Dismal Swamp Diaries

Hello all! We have arrived here in Moorehead City, NC yesterday evening. We have had terrible/no wifi connection while traveling through the swamps so we are a little behind on our blogging. Here is an update up to Elizabeth City. We will update you with the rest very soon!

Portsmouth was a fun time! We stayed at a free wharf for 2 nights where the glow from our very own 50ft tall Christmas tree illuminated the boat the whole night. It's really bizarre for me to see Christmas trees, lights, and decorations going up as we travel South while the weather warms up all around us. Feels a little more like Easter than Christmas.

We managed to get some work done on the boat while we were here. We rewired the running lights for the 2nd/3rd time. We gave Tilikum a little bath, replaced the fuel filter and the fuel strainer, and we even topped off the engine oil. While exploring Portsmouth, we also managed to find a dinner-theater where you can sit at a table inside of a giant theater and order dinner and drinks while a movie is played. Sam and I arrived in our finest sailing attire consisting of diesel soaked shorts, long sleeved shirts with plenty of holes, flannel vests, ball caps and Nikes. Turns out this place was a little higher class than we thought and we caught a few looks. Nonetheless, dinner was cheap and the movie was good. Successful "bro date".

The next morning we took off, leaving Portsmouth in our wake and headed for Mile 0 of the Inner Coastal Waterway. We were motoring along through the highly restricted US NAVY base area near the beginning of the ICW in Norfolk, VA, bringing back that nervous feeling while looking up at all battleships and aircraft carriers towering over us and seeing the NAVY Police boats wizzing by with their machine guns. Then, Murphy's Law came back for another visit. We were thinking to ourselves, "wow, this would be a terrible place to break down." In fact, I think we even said it. Sure enough right at that moment, our trusty ol Yanmar diesel we've come to name Barnsworth, or Barney, decided to quit on us. He sputtered a bit, revved down and up a few times, and then spit out so much white smoke that it felt like we were back in the fog that Nova Scotia is so famous for. We immediately killed the engine and waited for the fog to dissipate. Then came the realization again.  We're right in the middle of the channel, broken down, drifting towards one of the "restricted" areas that completely surrounded us. YAY! Luckily there wasn't any wind so we drifted up the channel a bit while I was down in the engine compartment figuring things out. As I was down there Sam was up top on watch. And of course, without waiting very long, a US Navy Police boat with 2 massive machine guns mounted on the deck came barreling down on us. They flew up to us, circled around, and then pulled up aside. Two guys about our age were operating the vessel and they popped out of the cabin and asked us what we were doing. Like we'd be casually hanging around a restricted area, but hey they were just doing their jobs. We explained to them how our engine quit on us and were trying to fire it back up. They gave us the whole, "Well this is restricted waters" and "you can't be here." They told us to move and we had to reasonably explain to them again how our engine wouldn't start. Finally, we managed to negotiate our way into firing up the engine really quick and scooting over to an area to drop the hook so we didn't impede traffic while they stood watch. I quickly figured that I probably overfilled the oil pan when we topped it off in Portsmouth leading to some oil overflow burning up in the chambers (hence the white smoke). I pumped out some of the oil which took about 20 minutes and re-checked the levels. Seemed all good! We fired it back up and bid farewell to our heavily armed friends on our way to our first draw bridge!

We arrived at the first drawbridge which was a double. Meaning it had a low train bridge and then a higher car bridge right next to each other. The train bridge raises when there are no trains, but the car bridge goes every hour. We were there at about 8:20 so the car bridge was down, but the train one was open. So we decided to go for it. We eased up to the bridge at speeds approaching a snails pace. Looking skyward praying that we would fit. We didn't... We bounced off the bridge with a dull thud ringing through the metal beams as cars zoomed by overhead. We were too tall by about a foot. Fail.. We backed up and waited patiently for the bridge to open at 9 and then headed through on our way to the Dismal Swamp!

For those of you who may not know what the Inner Coastal Waterway is or what most refer to as "the ditch", it's basically a series of canals that vary in width and depth. For the most part, it's pretty shallow and pretty thin. This waterway goes the whole way from New Jersey to Florida. It's a very common route for boaters headed South when you don't want to take the offshore route. If I had to describe what traveling through the canal is like, I would say its a lot like playing that game Minesweeper, except the mines are submerged logs and there are almost no clues for where they are located. So as your traveling along the canal often, especially with a 6 foot draft, you'll feel thuds on the keel the reverberate throughout the whole boat and your body.

But, it turns out the Dismal Swamp isn't so dismal. We saw the name on our charts and figured it would be dark, filthy, and the type of place that would be perfect for the setting of a bad horror movie. In reality, it was a beautiful river that had brightly colored trees forming a tunnel through the woods. Houses, roadways and walking trails followed it in tandem for most of the way. All in all, it was a really great way to be crossing state lines.

We hit our first lock and drawbridge on the canal and met some of our fellow cruisers who are also headed South for the winter. One thing we have come to realize is that we are basically the "babies" of the ICW cruising world. You don't really see (at least so far) anyone out here that is younger than 40. So we've been mostly making friends that are from a generation or two ahead of us. Despite our young age though, our sailing experience and abilities are as good or better than a lot of people out here. We have met a lot of newbies to the water while traveling along the canals. We actually met one guy that bought a sailboat one week before he took off on the ICW headed south. Awsome! We haven't met anyone that has come as far as us this late in the season though.

We motored along the canal until it began to get dark when we pulled into a river that joined in with the Dismal Swamp Canal. We drove up this small swampy river for a few hundred yards and wedged our 6 foot keel into the soft mud which held us in place (so much for that slick bottom job). Even though there was no wind, current or tide, we dropped our anchor just for good measure. As the sun set we fully took in how weird it felt that our 32 foot ocean going sailboat was sitting in a swamp 15 feet from shore on either side. There were all kinds of noises coming from the swamp like hundreds of little swamp creatures moving around all night and who knows what else. That night the crickets were almost deafening!  We made some dinner, hung out in the pitch black cockpit trying to spot light some gators (no luck yet). Then we went to bed as it began to pour buckets of outside. Our first actual drop of rain since we left Nova Scotia.

We woke up the next day and motored into Elizabeth City which was about 2 hours away. We approached the Elizabeth City Bridge where a really cranky bridge operator grudgingly allowed us and the 3 other boats we were then traveling with through. We tied up to the free slips that Elizabeth City offers and stepped ashore to meet some more fellow cruisers that were also tied up there.