On Wednesday we stopped in one of our favorite places so far: Southport, North Carolina. As soon as we had the boat tied up, we walked over to The Provision Company for lunch. There is nothing better than eating freshly caught and prepared seafood while sitting at a table overlooking the ICW.

Thursday we departed early and made our way to a place we haven’t stayed at before. This is Surf City, North Carolina on Topsail Island. The marina is on the ICW side of the island, but the island is only about 300 yards across at this point, so we were able to walk on the beach for a while. We also found a taco shop, and ended up eating tacos twice in one day!

During our stay we were treated to flyovers from several V-22 Osprey Tiltrotor aircraft. This is a cool plane that I always enjoy seeing. We really enjoyed our stop.

Next up was Beaufort, NC. We have stayed here twice before, so everything was old hat. We walked the waterfront as well as several of the adjoining streets.

I had been watching the weather for several days in anticipation of the next two destinations. These ware going to be long days over a weekend and I was really hoping for decent weather. Saturday was looking pretty good, so we decided to make the long trip from Beaufort to Belhaven in one day. This trip took us over the Neuse River, the Pamlico Sound, and the Pungo River. We have had challenging days on these rivers in the past, so I was pleased when the “light chop” forecast turned out to be relatively accurate. We arrived in Belhaven right before the rain started. It then rained nonstop until about 8pm.

The best thing about Saturday was that we were able to eat dinner at Spoon River Artworks for the second time. We had stopped here back in the fall after Hurricane Florence last year, and we found out then that the restaurant had taken significant damage and was not going to open back up for a while. As it turned out, we noticed that it was opening back up the day we were planning to be in Belhaven on this trip, so we were able to make a reservation. It turned out to be really cool to be able to be one of the first guests as the restaurant opened back up. The food was phenomenal.

Sunday was another day that we really needed to be good. On this day we were going to try to make it from Belhaven all the way to Elizabeth City. This is an 80 mile trip, and included the Alligator River, the Albemarle Sound, and the Pasquotank River. These bodies of water are also notorious for becoming difficult. So we got up extra early and put the pedal to the metal to try to get ahead of the storms that were forecast for later in the evening. Once again we were successful, and we enjoyed the free docks at Elizabeth City.