Has your boat suddenly sprouted wheels or wings?
Captain and Seadog on Talespinner in the Great Dismal Swamp Lock
That was the question that a non-boating friend emailed recently after reading my reports on SPOT. She had been watching my progress on the map as I seemed to travel across great swaths of land. For those of us who are boaters, we forget that so many Americans don't know about all these great canals that were built centuries ago in our country. Most of my northbound trip was either offshore or just inside the Outer Banks, and I am traveling much of this route myself for the first time. But I am not alone. It is the time of the annual cruising boat migration and I feel a bit like I'm in a herd. In the photo above, you can see me on the left standing on the foredeck of my boat, holding Chip, the Intrepid Seadog in his doggy sweater. We fit 18 boats into the lock and it took nearly 2 hours to shoehorn them all in and raise us up 8 feet.
The Great Dismal Swamp was resplendent with fall foliage and I made friends with lots of new cruisers. After jamming ourselves into the lock in the morning, most of the same boats spent the night rafted up to the Visitor's Center in the center of the swamp – which doubles as a truckstop for the highway. You can't even see my boat in the photo as I was all the way at the back with my wind generator and mast head instruments in the trees.
Great Dismal Swamp Raft-up
These long days of motoring down these man-made canals on these chilly October days have led to trying to find the best spot for the seadog.
Chip's Solarium
I finally realized that the top of the main hatch just inside the dodger acted as a little sunroom for him. He sleeps like a baby (or old man) in his own solarium now.
Exploring the back creeks of these little canals and byways is one of the best parts of this inland voyaging. And one thing I really like about traveling with a dog is that it forces you to find places where you can go ashore when it is cold and windy, even though it is tempting to just stay on the boat.
My Intrepid (blind and deaf) Scout
If I had done that, I never would have found this wonderful spot off the Aligator-Pungo Canal. I was looking for a place to anchor for the night, and I chose this spot just before the canal narrows into a straight man-made ditch. Off to starboard, there was this long skinny bay. On my iPad, I have the app Navimatics Charts and Tideswhich incorporates Active Captain information and I learned on there that this anchorage had a small boat ramp for getting a dog ashore. I took my iPad to navigate in the dinghy as Chip and I set off into the wilds in this uninhabited area at 4:30 with the temperature dropping and no cell phone access.
I anchored just off the letter "Y" in Georgia Bay then dinghied up creek
When we found the place, we turned into this long eery creek back through the swamp grass. I kept thinking we wound find the launch ramp, but we continued farther and farther inland. The creek was bordered by cypress knees and stark barren trunks of trees while hawks wheeled overhead and crows cawed from the pines. Once we arrived at the ramp, we tied up to a little pier just beyond which I saw a weed-eaten, broken-down wood shack and an old stained fish boat. The place made me wonder if that wasn't banjo music I heard on the wind in the trees.
Deliverance Homebase
Tomorrow, I will cross the Pamlico River and then pass through more man-made canals to carry boats from one river to the next. I will end up on the Neuse River and hopefully make it to Oriental for the night tomorrow night. Once again, it will look on SPOT as if my boat is crossing land as I traverse the tiny canals that join these rivers. And that pattern will continue all the way to Florida. For the last two days, I've had 20-25 knots of wind on the nose and my motoring has sometimes been slowed to under 3 knots in the sounds or rivers where the chop builds and the boat slams. Tomorrow, the forecast is for north winds at 20-25, but this time they will be from behind me so I'm not nearly as worried about making my goal. Day after tomorrow will be New Bern, my destination.
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Boys and Their Toys
Even while I was fighting the elements, I was passed by some of our fighting Marines from down at Camp LeJeune. Five boatloads of these guys raced past me today, and they looked like they were having so much fun speeding along at 35 knots, I thought that a picture of them flying down the waterway on an Indian summer afternoon would make a great recruiting poster.
I worry that all this all this boat driving is keeping me from getting my book done, and I do desperately want to get it out there, but at night, after 10 hours at the helm, it's all I can do to keep my eyes open. In addition, on all these back country canals, I've gone 6 days without Internet and tonight I went into a marina just so I could get connected and upload my blog. Now I have over 800 unread emails and no idea when I'll have tine to look at them. The thing is, I know I'll never be as dedicated a writer as some who dream of only doing that. I am a Sailing Writer and the boating part is integral to the writing part of who I am.
Tomorrow morning, I must get up bright and early to continue my southbound adventures on the Intracoastal Waterway. It's difficult to believe that one week from today, I'll be in Norfolk, VA aboard the Emmy Kate provisioning the galley for the Caribbean 1500 trip to the B.V.I.'s.
Fair winds!
Christine
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