We left Minneapolis on Wednesday March 9th and are driving a rental car to New Bern, NC to be reunited with Painkiller! To help break up the drive, we decided to stop overnight in Nashville and spend a couple of days with Ryan and Abbie along the way. We arrived in Nashville around 5 pm and headed out to dinner at Edley’s. They are purported to have some of the best brisket in Nashville and I have to say, I don’t think they were lying. It was delicious!

Then we all headed over to Robert’s Western World on Broadway to catch a band that we have heard there before called Kelly’s Heroes. There is a young kid who plays lead guitar that is fabulous! He’s like Prince meets country music. He can really play. We all had a really good time.

The next day we headed to brunch at another great spot called Milk & Honey. Abbie has soo many good picks for restaurants. We then went to a whiskey/moonshine tasting before we hit an escape room together. The escape room was really fun and you will be happy to know we did escape. Our evening activities included a night out with free salsa dancing lessons and salsa dancing for the rest of the evening. We were all exhausted.

The next day we travelled to New Bern, NC to our friends Ed & Evelyn’s house who have been gracious enough to watch our boat for us for the last 4 months. We arrived around 5 pm and they had dinner waiting for us when we arrived. We decided to relax and check out Painkiller in the day light tomorrow rather than tonight.

The next day we headed a street over in the neighborhood to where Painkiller was parked for the last 4 months. It was rainy today and stormy. We spent a few hours aboard to check things out. Got the fresh water system up and running and we were happy nothing seems to broken or leaking. I was able to inventory all the non-perishable food items that I left on the boat and only had to throw out a few items that either leaked or otherwise looked questionable. The most curious item was a perfectly pristine can of ginger beer that was still sealed, no obvious hole or damage but the can was empty! Not sure where that went? Mark noticed our line hanger in the anchor locker had fallen down, so he will need to re-epoxy that back up and fix that.

The wind from the storm was from the southwest and when the wind is from that direction, the water from the canals behind the homes in Fairfield Harbor empties out due to the wind. I guess this time was particularly troublesome and the lowest Ed & Evelyn had ever seen the water. Painkiller was sitting on her keel in the mud and the water was down about a foot from her normal waterline. All the boats in the harbor area were sitting on the bottom as well. We had planned to move Painkiller from behind the house where she currently was sitting over behind Ed & Evelyn’s house to make it easier to load things onto the boat and work on the boat. We would have to wait at least another day before we could think about moving her so we had enough water under her keel.

The next day, we were able to move Painkiller behind Ed & Evelyn’s house. In the meantime, it was COLD in North Carolina! Overnight the lows were in the 20’s for a couple days. Much too cold to sleep on the boat even with a heater, so we spent the first 3 nights comfortably warm at Ed & Evelyn’s house in the spare bedroom.

Over the next several days, we enjoyed dinners, games, some boat work, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, restocking the boat, touring New Bern, meeting friends of Ed & Evelyn’s in the area, drinking coffee and wine and moving back aboard. We can not thank Ed & Evelyn enough for all their hospitality and watching over our boat for us for 4 months.

Here are some pics from our wanderings around New Bern.

Fun fact: Did you know that New Bern, NC is the birthplace of Pepsi?

We have been so thankful for Ed & Evelyn and all they have done for us.