Mother Nature has been pretty good to us as we head to our final destination for Pandora, in New Bern, North Carolina.  We stopped for two days in Oriental, where we enjoyed a free dock with easy access to town.  On the dock with us was a boat from Colchester, England.  The older captain sailed alone across the Atlantic about a year ago.  At some point along the way he was adopted by a small black kitten he decided to name Mogs.

At each port Mogs goes visiting.  Maybe one day he’ll decide to stow away on a new boat.  At least that’s what Bob and I hoped when Mogs made himself very comfortable on Pandora. We began to think he might stay with us…. but as the English boat made ready to depart Mogs headed quickly back to his familiar digs.  Ah, well….

Friday was our final sail on this Pandora.  I could have wished for a bit less wind, but perhaps it’s for the best.  There is nothing like a couple hours of seasickness to make one willing to say goodbye to a boat!

In a little over a week we’ll be commissioning a new Pandora in Ft. Pierce.  As you can see, she’ll need a name change!

New Bern is a pretty city.  We are on a dock at the New Bern Grand Marina, where once you walk up the ramp you find yourself in the heart of the historic district!  Lovely! We had dinner at the Harvey Mansion on Friday evening, our first night in town.

Saturday morning we went to the well attended Farmer’s Market, and then headed out to Raleigh Durham airport to pick up a mini van to load up with all our gear and provisions from Pandora. Unfortunately that was the most economical place for a car rental, but it was a long day with 5 hours of driving round trip.

It’s Sunday morning and I must wrap this up to begin the decommissioning.  Hopefully we’ll get a bit more sight seeing in this week, during breaks from packing and cleaning. I know there is a weaving shop in town because I visited it a year and a half ago by car on my drive home from Beaufort! I cannot pass up a chance to see that again!

We have to be out of here on Friday morning!  There is LOTS to do before then!

This exhibit opens today at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, CT.  It will run until Saturday, April 26.  There is an awards ceremony on April 11, and a day of weaving desmonstrations on April 18th.  The museum is closed on Easter and Easter Monday.

I am thrilled to have two pieces in this show, and I hope to visit the show on the very last day it is open.  I’ll be skidding into town just in time!

The chairwoman of the show wrote me earlier this week to say that “Sunet on Wilson Cove” has received two awards!  2nd Place for Wall Hangings, and a special award for Best Use of Color!  She made my day!  The jurors were Sarah Saulson and Anita Thompson.

“Thread of Life”

We are passing through an area of abandoned rice paddies.  The colonists worked very hard to cut down miles and miles of bald cypress swamp—and that has to be a hard job (wonder if they had slaves to do it then)—and now it has all returned to bald cypress swamp once again.  Hard to tell man ever tamed this area.

I have learned a little of why rice is no longer grown in South Carolina.  It turns out that the process of growing rice the traditional way, which means flooding the fields at some point in the growing season, can only be done by hand.  Because the fields are so marshy and at times underwater, everything from sowing seed to harvesting the rice has to be done manually.  In other rice growing states (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and California) a hybrid type of rice is grown that requires irrigation, but is not grown in marsh conditions.  Mechanized equipment can be used for the whole process so the cost of growing rice is much less.  That pretty much put Carolina rice out of business.  There are still a few farms, but they do not export the rice and it is only available in small boutique type shops.  We bought some gold rice (not polished to white) from nearby Palmetto Plantation at the museum shop in Georgetown.  I made it last night, and I do wonder if some of the dark particles I found were just pieces of chaff or if they were critters.  I really to had to cull the rice before cooking it, just in case of the latter!  It has sort of put me off to making it again….

Since leaving Georgetown we have been traveling through the cypress marshes.  It’s always nice to be alone again….at least for a bit.  I never like being alone on holidays, and we are rapidly approaching Easter (tomorrow, in fact).  It would be nice to find an acquaintance we know when we arrive in Wrightsville later today.

Here are some scenes from the marsh. An abandoned rice paddy where cypress are coming back.

An osprey on the nest watching us as we pass.

Traveling through a landscape that has returned to unspoiled marsh.

And turtles sunning themselves on a cypress root.  I just had to include it even though it’s blurry! (So….what do you call a collection of turles?  A bale or a turn.  I’m going with bale since we are in cotton country!)