Manteo, NC

We took a long weekend to go to the Outer Banks again, this time we landed at Manteo and stayed four days at the Sanderling in Duck, NC. Pam has wanted to go to the Sanderling for years, and I was going fishing with some friends from work, so this combination worked out well.

Our room was just over the dunes from the beach, and since we were on the third floor, we had a nice view of the surf. We kept the patio door open at night and fell asleep to the sound of the surf.

The aquarium was right next to the airport, so we checked it out on day two. Lots of neat stuff like the otters and this cute guy.

Afterwards we went to the Oregon Inlet Marina to check out our boat (rental/chartered), The Qualifier, in preparation for the next morning.

The people coming back that day had done pretty well. The picture below is their catch, lots of mahi-mahi and a couple tuna.

We came back to the boat the next morning at 5:30 AM. It was raining and breezy. Seas were 5-9 feet. On our way out, about 20 miles, we passed several boats that were headed back in due to the rough seas. We faired a little better because of the larger, 60 foot, boat. It was a pretty wild ride at times, but nobody puked or fell overboard. After three hours of fishing we ended up with 38 mahi-mahi, which came to about 10 pounds for each of us after it was all filleted.

The next day we headed for home. We had to wait a coulpe hours for the weather to lift. By 11:00 it was accptable on the coast, but still IFR/MVFR towards home. We planned to go 50 miles at a time, but by the time we reached each waypoint, it was clear enough to continue, so we made the whole flight without stopping. The whole flight was at 1,800 feet, below the broken layer and through a couple very light showers.

Pam took this photo over her should as we left Manteo. Total hobbs time for the round trip was 3.3 hours and about 480 miles. The plane and the recently repaired prop performed well.