ICW South Bound (VA, NC, SC)

Location:  Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

 Since leaving Annapolis we have been making steady progress to the south, still hoping for warmer weather so we can put on our shorts.  We left Annapolis on Monday, November 5 and spent Monday night anchored near Solomons Island, MD.  Solomons Island is a very popular boating destination and is well known in the boating community.  We decided not to spend any time here this time since the weather was rainy and cold.  We weighed anchor the next morning, continued our trek down the Chesapeake Bay and spent Tuesday night anchored near Deltaville, MD.  Our destination for Wednesday was Norfolk, VA with plans to pick-up Dave’s friend, Bob, and to take on some fuel. To enter the Norfolk area, you must transit an area called Hampton Roads which is noted in the guidebooks as “one of the busiest shipping crossroads in the world”.   As we were entering the Hampton Roads area, we passed the Norwegian Tall Ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl as it was going out to sea.  The Norwegian Navy uses this tall ship to train their first year officer cadets and Norfolk is a normal stop for them on their training itinerary. 

Norwegian Tall Ship "Statsraad Lehmkuhl" Departing Norfolk, VA

 Norfolk is a major port for the US Navy and they have many ships and various vessels alongside the docks.  Here is a picture of two aircraft carriers, the Enterprise and the Abraham Lincoln, side-by-side on the east side of Hampton Roads.

US Navy Aircraft Carriers "Enterprise" and "Abraham Lincoln"

 Norfolk is also the starting point “Mile 0” of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), also known as “The Ditch”.  We anchored at Hospital point, on the Portsmouth side of the Elizabeth River and dinghied over of the Norfolk side to meet Bob for dinner at a little Italian trattoria and then to bring him and his gear back to the boat for his weeklong cruise.  We delayed our departure the next morning to coincide with the first bridge opening of the day, the Gilmerton Bridge and Gilmerton RailRoad Bridge.  There are a lot of bridges on the ICW, most open only on the hour or half-hour and it is important to time your voyage to match the bridge schedules. 

Flotilla of Boats waiting for bridge opening, ICW Norfolk, VA

 Once thru the first bridge, we pulled into Top Rack Marina for fuel and a pump-out.  There are several apps and websites that let you check fuel prices at marinas along the way, and the Top Rack price of $3.59 per gallon was the best we have seen all summer.  We took on 500 gallons, pumped out the black water tank and got some barbeque sandwiches for our lunch.  The fuel stop was just before a bridge so we timed our exit from the dock accordingly. 

The fuel valve on our starboard forward fuel tank leaks and lets fuel into the tank, whether you want it to go there or not.  Because of this, after re-fueling, we ended up with more fuel than planned in that tank and had a noticeable starboard list after our fuel stop We cruised this way for the next two days (note: this section of the blog is in italics because we had a starboard list during this portion of our journey.  It is meant to give you the feeling of leaning to the right for two days), until Dave and Bob devised a way to move the fuel from that tank to the port side (more on that below).  After the bridge near Top Rack Marina, our next bit of excitement was the Great Bridge Lock followed by the Great Bridge.  The lock drops boats down about 2 feet of elevation before proceeding south down the ICW; the opening of the Great Bridge is timed for the lock vessel traffic.   This was our first time through a lock and we tied our lines to the lock cleats with a large bowline loop, helped by a lock worker.  Once the water in the lock dropped, we were on our own to get our lines off the cleats, and a bowline loop didn’t work very well.  Bob finally jumped from the boat to the lock wall, got the lines off the cleats and then jumped back aboard.  We learned later from some ICW veterans that it is better to loop the line around the cleat and keep the non-knotted end of the line aboard the boat so that when it is time to go you can let loose of the end and it slips freely from the cleat.

Great Lock, ICW

As we were waiting for the next bridge, another 4 miles downriver, a sailboat behind us radioed that a sail boat next to him was aground.  He didn’t think he had enough power to help so he asked if we could turn around and help pull the boat off the bottom.  We turned around and went to help.  The sailboat aground was being operated by one man, apparently with no radio on board.   He was on deck waving his arms around wildly, swinging a small rope that he wanted to throw to us.  Bob prepared one of our heavier lines to throw to the guy, but after yelling to him, decided that there was no place to tie it on his stern.  We navigated close enough so that he could throw us his line and we managed to pull him off the bottom.  He shouted that all was well and wanted Bob to throw his line back.  Bob shouted back that he should start his engine before letting go of the line, so he went below to do so.  During the whole process, the guy used a few choice words about missing the bridge opening and having to wait for the next one.  Interesting how he seemed more concerned about missing the bridge than he did about being aground.  Needless to say, we did miss the bridge and had to wait for the next one.  Between that and the fueling, we were behind schedule for the day and had quite a ways to go before reaching our destination, Coinjock, NC.  Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal as we would just drop the hook somewhere convenient before dark, but anchoring places in that stretch of the ICW were limited.  We called the Coinjock Marina to make sure they would still be there to help us with the lines when we arrived and they assured us they would be.  With sunset at 5:00 p.m. we had two hours of cruising in the dark before we would get to Coinjock.  With Bob working the spotlight, Dave steering and me picking up channel markers with the binoculars, we arrived dockside at 7:00 p.m.  The dockhands there are very experienced and know how to pack as many boats as possible into their available space.  There was about 120 feet of dockspace available when we arrived and they had another 70 foot boat coming in after us.  We pulled up as close as possible to the boat in front of us, tied the lines tight and headed to the restaurant for supper.  We got a seat by the window so that we could watch the 70 footer dock behind us.  To give you some perspective of how tight the fit was, here is a picture of the boat docked in front of us and of the 70 footer behind us (no zoom used for either picture).  All-in-all, a very exciting first day on the boat for Bob. 

Boat in front of Seabiscuit's Bow, Coinjock, NC
 (you can see our bow rail at the bottom of the picture)

 

Boat at Seabiscuit's Stern, Coinjock, NC

 The next day was not nearly as exciting.  There were several good anchorages available on the Alligator River less than 50 miles from Coinjock, so we pulled away later than usual and made a short day of it.  (Note:  at an average speed of 7 knots, 50 nautical miles takes 7 hours).  We anchored up, watched the sunset and Bob cooked a gourmet dinner.

Chef Bob in Seabiscuit's galley

Our destination the next day was Belhaven, NC.  Belhaven is a sleepy little town with most of the buildings on Main Street either for sale or lease.  They did have a hardware store, and Dave and Bob had figured out a way to move fuel out of the starboard forward tank if they could get about 20 feet of 1” hose.  The hardware store had hose that would work, so we bought 20 feet and a couple of hose clamps and then walked across the street for lunch at the local burger joint.  Finally, the weather had warmed up and we ate lunch at the picnic tables outside in our shirt sleeves.  Then it was back out to the boat to move some fuel.  They hooked up one end of the hose to the foot valve (sludge valve) on the port forward tank and the other end to the drain valve on the fuel polishing filter, upstream of the fuel transfer pumps.  This allowed them to use the onboard fuel transfer pumps to move fuel from the starboard forward tank to the port forward tank.  They were unable to transfer fuel normally because the leaking valve is part of the fuel fill manifold.  If they tried to transfer fuel between any of the tanks other than the day tanks, most of the fuel ended up back in the forward starboard tank as it leaked back through the bad valve.

Bob during the fuel transfer process
Sitting near the port forward tank sludge valve

 

Dave during the fuel transfer process
sitting near the fuel polishing filter

After the fuel transfer, the boat was back level and much more comfortable.  The guys had showers and we headed back into town for a walk around town and some supper.  We wandered up to the main drag and heard a bunch of high revving engines so we had to walk over and see what was happening.  It was the Saturday night tractor races.  The tractors were various models of converted lawn tractors.  They hooked up to a weighted sled and pulled down the track as far as they could go, WOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!  We had a nice seafood dinner at Fish Hooks and then dinghied back out to the boat.

Belhaven, NC Tractor Pull

Here is another interesting North Carolina picture from Belhaven...

NC Tug Boat

From Belhaven, we traveled to Oriental, another small NC town, and dinghied into town for a walk and dinner.  The next day, Monday, we traveled to Swansboro and docked at Casper’s for two nights.  We wandered to the Ice House for supper… very fresh seafood and my vote for the best meal on the ICW so far.  Tuesday morning was Bob’s day to depart the boat and head back home to Texas.  We got up early and went to Yana’s for breakfast.  Yana’s is a local café with Elvis Presley/Marilyn Monroe/James Dean decorations and is noted for their fruit fritters.  We passed on the fruit fritters but had a good feed of blueberry pancakes and omelets.  We had a rental car delivered to us at the marina at 9 and then drove Bob to Greenville (about 2 hours by car) for his flight home.  We used the rest of the time with the rental car to do laundry and get groceries and then headed back to the boat for a quiet night aboard. 

Traveling the ICW you tend to see the same boats traveling each day, so by staying here an extra day, we separated from the boats we started with at Mile 0 and joined up with a new pack of boats traveling south.   It is very helpful to get to know the boats in your pack as everyone is good about advising of shoal (shallow) areas and giving advice of places to anchor or dock.  We anchored out last night near Carolina Beach and are planning to dock near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina tonight.  The weather while Bob was on board was mostly sunny and warmer but it turned cold again on Tuesday when he left and we are motoring in the rain and cold today.  We’re are back to wearing our hoodies and slippers, waiting for the next burst of sun.

As I was finishing this blog, we were still in route to Myrtle Beach, about 2 hours from our destination.  As they say in many of the cruising guides, when you are cruising the ICW it’s not if you go aground, it’s when.  Sure enough we had our when today.  We were cruising by the Little River Inlet, near the North Carolina / South Carolina border and we found ourselves without enough water under the keel, stuck fast.  We checked the tide tables and found out that it was about 10 minutes until low tide.  One of the boats who had been following us all day came around the corner so we advised them that it was best to come around our port side where there seemed to be more water.  We warned off a few more boats and talked to TowBoat US and SeaTow (two of the most common boating tow companies) about the possibility of towing us off.  SeaTow, who we have a membership with, didn’t have a boat in the area.  The TowBoat US operator was nearby and offered to tow us off, but because of the weight of the boat didn’t feel comfortable doing so since we weren’t members.  By that time the tide was starting to come in and the boat was starting to swing in the tide and the wind.  We waited another 30 minutes and as the tide came up we swung free, fired up the engines and got back under way.  We cleared two more swing bridges and arrived at our marina for the night at about 6:00 p.m., so we didn’t have to do too much cruising after dark.  After securing the boat at the dock, we walked up the street for a well-deserved happy hour. 

Really cool Dolphin video and Superstorm Sandy

Location:  Annapolis, Maryland

It was an exciting trip getting here, with Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy going almost right over the top of us (more on that below).  We started out from Wentworth-by-the-Sea on Friday, October 19 after I arrived back on the boat from my dad’s burial ceremony in Bismarck/Mandan, ND.  One of his last requests was to be buried at the Veteran’s Cemetery in Mandan.  My mom, my uncle Max, my uncle George, my cousin Barney and his wife Deb, and I all arrived on Sunday, Oct. 14.  On Monday, we took a trip over to the cemetery to check things out and also did some sight-seeing in Bismarck.  We spent the morning at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, where Custer lived prior to his last stand against the Sioux.  The buildings were closed because they were decorated for “Haunted Fort” tours for the Halloween season.  We looked in the windows of the building and got to see the ghoulish decorations and they opened up the commissary building for us so that we could look inside at where they had the costumes staged for the weekend tours.  On-A-Slant Indian Village is in the same state park and has replicas of Indian earthlodges.  The Lewis and Clark expedition spent a lot of time in this area traveling on the Missouri River.  After the state park, we searched for other historic locations in the area.  This is a picture of us standing in front of the “Whispering Giant”, listed on the guide map as an historical landmark.  In reality it was a wooden carving on the street corner in front of a liquor store.

Cousin Barney, Uncle George, Mom, Uncle Max, B at Whispering Giant, Mandan, ND

Dad’s burial ceremony was very nice.  The honor guard was there and they did a flag folding ceremony, played Taps and did a nine gun salute.  After the ceremony, we walked up the hill to his burial plot.  It’s in a good location with a view overlooking the Missouri River.  Plenty of family and friends came for the service and it was nice to catch up with cousins and their families, many of which I hadn’t seen for 25 years.  The next day we decided to try some more cultural experiences so we went to the Heritage Center (it was closed for renovations) and a tour of the state capitol building.  This is a picture from the 19^th floor of the capitol building looking out over the city.

View from 19th Floor of ND Capitol Building, Bismarck

Most of us who flew in for the services left early Thursday morning and I arrived back in NH late Thursday night.  Friday morning we took the truck back over to Dave’s Dad’s house, said our good-byes and headed south to Gloucester.  The wind was predicted to blow up to 45 knots that afternoon and the ride was very rough.  Dave lost his whole crew that day and was up in the pilot house bucking the waves with no company for most of the day.  We got to the north side of the Blynman Canal early afternoon and were protected from the worst of the wind, so the rest of the ride into Gloucester harbor was calm.  I talked about the Blynman Canal in an earlier post when we traveled north thru it; it is still very tight quarters and the bridge at the south end is very narrow.   Saturday morning we moved from Gloucester to Salem and dinner with Al and Patti at Finnz.  Salem is definitely a happening spot during Halloween with people in costumes and plenty of Halloween decorations.  This is a picture of a house decked out for the holiday, with huge spiders and webs and ghouls in the yard hovering over boiling cauldrons.

Salem Halloween House

From Salem, we went to the Plymouth/Duxbury area, anchored out and had dinner with Craig and Verna.  Craig and Dave were classmates at MMA and Craig is now a professor there.  Verna does interior design and they have a beautifully decorated house in Kingston.  Our plans for the next day were to go thru the Cape Cod Canal and Craig asked that we give him a call when we got to the east entrance.  MMA is on the west side of the canal and when we arrived there, Craig had arranged a group of cadets along the pier.  While we were cruising by, they shouted “Bon Voyage, Captain Herndon”.  It was really cool and very thoughtful of Craig to arrange it.  Here is a picture of the cadets along the pier.

MMA Cadets "Bon Voyage, Capt. Herndon"

We made it through the canal late afternoon and proceeded to Cuttyhunk for the night.  We arrived there after dark, so got to practice some night cruising.  This is a picture looking back at the Cuttyhunk harbor as we were cruising out the next morning.  From Cuttyhunk, we cruised to Block Island, RI.  Last year when we stopped here in August, the harbor mooring field was packed with boats and the restaurants ashore were packed with people.  This year, most of the moorings were already winterized and we were one of the only boats anchored in the harbor.  We dinghyed into town and asked a local where to get a beer.  She mentioned that only two places were open, one for beer and one for beer and food, so we had a beer at the first place, then walked up to Club Soda for another beer and Taco Tuesday dinner (tacos $2 each).

Cuttyhunk Harbor

Our original plan from Block Island was to cruise into Long Island Sound and to spend a few days in New London, CT where there is a huge Defender store.  Defender is a marine supply store and we have been developing our Defender wish list as we have been cruising this summer.  So it was going to be a big shopping spree, bring your wallet type of stop.  Instead, we checked the weather, noted it was going to be three days of good weather and decided to cruise along the southern shore of Long Island and skip Defender.  There are very few places to turn in along the southern shore and most inlets buoys are uncharted because the inlets have constantly shifting shoals, so it is not recommended that you cruise here in inclement weather.  We spent the first night in Shinnecock Bay, a large basin with about 8 foot depths.  We anchored out and left early the next morning.  Day 2 we went thru Jones Inlet.  As we were going in, following the buoys, a “head boat” fishing vessel hailed us on the radio and told us not to continue any further as the channel was mismarked and if we continued we would probably go aground.  He advised that we turn around, come back out and then follow him in.  We did and after we were inside, he advised us of a good place to anchor for the night.   We got up the next morning, checked the weather and headed for the New Jersey shore.  By that time, the predictions were that Sandy was going to come up the east coast.  Our leisurely cruise along the Jersey shore, with a planned stop in Atlantic City for a little gambling, now became a race to get somewhere safe out of the seas before the storm got too close.  On the leg from Long Island to New Jersey, a pod of short-beaked common dolphins joined us and swam in our bow wake for about an hour.  Very Cool!  Something that we will remember for a long time.  Here is a still picture of the dolphins and a short video of them swimming in our bow wake.

Dolphins swimming in bow wake

 We spent a long day cruising and anchored inside Barnegat Inlet for the night.   Here is a picture of the Barnegat Inlet Lighthouse at dawn. 

Barnegat Lighthouse at dawn

On Saturday, we spent another long day cruising to get around Cape May and up inside Delaware Bay before the predicted 12 – 16 feet seas on the Atlantic side of the coast.  (The predicted sea state of 12 – 16 foot waves means that the forecasted wave is equal to the average of the highest 1/3 of all waves.  In real terms this means that the maximum wave can be expected to be 1.86 times this prediction, so 12 -16 feet would be max of 22 – 30 feet.  Needless to say, we didn’t want to be out there in it when the waves reached those heights.)  The next day, Sunday, we left our anchorage near Cape May at o’dark thirty in order to make it up the Delaware Bay, thru the C&D canal and into northern Chesapeake Bay before sundown.  Our plan was to anchor in the Sassafras River and ride out the storm there.  We arrived mid Sunday afternoon and anchored up in the river just south of Knight Island and felt comfortable with our chosen location.  Sunday night was fairly quiet.  Monday dawned with plenty of wind and rain.  We set-up an anchor watch alarm on our chart plotter and our radar and took turns watching those and out the window to make sure we were holding fast.  About 10 a.m., the wind shifted and started coming more from the Northwest.   0ur watch circles indicated that our anchor was slipping so we pulled up the anchor and moved across the river so that the land mass better protected us from the NW wind.  All afternoon, the rain continued and the wind continued to increase in intensity.  We took turns on watch during the day and agreed that Dave would take the 8 p.m. to midnight watch and I would take the midnight to 4 a.m. watch.  About 10:30, I checked on Dave and he said all was well.  At 11:00, I could hear Dave zooming the chart plotter in and out, in and out, beep, beep, beep, beep.  Pretty soon, he fired up the main and I knew I better get out of bed.  The winds at that time were probably blowing 50 – 60 knots with gusts even higher.  I went out on deck to watch the chain come in and to help Dave with visual navigation.  We got the chain in (about 200 feet) and moved up river and across to the other side to get more protection from the south wind and re-anchored.  While we were making sure we were set and not slipping, we both felt a lull in the storm and assumed the eye must be passing overhead. Our barometer read 946mb at that time and if you look at the storm track you can see how close to the center of the storm we were.  Dave stayed on watch until about 3 a.m. when the worst of it was over and then I took over to watch the sun come up.  Anchor spot #3 was the charm and we didn’t have any more issues after that.  We came thru unscathed, with only some slight damage to the stem paint on the bow because of dragging the anchor chain across it while pulling in for our second reset.  The charts here will give you an idea of where we were and our anchor positions.  The first chart is the upper Chesapeake Bay.  You can see Annapolis and Baltimore on the western shore and there is a box around the Sassafras River on the Eastern Shore.  The second chart is the Sassafras River with anchoring spots 1, 2 and 3 noted.

Chart - Upper Chesapeake Bay

 

Chart - Sassafras River with anchor locations

Tuesday was a nice quiet day with some rain and wind, but very light compared to the previous day.  We both caught up on our sleep and watched the river flow mud from the creeks and land that were affected by the storm.  We also saw the local docks being overtopped by the rain and surge flooding of about 3 feet for this area.  The quadruple whammy of the rain, wind, storm surge and higher than normal tides contributed to the much of the damage seen along the New Jersey and New York coastlines.  Wednesday morning all was well, we pulled up anchor and headed for Annapolis where we are now.  We have spent the last few days visiting with Jennie (my friend from college, she was on the boat with us in August) and testing the food and beer joints around town.  Annapolis is a very quaint, easily walkable town, with a lot of bars and restaurants near the water front.  Yesterday there was a big tug-of-war fest.  The rope was strung across the harbor and teams from the Annapolis side tugged against teams on the Eastport side.  We’re on a City of Annapolis mooring so we had front row seats for the event.  Dave’s friends Tom and Sandy live in Easton (on the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay) so they came into town yesterday for a tour of the boat and lunch at an Irish Pub.  They also have a trawler and will someday join us for a cruise either headed south or north from here.  We just got back from a crab cake lunch at Davis’s Pub on the Eastport side of the harbor, so time to post and prepare for our next adventure.