April 17th - Moorehead City

It was was still a roaring south wind, but it has switched to include more westerly since that's the direction we'll be going soon.

So we head on down the canal. We get a little way when some guy heading north calls us up and tells us its way too rough and we should turn back. Turn back??? This is inland waters, us turn back? You kidding?

Well it was rough, quite rough, stupid rough with steep waves, when the canal opened out to the Newport River we had no protection from the south-west wind whatsoever and it was howling. But we plugged on and finally got into the protection of the State Dock at Moorehead City. We had a cup of tea, a sandwich and watched the dolphins play. It was lunchtime so we really ought to keep going. Well we left the shelter of the dock to face the full force of the wind. There were people walking along the dock faster than we were going. We were full into the wind now and had a hard job making way and this is not a small engine we're using here. After 40 minutes and having gone 300 yards, we gave up and we head back to the shelter of the dock. Time to find a marina. Most of the marinas in Moorehead City face south, these we would have to travel to over the ground we just gave up on, but there was one on the north side and they had an empty berth. Score! It wasn't far away, we back tracked a little. And turned into a cut with the marina at the end. It was clean, comfortable and complete. Even had a lounge for sailors. Very nice indeed. We found a good restaurant, had a few beers, chatted with a delivery captain, all while the wind blew like hell.

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