Log Book: November 15th

Conditions: under 10 knots, W 

Location: Cedar Creek, NC

We left Belhaven at four in the morning. This would be our second experience sailing in the dark, the first was when we left Atlantic Highlands. This time it was much easier to wake up. Since the beginning of the trip our sleep schedules have changed dramatically. We no longer rely on clocks to tell us the time of day, the only thing we use is the sun when it rises we arise, when it sets we sleep. We are now quite use to waking up by six thirty for the sun rise and going to sleep just after sunset, five thirty. Seriously there are days that by six pm Dad and I are fast asleep in our bunks. What was once a rough 4 am wakeup call is now just rising a couple hours earlier. We sailed out of the harbor with steaming cups of coffee in hand and watched the sun rise. The water was unnaturally still and the light reflections made it hard to tell where the water ended and the sky began. We made good time with our early start and we were soon passing Eastham Creek, where we had the engine problems and making our way down the Pamlico River-N. Bay River canal. Here the canal was flanked endlessly with shrimping boats. Dad wished aloud that we had time to stop here and find out where they sold their shrimp so we could get some fresh, but we were on a schedule.

When you rise early everything other part of your day schedule is earlier too, for example we had lunch at ten o'clock. We passed Oriental, NC around noon. Oriental is where we had planned to have as our next stop, before we had engine problems. Today we planned on continuing to Beaufort, around eighteen nautical miles further south. Beaufort is a big stopping port for all ICW travelers, making space to anchor hard to come by, not to mention that the anchorage is difficult to get to and is shallow. Knowing this Dad decided it would be better if we ended our day a little earlier than we had planned, picking out Cedar Creek as our new home for the evening, just passed Oriental. We arrived by three o'clock and hardly knew what to do with ourselves. We made dinner on our propane grill that hangs off the transom, something we hadn't done in awhile because the weather had been too cold. We spent the rest of the day hanging out above deck. I sat up on the bow by myself for awhile, its hard to get any time by yourself here and the Creek was very peaceful. The forecast for the next day said that we should be expecting rain so Dad and I put up our full cockpit enclosure. We had worked on the canvas all summer, painfully sewing like mad until it was finished, which it still isn't finished but we decided that it was good enough besides we had some sewing machine complications. The enclosure is like a canvas tent that goes over the cockpit, with windows and everything. We admired our hard work for a bit then called it a night, picking out Swansboro as our next stopping point.

What we ate: turkey wraps, cheeseburgers with avocado, tomato, lettuce, onion