Dumb and Dumber Strike Again.

I feel like we've been out in the middle of nowhere forever.

We left Roanoke Island (at the Inner Banks) yesterday and headed south west in the Pamlico Sound in our attempt to get back to the Intracoastal. The Pamlico really is a huge body of water and we only saw maybe three boats all day long.

About half way through the day we were thrilled to spot our first dolphins. One actually jumped completely out of the water which is something we've never seen. After that we had two of them follow very closely on our port stern and they would emerge from the water perfectly synchronized, go under, come up again... all the while with big smiles of welcome on their faces. This went on for a while and then they disappeared.

Once again we were able to sail all day with north east winds at 15-20 while using the jib, and then finally at around 6 PM we anchored in a very marshy Juniper Bay.

We've been wondering why no one else has chosen this passage on their jouney south and I think it's because if the winds aren't perfect it would be a pretty crappy crossing.

We need to keep this in mind if we ever do this again.

This brings us to a Dumb and Dumber update.

This trip will not take two weeks like we'd originally thought.

No, it will take at least three! How on earth could we be so far off?

Mostly because when you're in the Intracoastal you're at the mercy of bridges that are only open until 7 PM, and some of them only open on the hour. On our first day in the waterway we arrived at a bridge seven minutes after it closed and of course it was an hourly one. I ended up making us lunch while we waited for the next opening. It's also pretty winding and you can only motor so fast. The winding then adds miles to the overall distance and then the next thing you know you've added another week to your trip!

I wasn't a happy camper at that WTF discovery mostly because this means Wilbur will be in Doggy Day Care for another week. I've been calling and checking on him and of course he's having fun playing with his friends all day long but it still bothers me. I also found out they had a Halloween Party for the dogs last week and Wilbur didn't have a costume. It reminded me of the poor kids who used to have to sit in the school office during their class party because their crazy religious parents thought Halloween was evil. I only hope he won't be scarred by this lack of planning on our part and end up in therapy. He's very sensitive.

Our anchor held very nicely during the night and with steady winds we didn't swing around at all. I was worried that it would get hung up on a stump or tree branch but even though it was covered in a lot of heavy gunk the anchor came up smoothly.

We hope to exit the Pamlico later this afternoon as we head into the Neuse River. We will then be at Merrimon which is at the mouth of the next run of the Intracoastal. I only hope if we end up at a marina with 'free' WiFi, that it actually works!