March 9 - Hellhaven

The calm of the alligator river was left in our wake as we chugged on down the ICW. We traveled a little less in order to stop in what we thought would be a beautiful, fun little town – Belhaven, NC.

The entry was nice with a well-marked channel and a breakwall providing protection from larger waves off the ICW. They even had a free public dock we could tie up to. However, the dock was a little small for us with not a lot of water under it. There was also what we thought was a crab trap on one side. So we docked on the other for ease of maneuvering. After calling the town dock master, we found there was “an uncharted obstruction” on that side. Low tide revealed it was a large chunk of rusty hull-puncturing terribleness! Sure would have been nice if there was more than a small crab pot buoy marking that…

Once in town, the quest for Ice Cream, our main reason for stopping, was in vain. After 3 different stores told us they were all out, we found a greasy spoon with some local food and …yes! Soft serve!! So we got in line and waited…and waited…. And waited….They wouldn’t take our order! There was no “I’ll be with you in a minute”, they wouldn’t make eye contact, and they weren’t busy! We left after about 20 minutes, really unhappy, and tried to make our way back to the boat.  We were blocked by a train delivering something to the industrial plant next to the boat that they processed all night long. Very noisily.

Just to ice the cake: when I told a friend of mine where we were, he said he recalled getting bad fuel here.

We will continue past Hellhav, ahem, Belhaven on our next trip along the ICW