Inside The Dragon

We get to run the dragon this evening at the local New Year's Eve festivities. We had a practice run this morning to shake off the cob webs, brush it's teeth and make sure everything was in order. The boys are excited. There will be two "appearances" downtown before the dropping of the Croaker (instead of a ball, Oriental drops a Croaker.) One at 8pm, and another at 11:30pm.

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I like the way this old boathouse is withering away from the bottom up.
I guess thats the way most of these old structures go around here.

Sinking Sands

This shed is slowly sinking into the water.
From the looks of it, it's been there for quite a while.

More Photos

Just felt like taking some more....

Christmas Day

Well, we had a great Christmas day. The boys had a blast this morning tearing through their gifts. They spent the rest of the day playing with everything. After that we went to Perry and Susan's with Bob and Molly for a wonderful spread of Turkey and all the trimmings. Alot of food in a beautiful house. A guy named Bob Laverty came by (I played with this guy at The Station with Perry a few weeks ago for an art showing) and he has an extensive library of music he can play. I didn't have my guitar, so I tried out a pair of spoons...(my mom played the spoons every once in a while when I was younger) and Bridget caught the rear end of the song on camera. Perry's playin' his new mandolin. Max and Noah are playin' their new Gameboys (har har).

A Visit From The Neighbor Bird

Well, on Christmas Eve we were visited by our friendly but loud neighbor, the Great Blue Heron. We all sat out in the cockpit for quite a while watching him on the bank not 30 feet away from the boat. I thought the Christmas lights were confusing him... the boat sort of looks like a landing strip, after all. Here's some pictures. Merry Christmas everyone...Happy Birthday Jesus!

Cold Photography

Woke up this morning to temperatures in the 20's before the sun came up. Budge wanted to take the boys for some shopping so I decided to brave the cold and snap some photos...tried some new places and got a few decent shots. Anyway, here they are...

Fresh Bread By Chef Max

Noah didn't wanna get away from an intense game of chess, but Max took a go at it. After some time, effort, and an overnight rise in the oven....wah lah...fresh cinnamon sugar bread that made the whole boat smell good, and didn't last 10 minutes once it hit the table. Yummy!

Laptop Save

Well, we're back. For those of you that haven't already heard, we're still here. Not sure when we're taking off, but when we know more, we'll certainly shout it out. Doug Siddens saved the day by installing a new hard drive on our laptop, with an alltogether new Operating System (Linux, Ubuntu). It was a bit frustrating to start with (but we're getting the hang of it quickly) and we're able to reconnect with the outside world. With that, I am posting some of the Turkey oven pics from Thanksgiving, I know they're late, but better late than never.

We'll try to get everything rebounded as soon as possible and we wanna thank everyone that's been so helpful especially this past week. Here's some pics of the infamous homemade turkey oven. Check it out...

Journeys To Warmer Weather

Hey folks,

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season. The boys are all geared up, with birthdays falling in November and December for three of the four of us. Thanksgiving was great, we built an oven out of Cinder blocks here at the yard and Bob cut an old water tank from his boat into a firepan complete with good venting and a grill grate, and we smoked two turkeys from 10am to 3 pm. They turned out scrumptious, and several local cruisers and boaters came out with food galore.

For those of you that don't know, we are leaving to head "south" to some warmer climate, with hopes of spending a few months seeing some of the South Carolina and Georgia's coastline. We have enrolled the kids in homeschooling, and Bridget is currently reading and researching with some of the local homeschoolers here to get up to speed on the details. We will be sending updates to the boys classes letting them participate with the class along the way so the class can keep track of where we are and the places we've stopped and seen along the way.

With all that being said, we wanted to send a "thank you" out to all the wonderful friends and family that have been so supportive of our crazy ideas. It's been a wonderful learning experience for us, full of adventure, and wonder, and great people that all have been so encouraging, and loving, and helpful. The boys have had a blast!

We'll be leaving Oriental (weather pending) Saturday morning (December 13th) before dawn, heading south on the Intracoastal Waterway. You can find out more about the ICW @ http://www.cruisingtheicw.com/ . We will hopefully have a functional computer by then, and if not we'll certainly post when we can to the blog at stops along the way. We can be reached by email @ sailingmorgans@yahoo.com or snail mail @ PO Box 12 Oriental, NC 28571.

We are sorry for the lack of posting, but we are working to get everything back up to speed.

Hope to post soon.

Ray, Bridget, Max, and Noah

Update

Hey folks. Well, after much headache our computer has slowly gotten much worse. I actually went downtown to make this post to the blog. We picked up some sort of virus on the laptop that slowly crashed the computer. I had it re-formatted to try to fix it, and that worked for about two weeks, and the the thing slowed down to a screeching halt. Soooo, until we figure out how to fix it, or get a new computer, I'll be making posts from other computers. Don't know how long it will take, but we'll try to keep everyone posted. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Post?

Between the rain on the weekends and the fact that we've misplaced our cable that is used to import pictures to the computer, we've not been able to post. Budge has been busy with her new sewing machine (hey mom, budge got a new sewing machine, a Morse Photomatic 3 and she's been making a ghost costume for Noah for Haloween).
The boys and I also did our first model car together last weekend. A 57 Chevy, red with flames and they did a great job. We'll be doing more of those. Max has been sick, missed several days of school. Every weekend lately has had lots of rain in the forecast, so we've been hunkered down here. Hope everyone is doing well. We'll post more soon.

Peter And Gail Are Back In Town

You can see their boat at the towndock.

Check it out at http://towndock.net/ and look at harbor cam.

Cape Lookout Weekend

We left out Friday night and anchored in Adams Creek. We woke early Saturday and headed downriver to the Morehead City Turnaround Basin and out to Cape Lookout. Came back Sunday, saw many dolphins. Beautiful weekend for it, we had alot of fun.

South River Weekend

We took off on Saturday for South River and hung out with Perry and Susan. We anchored near an old cemetary and a small beach. Nice little hide-out.
The next morning we noticed we were anchored near "Big John" and his friends on his beautiful wooden gem "Whampoa" which means "much wood to varnish".
Beautiful weekend.

Boat Related Mishaps....Funny

Summer's End

It's been a really great summer.... and a great year for that matter. Now the leaves are changing colors and before we know it the cold will set in. We're already looking forward to next spring.

Castnetting Mystery Solved

Well, after not being able to castnet (used to know how, 15 years ago, but had to re-aquaint myself) we went out and tried to catch some shrimp. We caught a handful of shrimp and menhaden. Here's some pictures.

Melting Metal

Bob and I have started a welding class last week. We're quickly learning that it's definately a skill that needs a great deal of practice. I think it's a great "know how notch on the belt" 'around boats. Hopefully it'll come in handy in the future. Once a week on Tuesdays we go at it for four hours. The picture is just a random I found out there on the web....I hope to get some pics from the class.

Hanna Come and Gone

"READY ABOUT"

The boatyard is quickly filling up with boats. The dock is buzzing with boat owners that we haven't seen in ages. We have stripped Fidelis of it's canvas, and doubled the lines at the dock. If the storm gets too bad, we will be staying with a local family (Mary Ann and Walt) here, until everything blows over. We don't expect Hanna to be too bad, however, Ike looks to be extremely powerful, blowing at 140 mph. Looks like sailing for the next few weekends (during the best sailing month of the year) may be interupted with these storms.
We will probably not be able to post once the storm is near.
We'll keep in touch as soon as we can.
In the meantime, http://towndock.net/ has a great hurricane tracking feature that's extremely useful, as well as an active radar for the local area, so we should be able to see everything coming well ahead of time.

Batten down the hatches.

More Pictures From The Beach