Day Three - On Towards New Bern

6/20/14.  The next morning we were awakened at the Alligator River Marina by our next door neighbor, Ryan, leaving his slip along with most of the other boats at the marina.  The marina didn't appear to have any permanent residents, apparently serving only transients.  Ryan thanked us for our help and the rosary Sharon had given him, and told us he was headed for Belhaven, NC, a small city on the Pungo River about 50 miles away.  We told him we might see him there since we knew we had another 22 mile canal to transit and assumed that it would be at "no wake" speeds like the Dismal Swamp Canal.  Figuring that the Alligator-Pungo canal would take at least 3 1/2 hours at 6 mph, and the remaining 30 miles or so to Belhaven at least another hour or more, we figured that would be a good stop for the night.

By the time we left around 8:30 am all of the other boats from the marina were gone.  We got underway and water conditions were very good, so within 1/2 hour at our 30 mph cruising speed we passed Ryan as well as all of the other boats that had been at the marina the night before.

When we reached the end of the Alligator River and entered the 22 mile Alligator-Pungo Canal, I kept looking for "no wake" signs, but did not see any.  The canal was a good deal wider than any we had been on before, so the wake we were putting out had pretty much dissipated by the time it reached the shore on either side.  Since our wake was causing no damage I decided to maintain speed until I had a reason not to.   As it turns out I only had to slow down for other boats, of which there were very few, and a couple of bridges.  Consequently we transited the canal and entered the Pungo River in less than an hour.  By the time we reached the turnoff to Belhaven we had only been on the water for about 2 1/2 hours, so we decided to skip Belhaven and continue on towards New Bern.

As we proceeded down the Pungo River the water became increasingly choppy, and consequently Jake and Kimi started to become anxious again.  The previous evening we had called our son Michael, who is a veterinarian and owns Clevenger's Corner Veterinary Care near Culpeper, VA, and gotten instructions from him for medicating the dogs for anxiety should we encounter rough conditions again like we did on the Albemarle Sound.  Since it was beginning to get rough, Sharon gave the dogs their medication and they began to calm down.  Exiting the Pungo River, we entered the Pamlico River and the water became much more choppy, so I'm glad we had a way to help the dogs cope.

We left the Pamlico River and entered a creek and then another "land cut" canal that ultimately put us into the Bay River, which is a tributary of the Nuese River.  At this point I kind of lost track of exactly where we were and was just following the purple line on my chartplotter that represented the ICW.  At the resolution of the chartplotter base map there were no names on the rivers to tell me exactly where we were,  I knew we had to depart from the ICW "purple line" part of the way up the Nuese River in order to continue up river to New Bern.  We fully expected the Nuese River to be rough and choppy since the Pamlico had been, so I figured I would know once we entered the Nuese.  Since Sharon was dealing with anxious dogs I did not ask her to get out our charts to determine our position.

We entered another creek, then entered another canal, and when we reached a "no wake" zone I decided I had better figure out exactly where we were.  I turned the helm over to Sharon and got out the paper charts.  Since we had just crossed the "Mile 190" marker on the ICW it was fairly easy to determine our position.  I found that we were at least 20 miles past the point that we should have left the "purple line" to proceed up the Neuse River!  The lower Nuese had been so calm that I did not realized we had actually already been on it for some time.  We turned around and made our way back to the Nuese, and then 18 miles up river to the turn off to Fairfield Harbor just downriver from New Bern, where my brother lives.

In the creek just before entering the Fairfield Harbor canals is a very nice marina, the Northwest Creek Marina, where we docked for the night.  We were surprised to have made the transit from the Alligator River Marina all the way to Fairfield Harbor in just one day, but conditions were favorable, and in spite of my navigation error, here we were!