Ken, Francie, Skipper on Release: Thanksgiving and restart of our journey

     We are very happy to report that mom is home from the hospital and improving daily!!!!!! We shared Thanksgiving with Mom, Susie Frank,Dick, Nancy, Leslie,Kyle,Hannah, and Erik. It was great to have Mom home for Thanksgiving and doing great. We spent quality time at Susie & Franks house with all.
    We departed on Sat Nov. 24th with our new "rides" for Elizabeth City and Release. Upon arrival we discovered the alternator not working, BAH HUMBUG!!! Sunday after making a new bracket and installing a rebuilt alternator we still did not have a working system. Then the big dummy checked the fuse and found it was blown. It is great to remember how foolish you are. We left at 1200 hours and got a good start to another anchorage at West Lake on the Alligator River. We awoke at o dark thirty, took Skipper ashore and hauled anchor. We passed through the Alligator River swing bridge hoist sails and sailed for about 20 miles before entering the Pungo Canal. Once through the canal we hoist the sails and proceeded to Bellhaven NC for the night. We refueled anchored and dinghy-ed ashore for a walk and then back aboard.
We took Skipper ashore in the AM and left Bellhaven before daylight for Oriental NC, a beautiful town, which caters to sailors. There is a marine consignment store which I truly like. We were exploring with our new rides, the old ones have been recalled by West Marine and we found these on Craigs list. We and the bikes get along well together , we are all about the same age!!! We left Oriental a little later than usual, about 0800, and sailed a little across and to Adams Creek, before running out of wind. Then it was the Iron Spinnaker through the canal to Morehead City. We were then fortunate enough to be able to sail to Swansboro before starting up again. We passed through Camp LeJeune to Onslow Beach swing bridge and announced our request for an opening at 1700. At 1710 Francie asked the attendant if we could go through and he said that he had been trying to open the bridge for 10 minutes and hoped that it would happen. The bridge finally opened an let us pass and then couldn't close. We then continued on to Mile Hammock an Anchorage on Camp LeJeune. We kept hearing reports of the bridge not working for a while and then again today.   Last night the marines must have been doing manuovers all night, as choppers and lights were going all evening. Today, thursday, we continued through three bridges to Carolina Beach. I managed to find a few spots that need to be dredged, they should be able to find them as I left a notch on them with the keel.