friday, November 9

Even though the weather forecast downplayed the chance of rain today, it rained lightly from the very beginning of the day until late in the morning.  It seems like we are always planning our days around the weather—today, because we are in a slip, we decided not to change our plans of exploring town because of a light rain.

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Yesterday, I did some more work on out travel plan, specifically looking at tides around the two ocean inlets south of Southport. It is much easier to traverse the two problem ocean inlets (Lockwood’s Folly and Shallote) during high tide. We need time to get to the inlets from Southport and high tide has to be during daylight hours. So, Monday, November 26 (the Monday following Thanksgiving) seems to be the perfect day to make this trip because high tide is at 9:54 AM. The distances from Southport are (1) 11 miles (1-1/2 hours) to Lockwood’s Folly and (2) 21 miles (2-3/4 hours) to Shallote (pronounced with a long "o"). Leaving Southport at 6:54 AM (sunrise) should allow us to get to Lockwood’s Folly an hour before high tide and Shallote about 15 minutes before high tide.

Before we started the morning's exploration, we
moved our boat forward on the main dock
to make room for other boats
arriving this afternoon.

We began our exploration of Belhaven at 9:45 AM.

This is the main downtown shopping
area of Belhaven.  I took this
photo while standing in the
middle of the street.

A few of the shops on Main Street.

The highest rated restaurant in Belhaven,
Spoon River, was flooded out during
Hurricane Florence--it is now
undergoing repairs.

Our exploration of Belhaven was completed after lunch and Maggie went in every shop in town.  The downtown area had three feet of flood water during Hurricane Florence.  Belhaven Marina was operational within 2 days of the water receding but it took another 2 weeks before any boats showed up, according to the owner.

Saturday, November 10

It was raining when I crawled out of the v-berth this morning but it stopped soon thereafter. The sky was still overcast and it was noticeably cooler outside. The long line of power boats that were along the dock behind us departed.  The sun actually appeared at 9 AM!

We are trying to pace our trip south because our slip rental in Charleston starts on December 1 (and we had to be out of our marina in Baltimore because of the reconstruction) but we are trying to stay ahead of the cold weather too.  However, the cold weather will temporarily catching up with us tonight when the nighttime temperature drops to freezing.

The afternoon was sunny and warm but the breeze was cool. It stayed nice and warm inside our cockpit enclosure.

I was very pleased with Penn State’s 22-10 win over Wisconsin this afternoon—I watched the game on our onboard TV.  Several sailboats came into the marina sometime this afternoon while I was watching the game.

After the football game Maggie and I tightened three hose clamps (it took an hour because of the limited access!) from the port deck drain after we found a fresh water leak that moistened our stack of brown coffee filters that were stored in a cabinet in the head. I hope we solved the leak! We separated the stack of coffee filters so that they could dry in the afternoon sun.

This photo was taken looking upward at the underside
of the deck drain with its white nylon elbow and
three stainless steel hose clamps. Tightening
these hose clamps was like working blind.

We went out for dinner at the Tavern at Jack’s Neck and had a nice meal.  The restaurant had a lot of character and the food was delicious. (Belhaven used to be called Jack’s Neck.)  

Sunday, November 11

The outside temperature got down to 41 degrees last night, not quite as cold as predicted.  However, our onboard heater kept us nice and warm--the thermostat was set at 73 degrees.  Even though chilly in the morning, the sky was mostly clear and the sun was shining brightly.

It was a relaxing day today.  We watched some NFL football games, went out for lunch, and took it easy.

This was our last day in Belhaven and our last night in Belhaven Marina.  From here we go to an overnight anchorage in Adams Creek and then onto Beaufort NC.  Stay tuned...

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