Morehead City, Beaufort and cool and cozy Oriental

North Carolina has been great! We really have been enjoying the people, places, playgrounds fishing and boating here.
After leaving Little River we journeyed to Southport and then onto Wrightsville Beach. The kids enjoyed the beach at Wrightsville and were captivated with the local surfing scene. We stopped for fuel at the Dockside restaurant and they gave Laurel and Dakota a ride to the supermarket, talk about friendly!

From Wrightsville Beach, we slowly made our way to Morehead City where the kids found an excellent playground, we also found a great library and a lot of sights, we tied up at the Sanitary restaurant for ten dollars a night which was a godsend because our windlass broke down and hauling our 45 lb anchor and all chain rode by hand is a backbreaker.

The really cool part of Morehead City though is the sportfishing scene, we happened to be there during a tournament and got to see, huge fish. The excitement in the air is palpable.

Here is a Marling being offloaded a sportfishing boat, this one weighed in at 441 pounds. The minimum size is 400 for a keeper. The tournament winner was 645.5 pounds. There were also Mahi and Wahoo.

Laurel was captivated by this Marlin eye, so were all the kids as they all passed by and poked it at least once.

The sportfishing industry is strong enough that local fish cleaners will clean your fish for 35 cents a pound, not bad when just one boat can bring in over 600 lbs of fish. These guys were amazing to watch they could clean a dolphin in less than a minute.

The kids captured this green fellow, he got poked and prodded a bit but the kids did let him go.

This is a small black bass that the kids caught, inspired by the tournament they spent an afternoon catching small fish in front of the Sanitary Restaurant, they tossed them all back and had blast doing it.

Oriental! What a great place with great and really friendly folks. The locals treated us just great. This is Melinda teaching the kids the finer points of using a casting net. She runs a local website called http://www.towndock.net/ and the kids made the website's front page. Thanks Melinda for lending us your net! They also made the local newspaper with photos of them fishing at the town dock.

The kids spent hours and hours catching fish with the casting net they threw most back but kept some for bait. They also caught some large crabs which we cooked.

This is a small flounder, Dakota caught.

This is Gill, he showed us his workshop his furniture and artwork, his wife Laura who is also an artist showed us her drawings. Everybody has been very welcoming in this very relaxed sailing town and we are greatful to them for the big welcome. Thanks!!

We are currently at the Oriental town dock in company of Joe and Sigi on Sigi 7 and the Mitchell and Jodi on Scarlett. Jodi and Mitchell trailered Scarlett from Ohio and are cruising here for a couple of weeks. Has been fun to hang out with them.

We also took advantage to do woodwork on the boat and fix the windlass with parts that came from Scotland. Also a big thank you to Bob Gerwig for the advice on the water pump. We replaced it, no more leak. Thanks Bob. Tommorow if all goes well we will head to Ocracoke to explore the outer banks. Hope all is well with you!

Best, C.