We pulled anchor as the sun was rising behind and were underway at 0715. Forecast was for the weather to deteriorate late after noon with high winds... 30 to 40 knots... our plan was to cross the Albemarle Sound and stop at Coinjock Marina.

Crossing the Albemarle was uneventful with less than 1 foot seas to begin with... as we reached the far side the winds forecast for late afternoon started to pickup... seas increased to 2 foot. All-in all a good crossing... Herman and Lily enjoyed the crossing... :)

Winds were forecast to last into Friday... so we changed our plan and passed by Coinjock and continued to Great Bridge.

After Coinjock we had to transit Currituck Sound... winds were howling at point... steady 25 knots with gusts to near 40 knots... was a bit choppy but waves were on the port quarter most of the way and we did not really affect us much... a little spray was all.

We made the North Landing Bridge for it's 1500 opening... rather than push hard to make the Centerville Bridge at it's 1530 opening we took our time and arrived for it's 1600 opening... wind now steady at 30 knots and seeing over 40 knot gusts... wind was not creating any waves but was tough navigating at 3 knots with the gusts of wind.

We arrived to Great Bridge at 1620 and luckily there was space on the free dock across from Atlantic Yacht basin for us to dock. We were securely docked at 1630 at N36°43.244’, W076°14.287’. We traveled today for 9 hours and 15 minutes covering 61.7 nautical miles averaging 6.7 knots.

We pulled anchor this morning at 0645 and were underway at 0175... very muddy anchorage took 30 minutes to get the chain up and cleaned... :(

Started out a beautiful morning bright sunny with a light breeze until just before Belhaven when a small line of rain passed over us... wind steady at 30 knots with 40 knot gusts... came on fast and hard and went away just as fast... 30 minutes and it was over us and gone. However, the wind stayed... not as bad but 20-25 knots all day afterwards.

We had planned to anchor just at the end of the A & P Canal but with the wind direction the anchorage would of been wide open to the winds... so we opted to continue to past the Alligator River Bridge and anchor in the mouth of the Little Alligator River... good protection for the winds for the night.

We arrived to our destination for the evening at approximately 1730 and dropped anchor on the south side of the river in lee of the shore... Anchor secure at 1745 at N35°55.748’, W076°00.925’. We traveled today for 10 hours and 30 minutes covering 67.4 nautical miles averaging 6.4 knots.

We departed from Swansboro this morning at 0715 along with two other boats... a 56ft Krogren "Privateer" and a 42ft Krogen that was docked at the Swansboro Town Docks. Both boats leaving just ahead of us... which was good as they both would be running faster than us.

Beautiful day... bright and sunny with a light cool breeze... virtually no waves... :)

One strange thing happened today while in Bogue Sound... the boat "Privateer" hailed us and said they had slowed down due to an enormous amount of stingrays in the water and that they were actually hitting their boat bottom... I thought this was strange but acknowledged and sure enough when we reached the area they had reported... there were hundreds of stingrays... and they were hitting the bottom of the boat and the props... of course this was killing them creating a lot of blood in the water behind us... never saw anything like this before... have seen the rays in large numbers when they are mating but never had them not avoid the boat and especially our props... felt so bad we were killing a lot of them but there was nothing we could do to avoid it.

We planned to stop in Oriental today at the free docks but we arrived to the area so early in the day.... 1300... and with the Neuse River being flat calm... which is rare... we opted to continue on.

We arrived to our destination for the evening at approximately 1530 and dropped anchor in Gale Creek... Anchor secure at 1545 at N35°12.579’, W076°35.483’. We traveled today for 8 hours and 30 minutes covering 58.9 nautical miles averaging 6.9 knots.