Monday – Tuesday, May 27 – 28, 2019

After an uneventful trip from Beaufort, we arrived at Belhaven Marina around 3pm. Gregg, the dock master, was not at the marina because he’d flown home for his grandmother’s funeral. His business partner, Brad (and Brad’s wife), made the drive from Raliegh to help run the marina over the holiday weekend in Gregg’s place. They both work have full time jobs, plus two high school-aged kids. Gregg and Brad were childhood friends and always wanted to go into business together. Gregg recently retired from the Navy, so they decided to buy the Belhaven Marina. They have done a lot of renovations and are working hard to make a go of it. 

The marina is built around a 60-foot wide, grass covered jetty into the bay, so boats dock along each side of the jetty. Bo loved the easy grass access, plus he got to see his first snake next to our dock! It was black with a few yellow stripes and about 3-feet long. It made a quick exit to a bush as we approached. Bo had to inspect that bush whenever we passed by for the remainder of our stay.

Another Looper couple that we’d met a couple times, most recently 2-days ago, was staying a short distance away at River Forest Marina. Their marina has courtesy golf-carts for guests to use to get to town. (Our marina was located across the street from downtown – no transportation needed.) They swung by our marina in a golf-cart and picked us up for a 1 block ride to Spoon River Restaurant. Another excellent dinner at a restaurant that was highly recommended by the local folks. There was interesting décor including the light poles hanging from the ceiling that had books wrapped around them so the pages fanned out all the way around the pole. Unless you looked closely and could see the typeface on the pages, you didn’t realize they were books. After a short golf-cart ride back to our marina, we watched the sunset from our flybridge.

We spent Tuesday on various boat chores and getting a few supplies. Our friends from the other marina came over to our marina to watch the sunset and we met another Looper couple traveling on “Just Right” that had departed from Racine last September. It IS a small world (after all!).

Next stop:  Alligator River…… Scary!