Calm, muggy day. Kept motoring north. Our speedlog, which hadn't worked for a long time, started working again.
So far this trip, we've really lucked out on the bridges. We reach them just as they're about to open.
We're really making tracks this time. Our first trip up the ICW from Morehead City to Norfolk took six days. Coming back down took four. This time it looks as if we'll do it in three days.
We reached the edge of Albemarle Sound in the late afternoon. The wind had died down quite a bit, and we were zooming, so we decided to go ahead and cross it. It's fifteen miles wide and usually takes three hours to cross, but this time we practically flew across in a little over two hours.
Reached the other side just fine, but the channel into the river was hard to see. Apparently, one of the buoys was missing. I was at the wheel on a course of twenty degrees. Roy told me to go to fifteen, so I did. In a few minutes, the depth dropped to less than six feet, so I pulled back on the throttle. Rather than argue with Roy, I gave him the wheel, so he was at the helm when we went aground. A passing sailboat offered to help, but there really wasn't anything he could do. Roy kept gunning the engine, and after ten or fifteen minutes, we floated free.
Pulled into an anchorage near the mouth of the North Landing River. Remembering our experience of last night, we closed the portholes and zipped the curtains. It's a good thing we did; we were soon invaded by tens of thousands of miserable flying bugs. We had forgotten to close the porthole in the aft head (bathroom). When I went down to the aft cabin to go to bed, I nearly fainted. The whole cabin was full of bugs! Through some miracle, they didn't get into the main cabin, so I slept in there, but Roy bravely (?) went to bed in the aft cabin. I hope he survives.
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