On the morning of February 10th, we headed out of Norfolk and started on the Intracoastal Waterway. Stopped at Ocean Yacht Marina on the way out to get diesel. When it turned out there was no way we’d make the 11:00 AM opening at the canal’s northern lock, we stuck around to get water and ice too.
Left Norfolk for good at 10:40 AM, heading towards the Dismal Swamp Canal, checking off bridges passed in our waterway guide as we went.
The busy maritime traffic of Norfolk died off pretty darn quickly as we motored away as did the depth of the channel. Tripp, at the sign picture above saw ’70’ on the depth sounder. “Jesus, we still have plenty of water here. Oh, wait! That… is the temperature.” The real depth was about 14. Still plenty for a boat with a 4 foot draft, though.
The warm weather and lazy river pace of the day was a real contrast to the transits down. We got to the Deep Creek Lock at 12:30, tied off to a piling, and radioed the operator to let him know we were there for the 1:30 opening. Our man Neil let us know he’d be done with his lunch break soon and would meet us.
There was a real laid-back Mayberry feel to the canal management, with the operator doing both the lock and nearby bridge on both ends. Which meant, once the lock had filled and we were in the canal, Neil had to drive 10 minutes to meet us at the bridge. But, what a cherry job. Rocking chair on the porch by the station. You know just Neil is tossing a fishing line in on his lunch breaks.
Once in the canal, it was easy straight motoring for a couple hours to the welcome center. The pelicans and seagulls of Norfolk left behind (with a trio of those jerks eyeballing us right at the canal lock), we got to see plenty of box turtles, painted turtles, bald eagles, and great blue herons. More GBHs than the rest of my life combined, including one GAGBH (Giant Ass Great Blue Heron, for those of you who don’t habla science type names). We kept an eye out for the sailboat that Neil said had come in ahead of us, Tripp and I wondering what our kindred spirit out on the ICW might be like. Cool and handsome like us, undoubtedly.
Or so we thought.
Once we got to the Dismal Swamp Welcome Center though, those hopes were quickly dashed when we saw the guy’s beefy aluminum-hulled sailboat tied off smack dab in the middle of the dock like an SUV across three parking spaces. He started yelling at us… Well, at ME on the bow to give him space because he’d be “backing up” to “get to the gate”. By “gate” the man apparently meant the ropes between pilings, all of which were actually removable. But he had set his eyes on the newest ones, which being the lightest colored I guess struck him as having some kind of official capacity.
I relayed this information verbatim to Tripp over the chugging of the engine, but it was apparently so inexplicable Tripp thought I misheard the guy and left the tiller to come forward and talk to the man himself. But, that’s what he had said.
Oh, also, prior to this we had a nice rebound off of a big old tree branch that was at the height of the mast. Could have been way worse, but it definitely was a funny bit of jackassery on our end to display in front of a 70 year old jackass hollering at us.
The man, whose boat and name shall go unmentioned, turned out to be a fairly benign but EXCEPTIONALLY long-winded solo sailor with forty years of anecdotes he could stretch into four hundred year sessions of explication. Tripp told me to avoid this kind of solitary sailing unless I wanted to turn into an old blowhard. Well, I might manage that without the sailing. But advice taken.
Oh, that reminds me of an exchange in Norfolk I forgot to include:
We're walking on Granby Street. An older, heavier-set man with a cane walks out of a taco place, making weird noises of satiation. I turn because of the noise, accidentally make eye contact with the guy, and give him a friendly "howdy". In response, I get some equally weird noise of reciprocal acknowledgement. Tripp shakes his head at me, baffled. "Hot girl walks by? No reaction at all. Fat old guy? 'This is someone I need to talk to!'."
The staff at the Dismal Swamp Welcome Center and the facilities were all fantastic. Pleasant conversation with the ladies as I sat to use the wifi and buy cards the next day (February 11th). Neat boardwalks on the trails in the state park across the river.
The morning of the 11th went at an easy pace and we started getting ready to leave around noon, letting the kid running the bridge at the Welcome Center know we’d be heading out soon in order to make the 1:30 PM opening at the lock on the canal’s southern end.
As an encore, our long-winded friend from the previous evening came up to us in the middle of handling dock lines to leave to blast us about his high protein diet. Then he asked if he could have some of our eggs. We had three left, and some hard-boiled ones Jim Buie (the polar opposite of this guy) had given us in Cape May. This man got them all as payment to leave us the hell alone so we could get the hell going to Lamb’s Marina, where we intended to wait out Sunday’s wind.
Since we weren’t in any particular rush, we put up the staysail and main and meandered down the canal at a couple knots. When we were getting close to the next bridge, the one paired with the lock at the southern end, Tripp was mulling over starting the engine to come alongside the dolphin. But, I cajoled him with a “what would Sam Sikkema do?” to let sleeping Isuzus lie and just sail onto it. If we’d have had more time, we could have walked off the pilings onto the shore and got a souvenir at the flea market. But it wasn’t to be.
In the afternoon, Tripp decided to drop anchor on the Pasquotank River, near Goat Island rather than go down to Lamb’s, to wait out the weather until Monday. We tried like Hell to get in close enough to shore to tie off on a tree, for the humor of it, but couldn’t quite manage it. While we were doing this, what was clearly a migration path for birds hit a green light and a flock that stretched on for miles was winging above us.
I think that’s where we’ll leave update #6. We started reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods that night, about two hilariously underprepared guys attempting to do the Appalachian Trail in 1997. So here’s a terrible quality recording of my reading chapter 3 to Tripp as a curiosity to capture the feel of being at anchor with us on the Pasquotank River in North Carolina, on the evening of Saturday, February 11th.
Next update will include ruminations on black bears and cooking hijinks for the 12th, where we sat all day in the wind and rain.
Be well!
Hermit Thrush 