Cruising on the ICW: Virginia to North Carolina

"Front porch" view at the dock in Portsmouth

After our never-ending night crossing on the Chesapeake Bay, we decided to spend a full day recovering unwinding and a full night's sleep the next night, while tied up in Portsmouth, Virginia.

We may have been just across the waterway from Norfolk, but we never made it over there. The strong wind coming off the water and cold temperatures made the thought of getting on a ferry to cross the channel less than appealing. Also, by the time we got up to start our day, the sun had already climbed high into the sky. The first order of business was to get to the office at the marina to pay for our dockage and get the combo to the bathhouse so everyone could get cleaned up.

Later, my dad and I decided to stretch our legs by walking to the nearest grocery store a few miles away. With only small towns on our path for the rest of the trip, we agreed to re-stock when we had the chance- couldn't let the crew's beer supply run dry, after all!

Dad on our walk to the store in Portsmouth

The next morning we pushed off at 8:45 a.m., heading south down the channel towards our next stop: Coinjock Marina at Mile Marker 50 in Coinjock, North Carolina. Since the ICW begins in Norfolk at Mile 0, we had 50 statute miles* to go.

Our early departure had been timed to coincide with the opening time for the Gilmerton Highway Bridge, but a delayed opening at a previous bridge, due to a train passing through, forced us to miss its opening by just a few minutes. So we bobbed and circled in the somewhat narrow channel for the next 45 minutes until the Gilmerton reopened. Even, or perhaps, especially on the water, timing is everything.

When you're traveling down the ICW, bridges pose the biggest challenge to sailors. Most bridges lower than 65 feet tall open on a set schedule or upon request via radio to the bridge operator (the invisible guy hanging out in the bridge's control tower). Here, I have to note how essential it is for cruisers to get local knowledge when navigating. Before the trip Scotty and I found plenty of helpful information on web sites and online cruising forums, as well as in books we bought specifically for the trip. Still, nothing was as comprehensive as a simple printout of the recently updated bridge schedule we got from the marina. It's great reminder to always check locally before you go.

Bridges were high on our list of concerns for the trip, actually the main concern, because the Wind-Lass has a very tall mast. There are two types of CSY models for our specific sailboat layout and ours is a tall rig, shoal draft. And at 64 feet high our mast is higher than most. Most fixed bridges on the ICW were built to a standard 65 feet of vertical clearance, or the amount of space between water and bridge.

"Highway Bridge" at Mile Marker 7

On top of our mast is a flexible metal antenna and a 2.5-inch high navigational light. The fixed light leaves us with just about 9 inches of clearance left. Tide and wind also come into play, making it essential to monitor them closely.

Scotty climbs the mast to remove wind instruments for going under bridges

Of course, there is an exception the standard 65-foot high bridges: the Wilkerson Bridge (there's another 56-foot bridge near Miami but we'll cross that... ahem, you know the rest.). An engineering screw-up when the Wilkerson was built meant that the bridge's clearance wound up at 64 feet tall, a whole foot less than the others and the height of our mast. We talked about going around it via the Pamlico Sound through North Carolina's outer banks and decided against that due to rough waters and shallow depths caused by shoaling. 

Instead, we had to hope the 6 inches- give or take- of inland tide would give us enough clearance to pass through, or, as a last resort, tilt the boat to the side like this guy did. Pretty entertaining... when it's not your boat!

But that bridge was still several days away on our journey so we settled in for the relatively short eight hours of motoring to Coinjock. 

Osprey nest at the entrance to the Great Dismal Swamp route

Heading south on the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal

Dominion Boulevard Steel Highway Bridge

Opening up to let us through

Goodbye bridge

Next up, more small towns on the North Carolina ICW and one pesky low bridge to conquer!

*On the ICW, distances are charted in statute- or "regular" miles, versus where routes on the open ocean are charted in nautical miles. One statute mile equals roughly .87 nautical mile. Why didn't we learn this in math class?? (Preferably while learning how to sail to make it more relevant, of course..)

Crossing the Chesapeake Bay: It was a dark and stormy night...

The day after the launch and what was to be the day of our originally scheduled departure, a huge storm blew through. That had to happen, right? Because leaving on time, as planned, and in nice weather would have been way too easy for a first trip.

The morning began with a monsoon-like downpour giving Scotty and I an "extra rinse" on the way back to the boat from the shower house. Because our chances of pulling out of there looked dismal at best, Scotty and I went to the office for a second opinion from the boatyard owner. He confirmed that with strong gusts and rough seas out on the Chesapeake Bay it would be advisable not to leave that day. However, the next day appeared okay, though after that another storm would be moving through. 

So we hunkered down to wait out the storm moving across the Bay. Scotty and I had returned the rental car the night before so we were more or less stuck at the yard. But by early afternoon the rain stopped and the sun came out, so my dad and I armed ourselves with a backpack each and set off on foot to the marine supply store and the grocery store. Of course, the longer we waited, the more things I thought of that we might need... (provisioning post to come later!)

Wind-Lass at sunrise in Annapolis ~ March 13, 2013

The next day began clear and calm with almost zero wind: our weather window.

We rushed to get the sails up and leave before 11 a.m. so we wouldn't be charged for yet another night of dockage. At 9:45 a.m. we untied the lines and Scotty motored the Wind-Lass away from the docks. The boatyard was located up a wide creek that led out into the bay and after a quick stop for fuel, we were finally on our way! And it felt so good.

Leaving Annapolis in our wake

It started out clear and sunny, but very cold. Clearly, Spring had not yet come to the Chesapeake.

Zoomed up view of Annapolis skyline

The captain and his dad

Hey! Where is my blue sky going?

Scotty and Larry traded off watch, taking four hours at a time each at the wheel. I kept up with the log book and helped navigate using the paper charts we had purchased in Juneau and suddenly realizing just how helpful all those hours spent at the library had become. Yes, we have modern electronic navigational equipment, but while learning how to use it, current charts help avoid error and can be compared to the equipment's findings. And there's another good reason for being able to navigate the "old-fashioned" way, though perhaps Larry put it best: "If your equipment craps out in the middle of the ocean, you'd damn well better be able to navigate without it." Well said, captain. :)

My permanent perch in the cockpit

As the day went on we all enjoyed being out on the water. I refused to take any seasickness medication to see how I would do crossing that large body of water, but then pretty much planted myself on the cockpit benches for the next eight hours as we motored south down the bay to avoid any weird motion that was going on down below deck. If that's what I have to do to (hopefully) avoid it, so be it. After all, most of our voyages in the future won't be this cold. (And it was really, really cold...)

As the hours went by the clouds grew and the waves picked up, increasing from one to two-foot waves, up to three to five-footers. Though we had the sails ready to go, conditions were never right to make use of them.

Scotty and I stood watch from 6 to 10 p.m. and when Larry got up from a nap to take over the wheel, the seas had become quite rough (these photos were taken before that point). With daylight gone and hours to go heading south across the bay, we would now be navigating by the lights on channel markers. Scotty and Larry had planned for this to happen and to motor all night, a "time-saving" concept I had only grudgingly accepted. Now I saw that there was really no alternative. And when you're out on a large body of water like that and the seas get rough, it's not as simple as just "pulling over".

We all looked for lights flashing at the frequency noted on the paper charts, for example, "Red flashing every ten seconds". Except the charts don't spell that out, just have abbreviations like: "RF "A" 10 sec".

So, I would climb down the companionway, find our current latitude and longitude on the paper chart, find what I thought was the closest light on our bearing, climb back up and let the guys know what to look for. Scotty did plenty of this as well. All the while, the seas were churning, rocking us from side to side so that down below if you looked at a window you would see nothing but waves and the next instant nothing but sky.

Finding the navigation lights proved to be a real challenge, because there weren't just a few to choose from on the horizon, there were hundreds. Somehow, over the years I had cultivated this idea of Norfolk, Virginia (our next stop) as a small, historic, coastal town. As it turns out, Norfolk is both coastal and historic, but it is definitely not small. Norfolk is the second most populated city in Virginia (after Virginia Beach) and includes a major shipping and commercial port, including a large Navy base. Also, it happens to be PETA's headquarters (I may or may not have considered interning there as a college student).

We headed southeast to enter the channel leading to the waterway known as Hampton Roads which we would need to enter to begin traveling down the Intra-Coastal Waterway. This meant negotiating the convergence of several major shipping channels and all the traffic that went with them. This also meant that amid the navigational lights we were trying to locate on the horizon were other lights that moved... tanker lights. And knowing you're not the only one out there in the middle of that inky darkness is not comforting- it just means there are more things to avoid hitting.

Logically, I knew that the night would end, but emotionally it seemed unlikely. The coldness was the worst part for me by far. The hours dragged on, the stress of difficult conditions exacerbated by lack of sleep. Then our heater quit at about two in the morning; I could see my breath when I went below deck. At three thirty, I made the decision to get a few hours of sleep when I realized I was going to be more of a hindrance than a help to the guys as we neared land. They didn't seem to mind and I was glad to be out of the way at that point. 

At five-thirty in the morning we pulled right in to the Tidewater Yacht Marina and tied up at a nice open end dock as if it had been reserved just for us (it hadn't, but we would pay once they opened). Scotty got the heater working again and he and Larry cheered with beers they each only took a few sips of before conking out. The next day we woke up to clear blue skies though it was still only about 45 degrees and windy. Below, the Wind-Lass rests in her primo spot with the skyline of Norfolk across the channel in the background.

More stories of the journey to follow!

First Launch!

Has anyone else ever seen a 44-foot sailboat put in the water? Well, I hadn't before the trip so I practically begged Scotty to wait for me to get there before it happened. At first he sort of scoffed, "It's nothing to see. Wouldn't you just rather show up with the boat ready to go?"

Um... no, not really, honey. (Men, sometimes...)

This is my sad face at the thought of that happening!

I mean, this was a milestone after all. And with all the time we spent waiting to get the Wind-Lass in the water, I was beginning to think maybe we'd bought a nice little house on stilts instead of a boat...

Scotty had already been in Annapolis for eight days by the time the rest of the crew arrived, minus Larry who had flown out earlier to help Scotty with some necessary repairs.

On my way East, I stopped into Minneapolis for a quick layover while heading to the East Coast so my dad and I could fly out together. And Scotty's dad managed to get on a flight from Atlanta that arrived in Baltimore within minutes of ours coming from Minneapolis, so that Scotty could pick us up all at once. It sounded like a plan that was too good to be true, but actually ended up working out. (Hooray for small miracles!)

What I didn't take into account was that Scotty would be arriving in an economy rental car (booked by yours truly), and we had enough luggage for a small army of refugees. Picture that cartoon where a crowd of clowns try to fit into a tiny vehicle- yep, that was us at the Baltimore airport.

So, feeling very sardine-like, we all made it the 30-odd miles south to Annapolis to spend two nights on the boat while it was still out of the water.

The next several days were jam-packed with shopping. It was something I had sort of been looking forward to because living in Juneau really makes me crave variety in my shopping experiences and I wouldn't even call myself an enthusiastic shopper. Really, even grocery store shopping in unfamiliar stores/ cities, is a delight for me these days.

But since I had never helped provision or refit a boat before, I couldn't have anticipated the sheer magnitude of what  it would take to procure all things needed by a large sailboat and a crew of five for a 500-mile cruise. I ended up doing most of the shopping with my dad and Scotty's dad, while Scotty and Larry diligently worked on getting the boat ready. Talk about a learning curve, but with everyone pulling together we managed to get it done in time. Let's just say, I got to know this place intimately by the time we pulled out of town:

The day of the launch we all woke up around 7:30 a.m. and made various trips to the showers before the boatyard staff arrived for the day. Then at about 8:30 a.m. I called to let the office know we were ready to go, all the while sort of panicking about whether we really were. The boatyard guys arrived a mere five minutes later (!) and it was time to get off the boat while they started going to work with arranging huge straps underneath the hull and then removing the boat stands.

The whole thing may have been nerve-wracking for this new owner, but those guys were pros.

Now that I've seen it happen, I'm guessing the next time won't be quite as big of a deal. But I'll still probably breath a sigh of relief when the big girl slips happily into the water again.

Next up, our Chesapeake Bay crossing!

We did it: 500 Miles on the ICW!

Suffice to say, the Wind-Lass and our crew of five made a successful voyage from Annapolis, Maryland to Beaufort, North Carolina! But as far as blogging goes, now that March has melted into April I'm wondering whether we took a trip to the Bermuda Triangle rather than on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway...

Along for the trip were Scotty's friend from South Carolina, Captain Larry; my dad, Denny; Scotty's dad, Felton; Scotty and me. It was the first time everyone had met each other, including our dads, and we were so glad they could all be there to take part in the adventure. Plus, we thought the dads would have a good time and wouldn't mind if conditions turned cold or bumpy; fortunately we were right!

My dad, Captain Larry, and Captain Scotty

During the trip we dodged a storm (or two), encountered some rough water crossing the Chesapeake Bay, wrestled with a finicky heater (it needs a new part), and still managed to have a pretty good time in close quarters for ten days straight. It wasn't always easy, but we accomplished our mission of getting to North Carolina and had a lot of fun in the process.

Hanging out in the main salon

I can also say that I am seriously in love with our new sailboat. From her Yanmar 75 HP engine to her fully battened mainsail (among other fun accessories), the Wind-Lass is a champ, giving us few problems en route on a boat new to all of us. And she may need some interior decorating, but I'm looking forward to that part.

The two captains caught in a rare moment of downtime just before the launch

Without a doubt, the hugest and most indispensable ingredient behind our successful voyage was the hard work of Scotty and his friend Captain Larry who worked for uncountable hours on necessary repairs and maintenance before the launch. Quite literally, the trip could not have happened without them.

Scotty climbing the mast to remove instruments for going under bridges

While we were gone, each day seemed to just fly by. Even after waking up early in the morning, I would later find myself looking at the clock in amazement that it was already four o'clock in the afternoon. Needless to say, the trip went by too quickly and left me even more excited about life on the water. I've got plenty to learn, but perhaps that's the best part.

And you know what they say in Never-Never Land: as long as you keep learning, you'll never grow old.

I'll be back soon with more about our trip, how we made it under some pesky, low bridges, and a virtual visit to some charming and tiny coastal towns I had never seen before the trip, much less heard of.