October 7th
Well the incredible weather that we've enjoyed seems to be coming to an end, with winds 15-20 knots forecast, with showers and thunderstorms likely too.
The winds certainly picked up but we didn't get the showers. The current on the Beaufort Inlet was running at a about 3 knots as we punched into it but then as we rounded Radio Island the current was with us and rode along at 9-10 knots.
We reached the first marina that we had planned to stop at when we expected the conditions to be worse but with only 20 miles done we decided to push on. Then we came unstuck. Well actually we became stuck first and then unstuck. There a couple of buoys that had been added narrowing the channel I motored past just inside the new green and hit the bottom, I turned to the center of the channel and the depth went down. then after a few heart stopping moments we were back in the deep. Close call.
We stopped at Swan Point marina. Not the smartest looking marina, let's just say it has a lot of character. It is run by Tina Turner and her mother Evelyn. They took over the marina a year ago and they get A++ for service. I've never been in a marina that tries harder to make your stay the best it can be. Phil asked about shops and they said "What do you need?". Evelyn was going to the shops so she offered to get what we wanted and to deliver it to the boat! When they shut up the office at night they came around to tuck us in. Well actually they came around to see if there was anything we needed before they left and to assure us that the marina phone number would still reach them and not to worry they were only 10 minutes away.
We used the laundry facilities. Impressed eh? One week out and clean sheets!
Monday, October 7, 2013
October 4th
Friday night we stayed at an anchorage in Goose Creek, just before the canal to Hobucken. It was pretty desolate here.
Next day we went down the canal and into Gale Creek, then into the Neuse. We sailed for a while not really enough wind though. Part of the problem is we start at dawn and the wind doesn't get up until the afternoon. Tempted to go into Oriental but decided to crack on to Beaufort.
Put the main down fired up the motor and went into Adams Creek and everything changes we are now a line of boats, huge motor yachts are calling us up requested they pass on our port side.
By the time we get out of Adams Creek the wind is blowing 16 knots over the deck. We decide to stay at the Beaufort Docks marina. They tell us to head down the Russel slough (pronounced slew). I'm stressed about the prospect of going into a marina with 16 knot winds and strong currents. We get to the drawbridge and only have to wait a few minutes. Go through and into Taylor Creek. The wind isn't so bad and neither is the current. A guy is standing on the dock waving to us. We slip in no problem.
Beaufort is a real tourist (small) town, picturesque with an attractive Boardwalk with restaurants, bars and ice cream parlors. The place is really alive
Friday night we stayed at an anchorage in Goose Creek, just before the canal to Hobucken. It was pretty desolate here.
Put the main down fired up the motor and went into Adams Creek and everything changes we are now a line of boats, huge motor yachts are calling us up requested they pass on our port side.
By the time we get out of Adams Creek the wind is blowing 16 knots over the deck. We decide to stay at the Beaufort Docks marina. They tell us to head down the Russel slough (pronounced slew). I'm stressed about the prospect of going into a marina with 16 knot winds and strong currents. We get to the drawbridge and only have to wait a few minutes. Go through and into Taylor Creek. The wind isn't so bad and neither is the current. A guy is standing on the dock waving to us. We slip in no problem.
Beaufort is a real tourist (small) town, picturesque with an attractive Boardwalk with restaurants, bars and ice cream parlors. The place is really alive
Not only is it Saturday night but it turns out we arrived for the Sea Food festival in near by Morehead City. The restaurants on the boardwalk have live bands, and at 9pm there is an impressive firework display over Morehead City which we can see from the boat.
Sunday 6th
We decided to stay another night in Beaufort so that we could spend some time with John and Joy who drove down from Raleigh.
We have a drink and catch up on family histories and they take us to a Piggly Wiggly for a grocery shop. The store must have had wifi as Joanne facetimed me (intending to get Catherine). It was great to talk to Jo and the kids but I couldn't help feeling future shock. Joanne's face appearing in front of me in a Piggly Wiggly.
We then drove to Fort Macon and walked around it. We hooked up with a very friendly tour guide named Rich, who walked us around the Fort telling us the history of it. At the end John said he was taking us to the beach because we wanted to see the Atlantic shoreline. Rich said if you like I'll take you up in my plane. It was an offer we couldn't refuse. We drove to the airport and Phil and I climbed into this beautiful Grummond Tiger.
Rich took us around Shackleford Island then a 360 around the Cape Lookout lighthouse and this time an aerial tour of Fort Macon then down the start of the ICW route that we would take next day.
After we landed Rich did the same trip for John and Joy. What an amazing guy.
We had tried to persuade Rich to join us for dinner but he was already committed so we gave him our profuse thanks and left for dinner at Finz, the restaurant Rich had recommended in Beaufort. Imagine our surprise when we sat at the table looking at the menus and in walks Rich with John's hat which he'd left in the plane. Unbelievable!
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Wednesday, Oct 2nd
The Dismal Swamp canal puts you out into the Pasquotank which is a pretty river.
We put into Elizabeth City where they have free docks and someone to welcome you, and tell you his life story (I only asked what the tidal range was).
Phil and I were about to go find a grocery store but I went back to the first guy, (Jim I think it was) who was talking to someone sat on the bench overlooking the water. Jim lamented that there was no place close any more. The guy on the bench said he didn't have anything to do until 3pm, he'd drive us to the supermarket. So we climbed into his VW convertible and he drove us a couple of miles to Fresh Farms store, We did our shop while he waited in the car then drove us back. We thanked him and gave him a bottle of wine, then offered him lunch on board. He took us up on the offer as he and his wife were thinking of buying a boat. We shared the salad bar lunch and he opened the bottle of wine we had given him. Thanks again Mike.
Next morning we continued on down the Pasquotank river into Albemarle Sound. I've stayed in a cabin on Albemarle Sound and watched a storm come up in 15 minutes and whip the water up so that you could barely see. However this time the weather was gentle to us and we sailed across the sound and into the Alligator River. We anchored just before the canal that joins the Alligator River to the Pungo River. It seemed very desolate here too with many dead trees. The water has a brown color, no sediment just the tannin from the trees.
The Dismal Swamp canal puts you out into the Pasquotank which is a pretty river.
We put into Elizabeth City where they have free docks and someone to welcome you, and tell you his life story (I only asked what the tidal range was).
Phil and I were about to go find a grocery store but I went back to the first guy, (Jim I think it was) who was talking to someone sat on the bench overlooking the water. Jim lamented that there was no place close any more. The guy on the bench said he didn't have anything to do until 3pm, he'd drive us to the supermarket. So we climbed into his VW convertible and he drove us a couple of miles to Fresh Farms store, We did our shop while he waited in the car then drove us back. We thanked him and gave him a bottle of wine, then offered him lunch on board. He took us up on the offer as he and his wife were thinking of buying a boat. We shared the salad bar lunch and he opened the bottle of wine we had given him. Thanks again Mike.
Next morning we continued on down the Pasquotank river into Albemarle Sound. I've stayed in a cabin on Albemarle Sound and watched a storm come up in 15 minutes and whip the water up so that you could barely see. However this time the weather was gentle to us and we sailed across the sound and into the Alligator River. We anchored just before the canal that joins the Alligator River to the Pungo River. It seemed very desolate here too with many dead trees. The water has a brown color, no sediment just the tannin from the trees.
From beaufort
Wednesday
Departed from our mooring at the dismal swamp visitor centre at 7am arrived at the bridge and lock at the exit of the canal for the 8.30 opening.
The Pasquotank river into which the canal flows is beautiful very isolated , swampy banks and tall trees. The water is clear but stained brown from tannin in the trees, a bit like sailing in beer or black tea. It gets bigger and bigger finally we ended up in Elizabeth City, A friendly small town. A guy we met took us to the local supermarket in his car so we stocked the boat with food . Mooring was free on the city wharf , included use of a portaloo! That was the only part of the Elizabeth city experience I would not recommend.
Thursday
Out down the river into the Albemarle Sound , a light breeze took us across under sail, very odd to be almost out of site of land yet be in only 18 foot of water.
Alligator river
The lower reaches of the alligator river are boring! 3miles wide and a dead straight course for about 10 miles, unfortunately the light breeze was right on the nose. I'm writing this whilst at the helm. It's that boring
Now the upper reachers are not boring , they are intimidating , you can see the banks clearly and it looks like no one has ever placed a foot on those banks since time began, I think 'Deliverance' may have been filmed here. We anchored at the top of the alligator river just at the point were the Alligator Pungo river canal starts.
The pilot paint a dim picture of this canal with stories of sunken trees and shallows but it passed by without incident. Auto-helms a are wonderful however if you are not too careful you could hit one of those red posts that mark the channel , the likely hood is very small and thank goodness I looked up just in time!
Friday
So the Pungo river followed and after crossing the Pamlico sound and once again we are moored at the top of a very remote river.
6.30 start tomorrow.
Here is Saturdays route.
The most notable thing was that as we got closer and closer to Moorhead City and Beaufort traffic on the rivers got larger faster and more frequent. Moorhead City is a big boating centre and we stop for two nights
Sunday
Dear friend John and Joy drove from Raleigh to see us , they arrived at midday and we started with coffee and updated each other on family, number of grandchildren etc. then we set off for a bit of site seeing to fort Macon . This is a fort much like fort Widley near Portsmouth it was built in the civil war. At the fort we met a volunteer guide called Rich he was very knowledgable and gave a fine tour. He was a sailor and had done the trip to Bahamas, he also flew and had a light aircraft at a local airport in which he offered us a flight! So off to the airport for a wonderful flight over the Outer Banks Harpers island and Bogue sound. First Vince and i then Joy and John A wonderful experience and he wouldn't accept a thing in payment. A wonderful guy, you don't meet people like that very often.
Monday
Weather forecast not so good, it's going to rain and blow a bit.
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.
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.
This is coming to you from my computer chair in Severna Park. The guys had little to no service while going through the Great Dismal Swamp which is a shame for us because the blogging stopped. In one crackly phone call, this is what Vince told me. We are leaving Alligator River tomorrow for the Pongo. I asked him if they had gotten to Africa. It sounded foreign, but they were in the nether reaches of North Carolina. A real estate man in the Swamp at Elizabeth City gave them a lift to the grocery store. Another chap told stories about being around during Martin Luther King and receiving a letter from him. They have stories to tell and yet no service to tell it with. So I thought I would keep the blog alive and send you the two photos that I have received.
Yesterday, they arrived at Beaufort, North Carolina and pulled into their first marina stop - wow - 7 days at anchor! We had a brief facetime with Vince and we also saw Phil - they have the sailor stubble and lots of sun on their faces. They looked great!
Here's where they are.
They are meeting a friend today (John Ayres) - Vince hasn't seen him for 15 years. It will be a great day for old friends.
Yesterday, they arrived at Beaufort, North Carolina and pulled into their first marina stop - wow - 7 days at anchor! We had a brief facetime with Vince and we also saw Phil - they have the sailor stubble and lots of sun on their faces. They looked great!
Here's where they are.
They are meeting a friend today (John Ayres) - Vince hasn't seen him for 15 years. It will be a great day for old friends.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Tuesday
The Back River on the face of it was delightful but the airforce base with screaming jets took the edge off it. Wonderful sunrise as we left, plus dolphins on the way out.
Norfolk virginia is Southampton and Portsmouth rolled into one X2, and then as you go up the Elizabeth River it's all very industrial. Finally we entered the dismal swamp canal , it's not dismal it's beautiful here is a little video.
Bugger! Can't add videos! Bloody technology
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