Saturday, July 17, 1993

Today, we tried out the Intracoastal Waterway for the first time. All the way from Key West to Morehead City, we went "outside" in the ocean, and we were going to continue that way, but we were advised not to try going around Cape Hatteras, the ships' graveyard of the East Coast, so we bought some more charts and headed up the ICW.
The Intracoastal Waterway is more than 1200 miles long. It provides a safe, inland waterway from Norfolk, Virginia, to Key West, Florida. In some places it's less than a quarter mile wide, and in other places it's many miles wide. The depth is usually 10 or 12 feet, but a lot of silting takes place, so sometimes the depth is 6 feet or less, which is rather nerve-wracking when you draw 5 1/2 feet.
The ICW is a pleasant change of pace for us. On the ocean, we saw nothing but water and sky, but here the banks are thick with lovely green trees, and occasionally there are houses or marinas. And there's a constant stream of boats, coming and going. Now we know why we never saw any other boats on the ocean; they're all on the ICW.
The "La Bullit" with the kids on it left Morehead City an hour before we did, but by the time we got to Oriental, we were ahead of them. They hailed us on the VHF, and we were surprised to see they were directly in back of us.
We dropped anchor in 6 1/2 feet of water, half a mile from shore. Then we hopped in our Royaks and went exploring. My strength (what little there is of it) has fully returned. I feel great and can paddle for hours without getting tired.
We went up Whittaker Creek and all its little side channels. We were amazed how many boats were tied up there--hundreds of them. It's a very pretty area. The woods are dense and green, with many expensive homes hidden among the trees. And, of course, they all had private docks along the creek.
We went ashore on a tiny little beachlet and strolled around town. This is a lovely, peaceful, quiet, old-fashioned village. Some of the prices are remarkably low. We bought a thick, hard-covered anthology of Jack London for a mere $11! It would have cost at least $35 anyplace else. We went to a cute little ice cream parlor. Roy had a delicious sundae for $1.35, and I had a banana split for $1.45! I haven't seen prices like that for twenty years. Most places, a banana split is more than $5, and a sundae is $3 or $4.
We saw the free municipal dock and were very glad we hadn't tried to tie up there. The entire dock is about 30 feet long. Our boat is 39 feet long.
Ran into a couple we had seen in Morehead City--Dale and Herb from the "Solaris". They greeted us like long-lost friends and talked for nearly an hour.
We went part way up the bridge to see the harbor and adjacent waters. Then we went down a side street and were delighted to find a group of old-timers putting on a free musical presentation. They played and sang good old down-home country music. They were really good. We listened for a while, but it was getting late, so we had to leave.
We had planned on asking the "La Bullit" kids over to watch Roy's new tape of scuba diving around Key West, but by the time we got back to the boat, they had left. We watched the tape anyway. There were a lot of really great underwater shots. I had never realized how thick the fish are down there.