With Bock Marine not being able to take SAILS until Tuesday December 8th, we are staying at New Bern Grand Marina for a few days. Totally unplanned visit but it could not of worked out better... today New Bern had it's Christmas Air Show and Boat Parade and we had a front row seat.

Up before sunrise and underway from Dowry Creek Marina at 0700... forecast for flat seas with winds less than 5 kts.

What seems like the first time this trip the forecast was accurate... it was like glass all morning... only increasing to waves less than a foot in the afternoon as we cruised on the Neuse River. We only had a few sailboats moving with us today... plans to go to Oriental and spend the night and then run down to Bock Marine in the morning.

But when you make plans something always changes... Bock Marine called us and said they would not have room for us until Tuesday afternoon... ok.. it's Friday now... have 4 days to kill when we are only a few hours from Bock.... on to plan B... which we didn't have yet...

After a few minutes discussion we decided on plan B... continue up the Neuse River to New Bern, NC... it's a great small town to spend a few days. Susan was now busily researching what fun activities we can participate in while there...

Called New Bern Grand Marina and made a reservation and told them we would be there between 1600 and 1700... probably closer to 1700... They told us we needed to get there by 1600 or we would be waiting outside the Marina till 1830 for the Bridge... The marina told us that the Alfred A Cunningham Bridge had changed it's opening schedule to have restricted opening from 1600 to 1830... NO OPENINGS... that meant we were going to have to pick up the speed to make in time.

Normally we don't run that hard for any length of time... to make the opening would have to make 7.5 knots for 3.5 hours... we had a bit of current against us so had to bring the engines up to about 85% capacity running at 2800 rpm... pushing us between 7.4 and 7.6 knots.

About 2 hours later I noticed the port engine temperature rising a bit and went to check it... sure enough another hose had water squirting from it... I shut the engine down and let it cool and topped the water off... that would get us to New Bern without issue. Once at the marina I can replace the hose... nothing special about it... looks like a 5/8" hose and I should have some of it in the extra hose storage.

We made it to the Bridge on time arriving at 1558... requested an opening and we arrived to New Bern Grand Marina at approximately 1605 and were securely docked at 1615... Our position tonight is N35°06.143', W077°02.321'. We traveled today for 9 hours and 15 minutes covering 64.25 nautical miles averaging 6.9 knots.

Staying another day at Dowry Creek Marina... will use their courtesy car to go to the grocery. Thought I would sleep in but that was not happening woke up at 0530 same as most days... but I did get to see a beautiful pre-sunrise skyline this morning.