Day 7. Mike and I leave Portside marina early. We are headed to Oriental City. Will meet up with Steve and Linda (Yesterdays Dream) and stay the night there.

Mostly a lot of this is what was happening on trip. Unless something broke we traveled from the crack of dawn until the last possible minutes to be anchored or tied up someplace. I will be the first to admit. I do not care for traveling this way but Mike was helping me with navigation and he had limited time to help. He was only a couple days from heading home at this point.

In the future I am going to just travel from One place to the next. It will be a much more relaxed pace and there will be much more to see and do. For me, owning the boat and living on it is about seeing and doing new things not "just" going. I realise I am going to need more creature comforts on Mary Lee but really, I think of it more as my mode of transportation and place to stay while I am out doing things.

So we made it to Oriental, NC. It is on the Neuse river. I am surprised I didn't take more pictures than I did. I am going to have to be more thoughtful about doing that. We pull up to the only marina we saw. Tied up and went to find the harbor master. Couldn't find him but one of the patrons there who knew him well said he would call him for us. We took care of things and got our showers, then followed up with an all you can eat prime rib dinner. Very good. I slept very well that night. My back is feeling much better.

The picture is the dingy tied up at the public dock and Mary Lee is back beyond it. You can't see the bridge from here. it is to the right. We talked to Steve and Linda (who were staying at their daughter and son-in-laws home) and decided on a plan to see them. through a mis-understanding on our part we headed under the bridge to go to the public dock to meet them for breakfast. Not realising that we were looking at it right in front of us. We saw smaller sailboats on the other side of the bridge but you couldn't see much.

This is the fun part.I had measured my masts last year while still taking fairly strong pain pills. I remembered 40 feet. Well the mizzen mast is 40 feet above water. the bridge was 43. we crawled up to it and at the last second realised the bridge was just a little short. After a pretty loud clang, I lost the wind speed indicator off the top of the main mast. That was heart stopping but still had to back out of it. We were pretty sure we woke up the rest of the community. We went back and anchored before going below and laughing until tears ran down our faces.

Mast looked ok. I really don't need the wind speed indicater. Lesson learned. Do not trust any of last years measurements. We inflated the dingy and went looking for where we were supposed to meet Steve and Linda. We rowed to the dock and went walking. we didn't get far when a car pulled up and Linda asked if we needed a ride. It was good to see them. Steve and Linda are the salt of the earth. I always enjoy their company. We had a good breakfast and then they took us to a small market nearby to get a few things. It would have been nice to have stayed longer but we were running out of time before Mike had to get home.

So we made a little distance. about half a days journey until we made it to green 57. I would have to look but I think we were at stump creek. It felt like we hit something. We were in the middle of the channel. I mean we really felt like we ran aground. After a fight with the wheel we were still moving but the vibrating was insane. It felt like we had a major problem. Not good. We drifted with the current to far and hit bottom on the other side. It took a little doing but we got up main sail to pull us out into the channel again and we dropped anchor. It actually felt like something wrapped around prop.

Guess who is going to go look? The water looked nasty and cold. Well, no time like the present. I got ready and in I went. It was cold. I adjusted to it the best I could and went under. It took 4 tries to find what was happening. One of the blades is gone on a 2 blade prop. Looks like we are getting a tow again.

We got on the radio and called out Boat US. They answered right up. We told them where we were and this time we were further away but only about 45 minutes. I doubt if I would ever boat without their tow insurance. How can you beat an investment like that for a little over $100??? I had already talked to Steve and Linda earlier and Linda had found a marina where Mike would be getting off boat and heading home. I think she had also found us the nearest hardware store before the last tow. What good friends. Well in retrospect I probably should have just been towed there but we just went to the nearest marina. Harbor marina in Hampstead, NC. It has been a trying day to say the least. Well the last 3 days have been along with 2 tows in 3 days how can you beat that?

So we got Mary Lee tied up. Showered and ordered a pizza.