An Appointment in Morehead City

In Christian circles, there is the notion of a "divine appointment", where you find yourself deliberately steered to a time and place to encounter someone or experience some event.  I believe it happens all the time, but we are only rarely allowed to see God's hand directly.  Yesterday, we got to experience this in a wonderful way.  As we approached Beaufort/Morehead City, we began to make plans for some time ashore.

As some of you may have experienced, it does in fact get HOT as you go South in the Summer.  We have been planning for this, but we thought we could put off air-conditioning for a while through the use of wind scoops and open hatches.  Well, the reality is, the only true relief from the heat and humidity is a real air-conditioning unit.  We have a small generator to run an A/C, but we needed to buy one, plus build the support structure to keep it safely in the companionway door.  As we traveled down the ICW, we located a marina not too far from a Lowes that we could possibly walk to.  When I got on the phone with the dockmaster, he basically told me not to come to his marina.  He said it was too shallow (even though it was recently dredged) and that he was alone and couldn't give us any help.

Feeling rebuffed, we went to "Plan B", which was the Morehead City Yacht Basin, a truly first class facility that had a mini-van loaner car.  As we pulled into one of the slips, we happened to meet a couple of folks, Rob and Cheryl, touring the marina.  They were quite friendly and very interested in the boat and everything we were doing.  They had never been on a sailboat, so we immediately invited them aboard and showed them around.  A neat bond seemed to quickly develop, though we didn't really pick up on it at first.  During the conversation, they asked what we did to keep cool at night, so we shared with them that we needed to run over to Lowes to purchase a small A/C unit, 'cause it was starting to become uncomfortable.  Rob exclaimed that he had a couple of unused air conditioners in his garage and absolutely insisted that we take one!  They asked us to wait 40 minutes while they ran home to get it!

Sure enough, they returned shortly with the perfect room-sized unit.  We hauled it up onto the boat and plugged it into the generator.  Success!!!!  No more hot/humid nights!!!  They wouldn't take any money, so we asked them to let us at least take them to lunch.  One of Rob's side jobs is at Big Apple Pizza in Morehead City, so he suggested there.  We piled into the loaner mini-van and followed them to the pizza place.  Since we only got the van for 2 hours, the plan was to eat together, then do our grocery shopping.  Once we got there, however, we had so much fun visiting, our 2 hours were up before we even left the restaurant!

Rob and Cheryl, it was wonderful meeting you and that air conditioner is blowing cool air on me right now as I type this post - it is greatly appreciated!!!!  I know you've found the blog, so PLEASE send me or Rebecca an email so we can add you to our Facebook and keep up with you guys from now on!  And Cheryl, we really want to know if you get that job!  :)

And I am very grateful that we were steered away from one place and directed to another, at just the right moment!  God is Good!