"You've come a long way...are you going to Walmart?"

These were the words that greeted us as we were entering the channel leading to Spooner Creek and our current anchorage. More on that later. We left Oriental early this morning (8am) and the very first thing that happened is that Claude's GPS went on the fritz. That meant that Wayne and I had to navigate the whole day the "old fashioned way" with charts, compass, and a sharp eye for navigational aids. The day was not too difficult - we even saw porpoises in the canal around mile 185, but the difficulty level increased sharply near Beaufort. We elected to give Beaufort a miss, take the Morehead City Channel, and go farther. Unfortunately, the first thing we saw coming out of the canal was a huge dredger, not the green daymarker we were hoping to see. Leap of faith and we followed everyone else around to the dredger's starboard side and we were able to get back on track. There are any number of channels marked with a significant number of cans, nuns, and dayboards. We wove our way through, with Claude flying blind - no GPS, no chart, only us to rely on and follow. The great turning basin in Morehead City was absolutely packed with fishing boats, increasing the challenge of staying on course. We persisted, avoided all crashes and most wakes, and ended up on the other side in the Bogue Sound. I don't really like the name of that but oh well. At that point we were only about 2 or 3 miles away from the chosen anchorage. We radioed to Claude, "follow us slowly and hope for the best". He said ROGER THAT! As we made our turn into the anchorage entrance channel (known to be subject to shoaling and therefore perilous), some guys on a fishing boat yelled out the quote of the day in a friendly manner. Wayne, being a friendly guy, started a conversation. Me, being less friendly, reminded him this was time to "stay on task..." We made it into the channel, took a sharp turn to port in a very narrow space, and this beautiful little gem of a harbor appeared before us. We are anchored in 6 to 7 feet along with a number of trawlers and 1 other sailboat. It's true, we selected this anchorage based upon a number of criteria, not the least being a WalMart just 2 blocks away from the dinghy dock. We have just returned from there, laden with vitamins, gloves, warm socks, etc. I would love to post a picture, but I am pirating the wireless from the Spooner Creek marina and it is none too strong or reliable so - we'll try to take one and post it up on a future blog entry. We plan to brave the Camp LeJeune firing range tomorrow (Skipper Bob says they station a boat on the ICW right before you get there if they intend to fire rounds across the waterway that day) and hope to end up at Mile Hammock Bay. One thing we are going to do: verify the GPS tonight and keep on using the charts and compass. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but you better not forget the old ones just in case.