Well, so much for the forecasted great weather, although conditions looked fine through Friday. With Sandy, Tropical Storm or Hurricane, likely to skim by North Carolina’s OBX we couldn’t imagine not getting approval to move further south and more inland. Fortunately, reasonable folk work at Travelers and we quickly got a thumbs up- with one caveat: double the deductible should we have any wind related damage before Nov 1. Well gee, couldn’t most damage be “wind related”?
Toss around a few ideas and how the heck do you plan when the forecast changes every time you look? We have several weather apps on our iPhones; Wunderground, Weather Channel, Wind Alert and Passage Weather. NOAA Marine Weather is bookmarked for easy access. Russ studied them all and we felt that the further inland (west ) we could get, the better. The more obscure and relatively shallow the better; protection from the N and NE a must (NW would be a bonus). Our go-to app every day is ActiveCaptain and in situations like this, it was invaluable. We were able to find a spot about 12 miles off the ICW in New Bern, NC; a small creek we could duck into, 5-6ft deep with a tree-lined north facing bank that continued around to the west. The creek had one review, but that was all we needed; that and a look-see on Google Earth sealed the decision.

Approaching Duck Creek from the Neuse River at New Bern

As we motored up the Neuse River I spent a few minutes relaxing on the tramps. Temp was 84 and a beautiful, low wind sunny day; the last perhaps for over a week. I noticed little white things in the river and at first I thought they might be feathers, but a closer look showed they were little dead fish. Tons of them. I didn’t get a good shot of them on the river, but they were in Duck Creek too- much easier to photograph when we are not moving.

Why so many little dead fishies?

This small spot just off the privately marked channel, with a tad under 5ft of water doesn’t look like much and I wasn’t so sure at first if the protection hoped for would be found here in Duck Creek. Time would tell.

Duck, Duck, Sandy!