Groundhog Day at AP!

Albemarle Plantation – Hertford, NC – Wednesday, 5/12

There was no sun to be seen this morning as we woke up; it was cold and very cloudy. There was some light rain forecasted in the morning and the high temperature for the day was as expected at 58°.  We can honestly say the weatherman got it 100% right today. And so here it is we stay at the AP one more day.

Right after breakfast, Mark headed to the Yacht Club to do work.  Denise chose to stay on the boat for some personal time and to finish up the last blog. Once that was published, there were some business calls to make including returning a call to a past Orlando-based client who has a new project; this always seems to happen when we leave town on our Island Office.

At lunchtime Mark came back to the boat for his usual turkey sandwich and reported that he had company in the Yacht Club in the morning. There were several people who were participating in NOAA research regarding the quality of the water in the sound and creek. More specifically they were taking water samples and checking for nitrogen content in the water, to assess the threat of algae bloom.  They were all volunteers, but one was a former NOAA research scientist. After they had taken samples (yes out in the rain), they came back to the Yacht Club and put the samples under their microscopes and recorded all things scientific, before submitting them to NOAA. Fortunately, all was good with no sign of the algae.

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While Mark was doing this, Denise finished a few boat chores, processed many low-important emails out of her “in-basket”, and even did some reading.  She also made reservations at the Clubhouse for dinner, and confirmed their casual dress code requirement.

All day long there was constant activity down our dock, as it leads to the fuel dock.  With the shortage of gasoline right now, everyone was taking their 5-gallon cans in their golf carts down to the fuel dock to get them filled up. It appears that many people need the gas just to get out of the Plantation and get them to the closest gas station that may have fuel.  JE (Dockmaster) said he got a better workout than the gym because he had to lift so many containers; he sold at least 200 gallons of gasoline, in 5-gallon increments.

Mark arrived back at the boat around 4:00 pm when most of the rain had subsided. There was still a slight drizzle, but it was intermittent and looked like it was finally going to clear up.  By the time we headed to dinner (at 6:15) it had pretty much stopped. It was a good thing as the golf cart has no side curtains.

We arrived at the Clubhouse for dinner and found it lightly filled, but not empty.  During our delicious meal of crab cakes (Denise) and Shrimp (Mark), another two couples also came in.  But clearly there was room for more. Mimi (see yesterday’s post) had told us that the big night was on Thursday’s when they have Taco Thursdays. Hopefully for the financial benefit of the club this is true as there is no way they could make money with the light turnout we saw.

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After dinner we immediately drove back to the boat, freezing to death the whole way, and barely making it back to capture our last sunset in AP.

Tomorrow we intend to leave AP, but only if the weather forecast holds. We will confirm when we get up early as we are looking for a 6:30 am departure. We have about 90 minutes on the Albemarle Sound before turning north (yes finally again) up the North River towards Virginia, and that should give us time before the changing wind direction creates an uncomfortable chop on the AS.