Tuesday Oct 1st. The first of many firsts.
The first day on the ICW throws most of the challenges at you that you are going to face, a kind of test to see if you are up to it. except crossing the Sounds and the tidal currents of Georgia. We motored through Hampton Roads making sure we didn't get in the way of big ships or too close to any Navy ships and incur the wroth of the patrol boats.

We filled up with diesel just across from Norfolk town center where you can walk out of the marina and into the shopping malls. Maybe we should have stayed there.
For the next five miles it is industrial, dock land. W e pass through a couple of bridges but they are open (they only close about twice a day). Then we come to Gilmerton Bridge our first test. We call on the radio and he asks what clearance we need. I say 62 feet but later call back and say "I think it's 62 feet but we haven't even been under a 65 foot bridge yet". He's says "Don't worry we were going to raise it to 75 feet do think that will do?" . we have to wait about half an hour for him to open it (they open on the half hour). It's a pretty cool sight though to see this roadway being lifted so that you can pass under it.

A couple of miles further on we come to our first 65 foot fixed bridge (this is the controlling height of the bridges on the ICW apart from the couple that someone screwed up on and are lower). It has a pronounced arch so we have to be in in the middle. I look around to see Phil on the helm talking on the phone to Lizzie. For once I say can you put that phone down and help me pannic like we're supposed to. We get through OK but immediately afterwards is the narrow entrance to the Dismal Swamp. We make the turn and don't go aground and we're on our way. Hey, maybe we can do this.
We'd been in a hurry to get to the lock by 1:30p so that we could then get to the Visitor's center before dusk.

We make it and lock in with a Trawler style motor boat. Robert, the bridge/lock tender is very welcoming and helpful, and even entertains us by blowing on his conch shell. People bring them to him when they return from the Bahamas.

The Dismal Swamp seemed a bit of a disappointment to me. It is incredible to be motoring down a canal as straight as an arrow with overhanging trees but the remoteness of it gets undermined when the traffic on the road that parallels the canal goes rushing by. I think you have to hike into the woods on the right hand side to get that feeling. A couple (Brain and Stephanie) who lived on their sailboat, Rode Trip, had taken their canoes up the feeder canal to Lake Drummond and they said that was good.
The rest stop is for the road traffic as much (or more so) for the boats.
The three boats took up most of the dock so when a fourth small sailboat (about 24 ft) followed us in he tried a strange maneuver, he was going to tie up the bow to the shore with the stern jutting out into the canal. That is until his mast hit the trees and showered him with leaves and twigs. We told him he could come alongside us and we helped him do it.
He was about sixty and had a round face and an irrepressible smile. It turned out that he had bought the boat a few weeks before and had never sailed before. It was a nice little boat but had obviously been neglected. He had sailed down the Chesapeake in the winds that gave us a great sail but for him it was a bit much especially when the rudder came off in his hand. Fortunately he held on to it and pulled it aboard, so them he had to steer with the little second hand, outboard motor that he had bought. Apparently a 4 ft wave swamped it and the engine died. Luckily a Trawler towed him into the nearest marina.
The main couldn't be raised because of some problem with the halyard and he'd never used the "sail at the front".
He rushed off to make a phone call, which apparently was to his mother, 81, who turned up half an hour later. For 81 she was incredibly nimble but she had her son's "I think I can do it attitude". We explained to do it in two stages, first step over the safety lines on our boat and then step down onto the other boat. Mid way through she "I think I can reach it" and with one leg over the safety lines steps down with the other onto the little boat which promptly dropped about a foot. so we had to hold on to her and lift the other leg over.
The two of them slept on the boat that night although I never saw either of them with any thing other than a big bag of potato chips.
We were the first ones to leave the next morning. I thought I'd never see the little boat again but as we waited for the lock to open and were joined by the trawler motor boat towing the little sailboat. I changed my mind maybe like Popeye he would keep turning up no matter what was thrown at him.

The Dismal Swamp Canal at first light.