Days 2-147-8 in Belhaven, NC

The weather was windy, cloudy with scattered rain. That pretty well sums up the first day at Dowry Creek Marina. Having a "weather day" in port may not be our idea of a fun time, but there are always plenty of jobs to keep us busy. The Admiral repaired the mounts for her armchair on the flybridge, did laundry, paperwork, etc. As for me, I had a nice early afternoon nap...

A little before 4:00 pm we borrowed the loaner car from the marina to head into Belhaven to see the sights and have an early dinner. As we were walking to the car, the marina owner was outside looking at the black sky just to the north, and he said that a tornado had just been reported about 5 miles to the north. We started the trip into town by driving about a mile north to the main highway. Sure enough there were groups of cars stopped along the highway with people looking at this suspicious looking black cloud. This appears to be the storm that had spawned a small F-2 tornado. Later that night we saw reports about the tornado on the local news and even the Weather Channel. Fortunately, no one was killed , but several people were injured. The injured were taken to the hospital in Belhaven. The irony is that this hospital was supposed to have been closed 7 days ago by the owner who cited financial reasons. A last minute deal had rescued the hospital for 90 days. How ironic...how fortunate.

We continued about three miles into Belhaven. As we entered the town, it was pretty obvious that the electricity was off (no stop lights working, groups of people standing outside offices and stores, etc.). That kind of blew our trip as all of the restaurants were also closed as well as the hardware store. We did stop at the Food Lion grocery store as they did have a generator and lights...  We then gave up and headed back to the marina, which also did not have electricity. One good thing about our boat is that we have a generator and a big house bank of 12 volt batteries. Good thing too since the NCAA basketball championship game was on TV later. Terry ran the generator to help cook dinner, and we put the TV, satellite dish, etc. all on an inverter that makes 110 volt AC out of 12 volts DC. We were all set for the evening even if the electricity had not come back on later.

This brings us to today (Day 2-148, April 8, 2114). We borrowed the loaner car for another trip to town, and this time we were successful. We bought stainless steel bolts, nuts and washers to replace ones that we had used, and we had a nice lunch at the Fish Hook restaurant. Then it was back to the boat for more work and chores (after a short nap for me, of course). The good news is that another line of very black clouds moved through late this afternoon. That was supposed to be the big front that had caused all of the bad weather...

The weather forecast tomorrow is pretty good so we tentatively plan to leave "early" at about 8:00 am.