The Belhaven Well To Do and Onwards to Alligator River

Belhaven to Alligator River – 47 nautical miles sailed, 4 kilometres walked, 1 mile in dinghy

We’d decided Belhaven deserved another half day as we had yet to explore the eastern side of the town. After trying to find a decent radio station (non-country and non-Jesus) and failing miserably, I put on a Radiohead album as I prepared a breakfast scramble of chopped up sausage, peppers, mushrooms, cheese, and a handful of eggs. Sadly, we had no fresh herbs and I foolishly forgot the onions, otherwise it would have been super fantastic instead of just fantastic.

Though cool, it was a beautiful, clear day and Belhaven was silent, in the way that small towns are on Sunday mornings (before church). We walked eastwards from downtown and discovered where the rich kids live as we passed grand, waterfront mansions with driveways and carports loaded with Porsches, Land Rovers, and other shiny vehicles. We were again struck by how different these small US towns are from the Canadian equivalents. For example, in this town of 1406 people, 48% of the population is black and 44% is white, with the remaining few a mix of the two. There is a distinct rich area of estate homes and luxury vehicles and a distinct poor area of falling apart trailers with rusted out vehicles on blocks. It’s similar to what we’ve seen in other US towns like this. Everything seems to be a dichotomy. You are either black or white. You are rich or poor. You are fanatically religious or an atheist. You are good or evil. You are Republican or Democrat (this drives the good or evil, depending on which side you’re on). You are with us or against us. This dichotomous existence pervades everything in the US, which is perhaps why the politics work they way they do in this country. The one thing everybody agrees on, however, is hanging a huge American flag from your second story porch or the electrical pedestal of your trailer. Whichever of these dueling categories you fit into, you are first and foremost, a proud American.

Think about Canadian towns with a similar population. In Ontario, that would be places like Burford, Fort Erie, Port Rowan, Red Lake. In Saskatchewan, think about Lanigan, Wilkie, Langham, Davidson. In BC it would be Fairwinds, Ashcroft, Salmo. In Nova Scotia it would be Chester, Inverness, or Centreville. These towns, to me, seem far more heterogeneous in one way, with a higher percentage of European whites, but also more diverse as the remaining population is a mixture of Asians, indigenous, black, and many others, the ratios really depending on where you are in the country. You will see as many Italian, English, Portuguese, German, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Filipino flags flying as Canadian ones, and it’s okay to fly them both if you like. The social classes do not seem as rigid either. Most people are middle class with a minority of rich folks and a minority of poor folks. You also rarely see grinding poverty in these towns, unless you travel to the indigenous communities up north, where it is widespread.

I am not saying either of these situations is better than the other. They are just different. The statistics say the overall wealth level in the US is higher than in Canada, but it’s clear that this wealth is distributed very differently in these two countries.

Before returning to the boat, we stopped to talk to the Quebecers we’d met the other day in Oriental who were now tied up at the Belhaven town docks. Jonathan and Isabelle are a lovely couple and traveling on their 31-foot sailboat with no less than four young kids (that’s what we counted, there may have been another one or two stuffed into the cockpit lockers). We have an idea of how heroic this is as we travelled with our two in a similar sized boat, but we did not take them all the way to the Bahamas and back. Crazy! As we are traveling in the same direction as them we expect to meet up again soon, hopefully for lengthy sundowners.

We had a pleasant ride and made it further than we were anticipating, all the way across the arrow-straight and 20-mile-long Alligator-Pungo Canal, then up the length of the huge Alligator River and dropped the hook in a very exposed anchorage just shy of the Albemarle Sound, which we’d have to cross tomorrow morning.

Along the way I pulled out my Stretching Journal which I’d picked up back in Morehead City and Ana and I did a 30-minute aerobic and stretching workout on the boat, squeezing ourselves into barely large enough spaces in the cockpit to maneuver our body parts where they were supposed to go, according to the diagrams. I hope no other boaters saw us, as portions of it may have resembled moments of passion, with various limbs pointing in all directions and moaning sounds (from pain).

Return to Belhaven and Sampling Hush Puppies

Oriental to Belhaven, North Carolina – 41 nautical miles sailed, 1 kilometre walked, 1 mile in dinghy

It was time to knock down some more miles so after leaving a note with our contact details on the perp’s boat, we were back on the water in unseasonably cold temperatures. We’ve been running the diesel heater in the evening to warm up the boat and we ran it again this morning as it dropped down to 6 or 7 degrees last night. We haven’t had to think much about heating in the previous months, but as we inch closer back north, it’s back on our minds.

The winds were far stronger than forecast – gusting to near 30 knots and steady in the mid-20’s so there were some rough patches of water through the open bays we traveled through which gave SeaLight a good rocking and knocked Ana’s suitcase full of clothes upside down onto the ground. She has this elaborate system of bungees, pulleys, cords, come-alongs, barriers, mechanical stabilizers, slipknots, netting, and movement sensors she rigs up in the v-berth whenever we’re likely to go through rough water. It’s all meant to hold her suitcase in place but somehow it never works, and I’m usually the one to deliver the bad news when I leave the cockpit and go down into the cabin to take a leak or heat water or make a snack and I look into the v-berth to see her beautifully folded clothes and large inventory of grooming supplies now scattered haphazardly on the ground with the suitcase flopped on top with its wheels slowly rotating in synchronization with the giant waves we are smashing through. There is one benefit, though. It takes her about 90 minutes to restore order so that burns up a chunk of the dreadfully boring travel time for her.

Belhaven was just as we left it five months ago - even the weather was the same. Like Oriental, it is a town custom made for boaters. Free dinghy docks, free town docks for big boats, a main street with the ICW Brewery, a classy steakhouse for those with large cruising budgets, the groovy Bad Moms Coffee shop, a well stocked hardware store, Farm Boys burgers and fries, and a few ladies fashion shops. Further afield are two full service marine stores and a big grocery store. We wandered downtown, had a browse through a couple of shops then stopped for an extended coffee visit at Bad Mom's. We struck up a conversation with the young girl working there and she asked us if we were locals or visitors. That's the nice part about being Canadian in the US - you can blend in easily. When in the southern states, people assume by our weird accent that we're from Maine. When in the northern states, they assume we're from down the street. We told her we were transiting boaters and she said a lot of boaters come through the town. She then passed on a story from a few years back when an English sailor delivering a boat to the UK ran into major mechanical problems and pulled into Belhaven. He was stuck here for an entire year, waiting for parts and repairs. She got to know him very well.

Our last stop for the afternoon was Farm Boys, where we picked up two burgers, fries, and an order of Hush Puppies to go. We’ve been seeing Hush Puppies on restaurant menus and also pre-made mixes in the grocery stores, but we weren’t sure what they were. Well, Hush Puppies are little football-shaped blobs of deep fried premium corn dog batter and they are delicious. Like, really good. Ana swooned over them and I considered sprinting to the grocery to pick up a box of mix so we could make them on the boat. But then we’d have to get a deep fryer too and I wasn’t willing to go that far for decadent little fat balls.

We decided on a crazy Saturday night back on SeaLight so ate our burgers as we watched a new Black Mirror episode, then played a board game, had a rum and coke, did some route planning for the coming days, then broke into a hot disco strobe light party that took us late into the night.