North Carolina-Roy's country May 1st

It has been a busy couple of days, but at 7:45 am today Rock Chalk crossed into Roy's home state. Back in basketball country (no offense Mike about Florida), but we have had more people recognize what Rock Chalk means here than in the month prior. We currently lie in Wrightsville Beach, NC on the Cape Fear River. Wilmington NC is west across the river, but this is a beach town.

There are 3 capes in North Carolina as you go north. The first is Cape Fear which we crossed today. The next is Cape Lookout, where we will be tomorrow. The granddaddy is Cape Hatteras, which we will take 3 days to go inside of it up to Norfolk. They call Hatteras the graveyard for ships, and we are not going to tempt an outside run. Plus Shelley wants to see the Dismal Swamp, which we will go through after Elizabeth City. Should be interesting.

We had a beautiful anchorage near Georgtown, where several of these photos were taken. We went up a creek for a mile an anchored in this stream that was about 100 yrds wide. We had a friendly alligator who spent the night off our stern. It was absolutely still all night and the only sounds were frogs and birds. Really beautiful.

That night as I was checking our anchor in pitch blackness, I kept seeing circular shooting stars in my right eye vision every time I moved my eyes from right to left. It was still there the next morning along with many black floaters, and a light film over my right eye. Great, my worse thought, as we do this trip for this year, is some medical issue. With Mom having glacoma, and Dad had a detached retina, I had to take this seriously. Dad lost his eye when we were sailing in the Caribbean because he ignored his symptoms for several weeks. Once again, on a boat or our bodies, everything is broken, it just hasn't happened yet.

So by 3:00 yesterday we got to a marina in Myrtle Beach, and the dockmaster was a retired ER and surgical nurse. How lucky was that. She put us in her car and drove us to the nearest emergency room just a mile a way. Within an hour I had a diagnostic optomitrist dialating my eye and examining the retina. I am happy to say it was all in tact. So my problem was not the retina.

So what am I seeing? He says that as you get older stuff starts to float around your eye. It is causing the floaters and the bright flashes, and the film. Oh well. Frankly I was very relieved that I was not going to have to have surgery, and by 5:00 we were back on the boat.

I was very impressed with the credentials and professionalism of this doctor, which says something about our state of medical care in the US today. I was walking into an emergency room and received excellent care, regardless of whether I had medical insurance or not. Anyone who tells you that our system is completely broke and needs a 2200 page bill to fix it, is crazy and just flat misinformed.

So this was just one more adventure to add to the list, and I am sure there will be plenty more.

(For some reason I cannot add photos, so I will try it on another page.)