LAT: N 35° 31.9' LON: W 76° 36.9'		warm and bright, showers surrounding
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Deja Vu Cruise

It's hard to say goodbye, but we know she will give a new owner a place to live or cruise, pride and projects!
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Tim steers us into the future.

The Dream That Was Cruising

Remembering What It Is

Off we went, into the great blue yonder only to recall that we had been there before. The storm clouds stayed in the distance and the wind helped push us along on our first day out. The feeling of cruising is hard to adjust to when you've been running around, on your feet, getting things done. On the water, the time slips away as you leave motivation in your wake. We were exhausted from our daily work load and cruising helped us to relax. Though, it was a different feeling than before.

Knowing all the things to check off our list, knowing we don't have all the time in the world, made it even more surreal. We have recently rented an apartment in Ithaca, NY, moved from Montana, stayed and worked in Boston for a month, made a stop for a wedding in Maine, scrubbed and sanded in Oriental and then found ourselves back onboard Slowly heading ENE.

We made good time and pulled into quiet Belhaven to fuel up and check out a new wine, books, and internet stop. A man who has been in Belhaven for awhile now working on his boat has been enlisted to help fuel up boats at the tiny marina and he kindly lent us one of the golf carts they have there. We zoomed into town at a slow jogging pace and quickly found the place we were looking for. After a bite to eat and an enjoyable hour with a good internet connection we returned to Slowly to anchor out in the Belhaven harbor. We had not tested our anchoring abilities in awhile and were pleased when we found a good grip in the muddy bottom.

Mid-summer is not the best time to go cruising, and running our silly AC fan in the aft cabin would require running the generator. Nonetheless, a breeze through the forward and back hatches does a nice job. We remembered how tiring a good day of sitting about on the fly-bridge can be when we passed out looking out the back door into the night.

Belhaven, NC. While we normally seek the new, returning to southbound stops can be quite interesting. On our last visit we struggled to get on-line, ending up borrowing a computer at a local hardware store. This time, we had wireless while enjoying beers and tapas. But don't let words like "wireless" and "tapas" give you a false impression of this southern spot. The Wine and Words Cafe (source of said features) may be the leading edge of more change to come, but the rest of Belhaven is much like we left it. Plenty of empty store fronts remain. The waterfront has some new construction of some unfortunate cookie cutter condos; however, some cute old houses appear to be under renovation. Three years hasn't done much to modify Belhaven as we see it, largely from Slowly's aft deck, where we enjoy it as a comfortable anchor spot.

We had a snack at the Back Bay Cafe while checking our email at Belhaven's Wine & Words: crostini with goat cheese and cucumbers and we tried American Lager from Rogue, a favorite brewery of ours from Oregon. On board we dined on Zatarain's Jambalaya Rice, Johnsonville Bratwurst and Food Lion white mushrooms.

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