Elizabeth City – Jennette Brother’s Dock

Today’s journey ended our travels on the Dismal Swamp Canal for 2014.  I could have stretched it out another day or two.  This morning was cold and wet as the front pushed through.  Winds 20 knots or more from the northwest would bite into us on certain stretches of the river.  We put everything down on the enclosure.  Although that gave us a reprieve from the wind, the temperature was still uncomfortable.  We wondered if it might start to snow.  We both continued to add layers only to start over again with woolies on the bottom and reapply the layers.  I was glad to see our target dock come into view.

This is the first time we have landed at the Jennette Brother’s commercial dock north of the bridge.  They are a food service distributor for local independent restaurants.  They only have a few requirements, like signing a damage release and listing your insurance company, eating out once a day – for each day of stay - at one of the local restaurants, and being back on the boat before they close their gates for the night.  The closing varies each night, based upon their workload.  It could be 8 pm or 11 pm.  That is easy enough for us to work around.  The dock is solid and well protected from the wind.  We had over 9 feet along side.  The only drawback is that we are not with the large groups of cruisers.  Right now there is only one other boat here with us, but there is room for one more large boat or two smaller ones. 

There are SO MANY cruising boats in the area right now that the docks on the south side of the bridge are completely full and some boats are rafted together.  Many more are coming.  These strong winds will be with us through Thursday night, therefore I do not expect many boats to depart the regular docks and I expect more to arrive.  Maybe they will all mosey on when the winds abate Friday.  We hope to move over to the regular docks before Sunday so we can go to church and not be restricted by Sunday’s closure of the business gates.  We will figure something out, one way or another.

We arrived in time for lunch and it was good to get back to one of our favorite restaurants here, Quality Seafood.  Oysters are in season.  We enjoyed them fried and in oyster stew.  Did you hear that Brad & Sabrina?  I wonder what is on the menu for tomorrow…

Love to all,

Dena

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