Coinjock Marina was packed full last night... not any space left on the dock and they had packed us in tight to each other with 5 feet of space fore and aft between boats... made it a bit tough leaving the dock... luckily this morning the current was almost slack so we only had to deal with the tight spacing. We left Coinjock Marina at 0730 this morning and headed north... planned destination Norfolk/Hampton Roads area.

A few bridges to deal with today with restricted opening schedules... only one gave us an issue... the Centerville Turnpike Bridge... we had been hearing the USCG VHF Notice to Mariners about the bridge and maintenance but it only said starting today at 0830 they would be performing opening and closing maintenance and to contact the bridge... So I called them this morning on my cell phone and asked what the deal was... was told that bridge was in the open position and that they were performing maintenance.... Cool no problem.

After clearing the first bridge and rounding the bend just north of it I could see the Centerville Bridge... it was open... awesome ! However, as we approached the bridge I noticed it closing... but very very slowly... when we got close to the bridge you could see several men on the bridge walking in a circle... they were manually closing the bridge... NO! I hailed the bridge on the VHF and was told they would be opening it again shortly... well that was at 1135... they opened again at 1215... we waited 40 minutes... think that is longer than "shortly". In the 40 minutes we waited 7 more boats had arrived also waiting... there was a big parade of boats following through...

The wait screwed up our timing for the bridges and now we would have to wait another 45 minutes at the Great Bridge Bridge and Lock.... totally frustrated we decided to call it day... made reservation for the night using Dockwa at Atlantic Yacht Basin. Susan wanted to do some provisioning so this was the perfect area for her to be able to do that with a grocery within walking distance of the marina and I could maybe get the electrical parts I needed to correct the power issue with the navigation computer that started a couple of days ago.

We arrived to our destination for the night... Atlantic Yacht Basin at 1230 were securely docked at 1245. Our location for the night at N36°433.207’, W076°14.035’. We traveled today for 5 hours and 15 minutes covering 31.7 nautical miles averaging 6.1 knots.

We departed from Dowry Creek Marina this mooring just before sunrise at 0615... the sky was orange... very beautiful. Three other boats that arrived yesterday after we did also were preparing to leave... 65ft Flemming, 42ft Krogen and a 45ft sun deck trawler not sure what make it was... was nice having some boats also cruising north around us all day...:)

The Flemming was first to pass us just before the A&P Canal... the Sun deck Trawler passed us in the A&P Canal and the Krogen trailed about 3 miles behind us all day... several other boats also passed us that looked like delivery captains rather than the owners.

Weather was beautiful all day other than being a bit chilly... upper 30's when we left but it was bright and sunny all day... very little wind... awesome day!

We arrived to our destination for the night... Coinjock Marina at 1630 were securely docked at 1645. Our location for the night at N36°20.954’, W075°56.908’. We traveled today for 10 hours and 30 minutes covering 72.6 nautical miles averaging 6.9 knots.

Last night a cold front had come into the area and we woke to 40 degrees... a bit chilly compared to the day before... Brrrrr!

Delayed departure today due to some issues found during my engine room check... upon entering the engine room I noticed some water puddled in the bilge on the port side behind the engine... tracing back to the water source I discovered the port engine stuffing box bilge pump had stopped working and was overflowing. Our stuffing boxes are within an enclosure that keeps the slow drips of water out of the bilge. The enclosure has a bilge pump in it... when the water level in the enclosure reaches a high enough level the bilge pump activates and pumps out the water... The pump had stopped and the water level reached the point that it overflowed from the enclosure into the bilge... took an hour dry up the bilge and replace the pump (keep spares on hand).

We were underway at 0730... had planned to leave at 0600... oh well... :) Forecast for the day was 15-20 knot winds early morning... diminishing to 5 to 10 late morning... seas heavy chop. Once we got out into the Neuse River the forecast was very accurate and we had heavy chop large enough to have spray come as high as the pilothouse windows... was not an uncomfortable ride just aggravating with the spray hitting the windows.

Couple of sailboats were the only thing we say today while cruising... one had spent the night in Oriental on the town docks across from us... they were still at the dock when we left but noticed them on AIS later morning trailing about 5 miles behind us.

Had another issue just before leaving the Neuse River... suddenly the main electronics I use for navigation went blank... no power to them... had to do some shuffling to switch over to the back up chartplotter... but this put a damper on our planned destination... we were gong to anchor at the south end of the Alligator river... we had to stop early at Dowry Creek Marina so I could sort out the issue with the navigation computer. Susan called the marina and made a reservation for the night.

We arrived to Dowry Creek Marina at 1400 and were securely docked at 1415. Our location for the night at N35°31.969’, W076°32.121’. We traveled today for 6 hours and 45 minutes covering 43.5 nautical miles averaging 6.4 knots.