Tuesday, October 16 – Now I have to tell you a little bit about the Alligator River Marina.   The name evoked images for me of a beautiful, secluded spot where you could spend the afternoon watching and listening to the sights and sounds of the wilderness – and they have a full-page ad in the Waterway Guide depicting spectacular sunsets, and views of the Alligator River.   Well, basically, it’s a Shell Gas Station at the foot of the Alligator River Swing Bridge!  But don’t get the completely wrong impression.  The entrance is easy, the docks and slips look relatively new and well cared for, and we tie up along the face dock next to the land.  Bob goes and checks in, learns that “Miss Wanda” cooks supper if you go to the restaurant before 6:30 p.m., and breakfast is served starting at 5:00 a.m.  Now I’m not quite sure I would exactly call it a “restaurant”.  It’s more like a run-down 7-11 look alike with a couple of old formica booths, but the dock master is very nice and helpful, and we have a nice evening there.  I opted to prepare dinner on the boat – one of my experimental skillet meals that actually didn’t turn out too bad, and we had leftovers.  We awake to what seems like will become a nice day, and decide to be daring and have breakfast by Wanda.  Well, Wanda isn’t cooking this morning, but the cashier lady is, so we order the standard greasy spoon breakfast of bacon and eggs, and it’s not too bad.  I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t order Eggs Benedict, but, hey, I guess you can’t expect a gourmet breakfast at a Shell gas station (I don’t understand these things….)  So we are off at around 8:45 a.m. and the first thing we have to do is navigate the swing bridge.  I call the bridge tender on channel 13, and he tells me to “Come on up, and stand back!”  So we do, and wait, and wait, and wait for him to open the bridge.  Couldn’t quite figure out what was the hold up, as there seemed to be hardly any traffic.  So standing back turned into keeping the boat steady and not rocking around.  Finally, he opens up, and we go through without any problems and are now on our way to Belhaven via the Alligator River-  Pungo River Canal.  It is windy, and the Alligator River is really choppy.  The body of water is relatively wide, but you do have to be careful about straying out of the channel although there is enough water on either side for our boat, but all the notes in the guidebooks say that there are pilings and “snags” outside the channel.  I guess a “snag” is like a troll who lives on the bottom just waiting to grab your boat and drag it down to the sea floor.   As the Alligator River runs into the Pungo Canal, the scenery again is eerily desolate, and beautiful.  Golden marshes mixed in with sparse trees, and dead and dying gray tree trunks, stumps, and driftwood line the landscape and shoreline.  Crab pots (or some kind of pot) are numerous outside the channel and make colorful polka dots in the water.  The weather is windy with choppy waves, and I am glad to get in the canal if only to get into calmer water.   The canal itself is just what you would picture – narrow, deep only in the small channel (don’t dare stray unless you want to be “snagged”!), and all along the shoreline tree stumps poke out of the water like a regiment of gargoyles.   The canal is long – approximately 20 miles), and I understand that you should see deer and maybe even a bear!  I am excited and keep my eyes glued to the binoculars until I have indentations around my eyes and finally decide that I am not connecting to any wildlife – marine or otherwise.   The only strange object we saw was a large, floating log, that we were warned via the radio to look out for.  The canal opens into the Pungo River, and close by is the Dowry Creek Marina where we have a reservation for the night.  

            Now this is truly a wonderful little spot!  I think it is my favorite place so far.  It’s run by Mary, who is the owner/operator, and she lives here on the third floor of the marina building.  The entrance is easy, and folks are there to help with the lines.  Bob does a great job of backing in, and pretty soon we are tucked in for the night.  We go up to check in.  The buildings and docks, if not new, look new, and are beautifully maintained - gray siding with white trim and porches.  Nice landscaping, a pool, nice private shower rooms, a laundry, and a really nice separate building by the pool where Mary hosts a cocktail party at 5:30 p.m. every night!!!  How could we get any luckier?!  You have to bring your own bottle, but that’s fine, and an h’ors d’oeuvre would be welcome.  We take showers, grab some cheese and crackers and a bottle of white wine, and at 5:30 we head off to the cocktail party!  There are approximately six or seven boats, all headed south, of course, and we exchange boat cards, and have a great time.  It’s amazing that almost all of these people know someone we know, or keep their boat in a marina that we know, or we realize we have something in common with them whether it’s boat related or something else.  The party winds down about 7:30 p.m., we return to our boat, eat experimental skillet leftovers, watch TV (the debate, of course – and, I hate to say this, but I fell asleep).  We go to bed, and I drift off to peaceful slumber thinking maybe this is all coming together, and we’re going to have a great time.

            Wednesday, October 17 – I wake up at 6:00 a.m., but decide it’s really too early to get up.  However, I hear other boats leaving, and I can’t really go back to sleep, so we get up around 7:00 a.m.  We have a light (healthy) breakfast this morning, as opposed to the 7-11 special, and start to get ready to be on our way.  It is a picture perfect morning, mostly sunny, a few clouds, not too warm, but not too chilly; the water is really beautiful – it is so calm, not a ripple - it looks like a reflecting pool – truly a perfect day to motor to our next destination – Oriental, NC.  We are starting to really get into a routine of what we need to do to get ready, and before long, Bob is ready to start the engine.  And that’s when, as the expression goes, “the poop hits the fan.”  The starboard engine fires up to life just perfectly, but the port engine – NOTHIN’!  WrRrrrrrr.  Nothin!  I’m too polite to write what I am thinking.  Bob starts checking various things.  He says the batteries are low, but for the life of me that makes no sense – they are brand new – they’ve been checked by our mechanic at home – plus the starboard engine started fine.  Bob fiddles with the inverter (don’t ask me to explain what the inverter does),  he finally goes down in the engine room – I hear troublesome mutterings from down below.  He fiddles with other stuff, he walks back and forth, he goes up and down in the engine room (did I mention, as wonderful as he is, he is not a mechanic).  I hand him flashlights, paper towels, other stuff.  Finally, he decides to call our mechanic back home.  Did I mention that I HATE BOATS?  Now we are out in the middle of nowhere, we have intermittent cell phone service at best, and everytime Bob calls the guy the phone cuts out after three seconds (plus we have old phones and the batteries do not hold a charge for long anymore, especially, here out in the boonies).  So, eventually, Bob decides to take a picture of something the mechanic is telling him to find and do something with, but Bob can’t exactly find it, so a picture could be worth a thousand words in this case.  So we do that.  Then after innumerable calls back and forth and innumerable dropped calls, and references to other mechanics who do not answer the phone, Bob decides to go to the office and see if there is a local mechanic who could help us.  In the meantime, the Annapolis mechanic calls back and asks Bob to check the fuses – if the fuses are good – then smack the solenoid.  Smack the solenoid??  I’d like to smack the solenoid.  I’d smack it so hard I would smack it into smithereens.  The “darn” thing would never turn off once I got through with it.  I know, I know – not a good attitude.  So I decide to cheer up and do laundry while we wait for the local mechanic to show up.  At least I won’t be completely worthless and the day won’t be a total waste.  Using a Laundromat for the first time in about 40 years is an experience, but, ok, it’s not rocket science, and I have the machines all to myself.  Who care if the colors all run together.  At least the engine, will, hopefully, be fixed in due time, and nothing else will go wrong today – right?  WRONG!  As we are eating lunch, we start to hear this gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, coming from the kitchen (ok, ok – galley – sink), and Bob gets this funny look on his face.  Back down in the engine room – more inexplicable mutterings, more flashlight handings…and…it appears that we have a rather large leak in a water line fitting coming from the water pressure pump.  So, on this boat when you don’t have water (as we had to turn it off) you don’t have the use of anything that uses water (use your imagination).  I am glad we are in a marina, because if we were in an anchorage, I would be really CRANKY.  Maybe the boat is getting all of it’s boat kinks out before we go too much farther, and it was just waiting until we couldn’t really turn around and go home – so now everything from here on out will be smooth sailing – right?  Well, the mechanic came – he fixed the engine which was a simple starter switch that he had with him, and, hopefully, right now he is fixing the leak which is a little worse than we had first thought. 

            Oh well, I am going to assume that all’s well that ends well.  Mary is hosting a pot luck supper tonight, and I am going to take some barbeque on crackers.  I didn’t really stock up on much appetizer type food, but I guess I will have to prepare better the next time I am at a grocery store (whenever that will be).  I was complaining that I would have really been unhappy if we had found ourselves at an anchorage when all this happened, but Bob reminded me that we could still go somewhere with one engine operating.  Thank Heaven for small blessings!  Stay tuned – I’m sure this will get even more interesting…oh – one more funny story – as the mechanic was in the midst of his repairs, he had to go into the forward head (which is where the cat box is) as there was some electrical panel in there that was important to his ministrations, and he happened to remark that something smelled wonderful – was I cooking something with apples or cinnamon?  “No,” said I, “that’s the deodorizer we use to keep the cat area smelling fresh and clean.”  I guess it must be working!