next few days after oriental were pretty routine. get up put things away.  motor all day anchor at night.  very cold mornings with no heat.  pulled into a great marina called spooners in moorehead, found it in a book, was a narrow channel to get into but tide was high so we had no problem.  stayed there one night so we could use wifi get some heat and much needed hot showers.  this was part of a condo complex that took a couple of transient boats a night.  we have been very fortunate to find so many great places to stay.  we usually find a marina to go into every 3 days or so rest of time we anchor, it is quieter and free.

saw our first pod of dolphins.  we are close to ocean just over sand dunes.

3 days later we pull into southport marina.  dock guys helped us tie up.  great place.  we ran out of propane the day before so now we have no heat and no way to warm anything up so we went to southport, wonderful facilities.  we call the local hardware store to see if the fill tanks and yes they do. we get boat settled start the laundry and begin our 2 mile walk one way to get propane.  we get half way there and joe asks me what is on the shopping list.  i said propane  SHIT  !!!!!! we forgot the propane tank.  so we walk all the way back to boat.  it is dark now.  joe gets the tank and we start walking again.  i see a truck pulling out from zimmermans  marine right next to the marina.  i tell joe to stay on street instead of sidewalk maybe this person in truck will offer us a ride.  AND  HE DID!!!   LOL!!  he took us to store and back,  thanks steve,  he was manager of marine shop and a fellow sailor.  he knew how far we were gonna have to walk.  next day we had his guys come to boat and make adjustments to the stuffing box.  it will get us by until we get it repacked.  we stayed 2 days in southport. Joe had to get work done and we needed internet to do that, cleaned boat, washed all salt off.  met some great people. hank a fellow sailor has a chart briefing at 6 every night and gave joe some extremely valuable shoaling information that we used the last 3 days.  hank also has a shuttle service to stores and back. i hired him so i could provision.  did some Christmas shopping, finally. 

by they way Merry Christmas to all of you.