May 26. Beaufort, NC to Manteo, NC

We left “Beaufort Docks”, NC at 7 am.

Went north on the ICW through Adams Creek, which gets a little skinny at the entrance.

Then got out to the Neusse Niver to Bay River to Palmico River. This ends on Palmico sound (inside Cape Hatteras) which is 12 miles open and we could go at 25 knots for 4 hours.The wind was blowing from SW and we had 1 to 2 ft waves.

Then we got to a Naval Aviation Zone, danger for navigation close to “Long Shoal”. We also saw lots of stakes on the water. Reason why we had to slow down for a little while.

After the passing this restricted area we headed towards the entrance of “Roanoake Sound” one of the channels that takes us to Pirates Cove on Manteo, NC.

Very strong currents come into this area from Oregon Inlet moving the shallows around and the channel gets dredged often. Also the channel got remarked recently. We didn’t know this, and when we got there it was very confusion and couldn’t get any advise on the radio. Finally follow some local through and very slowly we got to our destination: “Pirates Cove Marina” on Roanoake Island, inside the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

We cruised 110 Nautical miles , and burned 400 gallons of fuel.

We wanted to go out to dinner to “Stripers” nice waterfront restaurant in Manteo or to “Tortugas lie” on the Nags Head beach, 7 miles from the marina, very casual and young and friendly surfer crowd but by the time that we rinsed the boat, put every thing away got pretty late. We knew this area closes early so we rushed to the marina restaurant and the food was pretty good.