10/27/14
Oriental NC, ICW
Position: 35 01.785N, 76 40.890W
Posted by Bill

We traversed a little over 40 nautical miles today, a pretty normal day for our travels, ending up in Oriental NC, in Whitaker Creek. We have been hearing and reading so much about Oriental, and how many cruisers end up here when they are done living on their boats, and our expectations were high. The passage was really nice, warm, sunny, light winds. We traveled through part of the Pamlico sound and some pretty treacherous passages when the wind is crazy bad. We lucked out today.

Along the way we picked up a stowaway…a small sparrow. It landed on the boat and tried to hide from us, jumping around the boat. It looked like it was injured as it would jump from spot to spot on the boat and not be able to fly away.

We landed at Whitaker Point Marina and it is extremely nice. Part of their amenities include a free shuttle car that we used to make a run to the liquor store. We were down to our last bottle of vodka… heaven forbid!!! We stocked up and went to the grocery and marine store, making it back in time for sunset. This marina is very very nice.


Oriental was not what it was hyped to be but is a nice town.

Today’s drama was courtesy of the alternator that charges our batteries when the engine is running. It has been intermittently not charging. The intermittent nature makes it very tough to pinpoint the problem and deal with it, and today it just plain didn’t work. The batteries were really low after a night anchored out, so I set up the generator that we use to charge the batteries when anchored out, running it while we were motoring. The last 45 minutes, I disconnected the generator and the alternator did it’s job. I’ll dig in to it more tomorrow..

All of the people we meet living on their boat say the same thing…something is always breaking! The nature of boats.

Another nice sunset: