Saturday June 25, 2011

Reflections Day....

We had a real early start from Elizabeth City today. We wanted to make the lock at the start of the Dismal Swamp for 8:30 and it was 18 miles away. Our first start before sunrise!

We made the 06:00 bridge at Elizabeth City and continued on up the Pasquotank River as it narrowed. It was absolutely beautiful.

 Approaching South Mills Lock in duckweed

We got to the South Mills Lock at 8:30 and did the 8 foot lift without any problems (our first lockage with the boat). We got through the lock in about 30 minutes and were on our way. The view was great but repetitive for six hours.

The one thing we will remember were the yellow flies that really took a liking to Chris.

The water looked like Coca-Cola which explains the brown stains on every one's boat ....

We arrived at the Deep Creek Lock at 15:00 and locked out to the Deep Creek. A left turn took us into Elizabeth River and on to Chesapeake VA.

Here we encountered the Chesapeake Police boat which requested a boarding to inspect us.

They had guns and we complied. They were very efficient and we were able to prove we owned the boat, had no Mexicans or Cubans on board and had all of the required safety gear and the heads did not flush overboard.

The remainder of today's trip took us past numerous naval repair yards where we saw some submarines and other warships.

We got a dock at the Waterside Marina in Norfolk VA and took the opportunity to go to the Bayou Boogaloo Festival. We had lots of fun watching a busker do his contortionist routine.

We walked downtown and had a great supper.

Best Fish 'n Chips on the planet is at Snappers ... they use flounder.

Friday June 24, 2011

We got away from the Dowry Creek Marina at around 09:00. We had fun watching all of the gulls staking out their personal pilings at the docks.

We headed up the Pungo River and entered the Alligator River - Pungo River Canal which was about a 20 mile run in an excavated canal.  The smoke haze was good.

Lots of people crabbing.

This led to the Alligator River which is a fairly open body of water to the west of the Dare Swamp which has 45 square miles of peat bog on fire. Luckily the wind was blowing from the west and reduced the smoke haze considerably.

We passed through the Alligator River Bridge at around 13:25

The next leg of the trip was through the Albermarle Sound.  A fairly large body of water with a nice ride. This was where we had to decide on the route northward and we chose the Dismal Swamp route.


This has been the highest density of crab pots we have seen so far. We dodged at least 1000 crab pots on our trip today.

We continued on through  the sound and entered the Pasquotank River to Elizabeth City. There was a very interesting blimp servicing complex on the way into the town.

We stayed at the Pelican Marina, an interesting facility with low power capacity.

We had supper on the boat and Chris and I took a walk into the town to check out the harbour area.

Thursday June 24, 2011

We left the City Dock at Beaufort at 07:50 today and circled Radio Island to bypass the bascule bridge in the Russel Slough that was closed for "morning rush hour". We had our first critter sighting of the day when we saw some of the wild horses on Shackleford Island.

Shortly after Beaufort, we entered the Adams Creek Canal portion of the ICWW.

Along here, we were told we may see some bald eagles but the closest we got were some turkey vultures.

We encountered our first barge traffic in the ICWW canal (other than in major shipping ports), a load of wood chips bound for a paper mill.

We left Adams Creek and headed into the Neuse River which is a fairly open body of water. The smoke from the brush and bog fires really started to get bad again as we passed Oriental NC. At least I think we passed by Oriental which is somewhere in the smoke....

Visibility < 1/2 mile

We got to become accustomed to navigating by GPS and watching the radar for other boats which included some commercial traffic and large yachts.

The "blips" are other boats

Dragging for shrimp

A big "blip"

After about 15 miles of navigating in the smoke on the Neuse, we entered a canal that took us to the Pamlico River. The visibility started to improve. We passed by a shrimp fleet moored near the Hobucken Bridge and we got to see how they processed the day's catch.

The Pamlico River is about 5 miles wide at the point where we crossed it and headed up the Pungo River to Belhaven. The first marina we tried was terrible with rickety docks and not enough room to manoeuvre so be did a quick abort and headed to Dowry Creek Marina, a few miles further along our route.

It was very nice with friendly dock staff who helped Captain Brian execute his first "stern into a slip with pilings" docking manoeuvre. It was very hot and humid again it didn't take us long to get into the refreshing pool.

Our friends, Alec and Sharon from Chocowinity NC, came by to visit. They brought us a gift of some breathing masks as it appears that we have not yet passed the worst of the NC brush and bog fires. Apparently they need a hurricane or tropical storm to extinguish them. We all went out to supper in Belhaven at the Fish Hooks Cafe. Great fresh local seafood!

While we were eating, there a terrific thunderstorm passed by. By the time we looped by the Food Lion for some quick re-provision, it had passed but entertained us with a fantastic lightening show as it passed over Cape Hatteras.

Our cumulative totals:

Distance travelled = 1169.3 nm

Travel Time = 164h 34 m

Fuel Burn = 1081.6 US gal

Wednesday June 23, 2011

We awoke in Swansboro NC to the sounds of a 07:00 artillery barrage from Fort Lejeune, a few miles away. The boat was covered in ash from the nearby brush fires and low lying smoke enshrouded the area.


The engine room had cooled off overnight and Captain Brian spent an hour down below working on troubleshooting the high transmission temperature alarm problem we had encountered yesterday. We finally concluded that we had a bad temperature sensor rather than something wrong with the transmission. We disconnected the defective sensor and proceeded to our destination of Beaufort NC. We found out there are no replacement parts immediately available (6 week delivery) so we will have to do without temperature sensing on one transmission.

Here we are leaving Swansboro.

The first part of the route was along a man-made canal. We then entered Bogue Sound which had a dredged channel with little islands made from the dredged material.

The smoke got worse as we neared Beaufort and visibility reduced to 1/4 mile.

The approach to Beaufort through Moorehead City was a bit tricky with multiple channels and no visibility but were able to get tied up at the Beaufort Town Docks by 13:50.

Approaching Town Docks

Beaufort Waterfront

The smoke started to lift as the sea breeze built through the afternoon and we were able to do a walking tour of the town. The big claim to fame here is that Beaufort was once home to Blackbeard the Pirate.

After our walk we stopped at the local sailor's pub of a cold beer.

We all went out to a really cool restaurant for a "Tapas Style" supper.

Our cumulative totals:
Distance travelled = 1099.8 nm
Travel Time = 156 h 9 m
Fuel Burn = 991.7 USGal