Drew and Deb sailing: Back on the boat after leaving Shawnee at Ms. Wanda's for a week

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We suddenly had to leave our boat and drive a rental car up to Schenectady, NY to see my mother-in-law (ex) who went into Ellis Hospital with a deteriorating kidney at 102 years of age. We all went to visit and help out. She is now in a hospice situation in a nursing home. Rhona Twombly is a wonderful, kind, accepting person I love and have known since I was 18, a second mom. She's as sharp as a tack. We will head back up there once we secure Shawnee in a place where she can stay for a couple of months.
Ms. Wanda allowed us to keep our boat for a week at Alligator Marina, her place. She drove us to the rental car place in Devil Kill Hills, NC so we could drive up to the emergency.

This is Shawnee at Alligator River. The slip is 14' wide and we are 13' wide.

After seeing Rhona we drove straight down 11 hours from New York and arrived Thursday AM in time for Wanda to take us to return our car. We hopped back on the boat by 10:30 and motored 8 hours to Bel Haven, NC where we could anchor (yeah, one free night!) The weather was better as we sailed down Thursday. We dinghed the dog in for a break. She dutifully sat outside while we ate at the best restaurant, Tavern at Jack's Neck, Bel Haven's colonial name. It's only been open a year and we highly recommend it. We met a bunch of sailors in there, each with their own boat expense horror story - one was buying and installing a new engine for $15,000 after having a calamity or two at sea. Another had hit a submerged log so hard the splinters were stuck on the drive shaft and bent the propellers, and another was having a new transmission installed. All stuck in Bel Haven for a while. We felt last year's expenses were at least in the ball park with theirs.
I decided that there are two kinds of expenses: preventable expenses that have to do with spending money to maintain and check the boat thoroughly before things break. If you don't change the oil and do the recommended needed care for the boat and replace and upgrade as needed then you'll be in trouble, big more expensive trouble. And there are expenses that occur beyond your control like hitting stuff submerged in the water. When I am at the helm I look through the binoculars for debris as we motor along, but I'm afraid there's no way to see something submerged unless it has some little different wave action around it. Anyway, we've been lucky, and I don't complain about trawlers or big yachts passing us anymore - they can forge the way and hit stuff ahead of us. We also have 3 navigation systems I've talked about before.
The large scale paper charts that show depths and routes.

We also use Navionics on the Ipad that I chart before each trip. I like it the best because it also shows the boat going on the route through the water with the depths. Drew plots on Max Sea, the boat's computer navigation system that connects with the Garmin radar and routing system. It moves through the radar but doesn't show the depths on the screen.
Since we read about two lows converging here for some real fowl weather and gusts to 50 k for Saturday and Sunday we went into River Dunes Marina tonight, one that had been recommended last year because it's cheap, very protected from big blows, and is a luxury facility. We can't figure out why it's so cheap, but we'll take the 6 water jet showers, fabulous bar, fitness center, beautiful restaurant house, pool, cabana, courtesy car to get groceries in Oriental, bikes, kayaks, beautiful architecture, and comfort. This place is also a wedding destination booking spot.

The front of the House at River Dunes Back of River Dunes