River Dunes

Thursday was spent in the River Dunes Marina, a nice, modern, marina where the Neuse River meets Pamlico Bay and a few miles up from Oriental, NC (of which more later today...we are going to borrow a courtesy car later this morning and drive down to tour around)

The Marina complex include a main house, several cottages scattered around, some large vacation homes and a condominium in addition to the marina.

The Marina, with the Main House in hte background

Clubhouse, with marina boats in the foreground

Looking down the docks from near the clubhouse

Priority in her slip

 The plan was to create a vacation community for boaters but I"m told that progress to that end is slow...real estate has been hurt here like everywhere else.
But the quality is high, amenities are good and the staff is very helpful.
One of the amenities that is featured is the steam shower with multiple spray heads  and steam at the push of a button..although I do like the shower on the boat, I have to admit this is nicer.

Fancy Shower, a feature of the marina

The day was spent on small tasks..The only challenging one involved crawling into the chain locker. I had placed a 4"PVC pipe in the chain locker to carry the anchor chain from the hole into which the windlass feeds it to the back of the chain locker where there is more room for it to pile up (Otherwise the pile of chain grows up to the hole and blocks input of further chain).

Looking up at the PVC carrying the chain from the windlass to the back of the anchor locker. It now has a reasonable slope down to the back

Looking at the PVC pipe from the front...The chain has plenty of room to fall

Radeen and Hayden invited us all to a Beef Stew dinner on board their boat...it was wonderful

Friday morning we borrowed the courtesy car and drove about 15 minutes to Oriental. This is a town I've heard much about as a sailing center of the middle atlantic coast and I"d been looking forward to visiting.... I was much disappointed. The "town" is about two blocks long, with a small harbor at its center, a few small shops, a few restaurants (one of which gave us a nice breakfast...but I still don't understand grits) and a few smallish marinas.

The harbor in Oriental, NC

We did feel obligated to visit the local marine supply store and then the West Marine "Express" but didn't spend much...

Then back to River Dunes where we attended to small tasks..Hayden varnished the teak on the front half of his boat, Bob worked on his intermittently failing wind instrument..I went and sat in the hot tub...its a task!

We had dinner in the Marina Restaurant..quite nice

Tomorrow we are off to Beaufort, NC