Today we are headed Harbor Village Marina in Hampstead, NC. After awhile all these marinas run together in our heads and it doesn’t help when all the names are similar. There are soooo many marinas have use the word Harbor. Harbor Village, Harborside, Harbor Plantation. Oh, and that’s the other term for marinas in this neck of the woods, Plantation. So many Plantations.

We are looking to stay 3 nights here in Harbor Village, there is a low pressure system/cold front coming in that will bring high winds, rain and storms. It seems like we have these cold fronts marching through every 5 – 6 days.

We woke up this morning at anchor still in Mile Hammock Bay before taking off for Harbor Village. It was quite chilly this morning in the upper 30’s and when we are at anchor and not plugged into shore power we don’t have any heat in the boat. Mark was so nice this morning to get up in the cold and start our diesel generator so we could run the heat for a bit to get the chill out of the cabin. We made coffee and that also heats up the cabin a bit with running the stove. The hot coffee warms us up as well! We only have about 20 miles to go today so no need to be in a hurry.

When I called to make reservations at Harbor Village Marina, the lady on the phone was very nice but she was very concerned that we have enough provisions aboard the boat since the marina is in a residential area surrounded by houses with no town, store or restaurant anywhere close by.

When we arrived we found a very nice, clean marina with newer docks. It is one of the best marinas we have encountered so far and the owners were super nice and helpful. Here is a look around:

As we were waiting for the owners to check us in since they were helping to dock another boat, we found a comfortable chair on the deck outside their marina office. We were just sitting looking out at all the boats in the marina. Then one particular boat caught my eye. It was the name of the boat that first got my attention. The name of the boat was “Buttery Nipple”. For those of you unfamiliar, a buttery nipple is a drink made with butterscotch schnapps and bailey’s Irish cream. We had these drinks aboard our friends, Rick and Shauna’s boat. So, seeing the boat name we snapped a picture and sent if off to Rick and Shauna to remember our evening together in Rock Hall, MD having Buttery Nipples.

As we were taking a picture of the boat, Mark looked more closely at the hail port of the boat. The hailing port on the back was St Croix Falls, WI. St Croix Falls, WI is a very small town in western Wisconsin which is about 5 miles from where I grew up and is a very unusual hailing port to find in North Carolina. Also unusual in that St Croix Falls really doesn’t have much in the way of navigable water.

Just then the owner walked up having finished helping the other boat dock. I asked her if she knew who owned the boat Buttery Nipple. She immediately said, That’s my boat! I asked her what she knew of St Croix Falls, WI. Turns out she grew up there! I told her I was from Centuria. No one knows where Centuria is or has ever heard of it. Well, she knew! She told me her family name and I was familiar with the family in the area. She asked if I knew the Quist family, as that was her husbands family. The Quist family owned the local grocery store in Centuria and of course we knew them. It is a really small world when you run into someone from a small town in Wisconsin in North Carolina.

The other couple that came in about the same time we did were also getting checked in, so we introduced ourselves and got chatting with them. We invited Steve and Anne aboard our boat later for a bit of happy hour. They are headed north and are from the Chespeake Bay area. They had been south in Florida so they had lots of great information and recommendations for us heading south. It’s always nice to hear of other people’s experiences and what is good and perhaps not good on the “road” ahead. We had a great evening.

We spent the next couple days just lounging around, playing some cribbage, cooking dinners, doing some blog posts, planning our next stops ahead and making some calls to marinas for reservations. When it wasn’t raining, we took a couple of walks around the area, there are some beautiful homes in the area.

We do really like this marina and may have to stop here again on our way back north.

Next stop Carolina Beach.