11/11/99 | Norfolk to Beaufort NC

mile zero

Britt was expecting something more industrial, and I was expecting something more overwhelmingly military, so we were both pleasantly surprised by Norfolk. It's a real city, with skyscrapers and shopping malls, and the waterfront area is being developed with a clearly upscale bent. A free electric bus makes it easy to get around the downtown. We spent an entertaining day at Nauticus, a museum about ocean-related things (sea life, the navy, the weather). They have a huge variety of interactive exhibits: we designed container ships, drilled for oil, listened to sonar echos, and (in a Disneyesque mix of computer displays and live actors) assisted a Navy Aegis ship in combat. We also got some culture in at the Chrysler Museum of Art.

We've read a lot about how nice many of the people and businesses along the ICW are to cruisers, and in Norfolk (mile zero of the ICW) we experienced it for ourselves. On the way to the Chrysler Museum, we stopped in at The DataBank, a computer store, looking for some headphone jack parts. They didn't have what we were looking for, and suggested Radio Shack, but it was too far away to walk. When we explained that we were boaters, without a car, the manager asked one of his employees to drive us to the Radio Shack! (Which did have the parts we needed!)

heading down the ditch

We planned a pretty short day for our first one on the Intracoastal Waterway. On our last day in Norfolk, we did chores in the morning and left the marina at just before 2 in the afternoon. We motored down the murky water past big gray Navy battleships and tugs pushing barges, and after about three miles came to the first of the many opening bridges. When we hailed the bridge via radio, to request an opening, the bridgetender told us to wait until the three motor vessels behind us caught up, so he could let us all through together. Of course, when we'd all gone through the bridge, the motor yachts all took off and left us in the dust...but at the next bridge, three miles down the road, the bridgetender made them wait for us!

Most powerboaters here are quite polite. Frequently, as they approach from behind, they call us on the VHF to let us know what side they're planning to pass us on. We always slow down so they can more easily pass us at a no-wake speed, and they usually give us a wave and smile before they take off at full speed again. A lot of overtaking goes on here. In straight stretches, we can see a line of boats stretched out ahead of and behind us, all going south. So far, exactly one northbound cruising boat has gone by each day.

The Dismal Swamp Canal was open, but with a controlling depth of only five feet, so we stuck to the more-traveled Virginia Cut route. At mile 11.3 we had our first ever lock, the only one on the ICW (the Dismal Swamp route has two). The Great Bridge Lock is a fairly minor affair, since its purpose to control tide differences between the Chesapeake and the Albemarle, and the lift is only 2.7 feet. We were a little worried we would be a few minutes late for the hourly locking, since the guidebook we had implied that locking for southbound boats was on the half-hour, but it turned out that they don't actually close the gates and lock through until fifteen minutes before the hour, so we were fine. We exited the lock and tied up at the free dock between Great Bridge Lock and Great Bridge Bridge (another drawbridge). It was the first time we had to "parallel park" between two other boats, but between Britt at the lines and me at the wheel, we managed without hitting either of them. (It's much easier in a car.)

The next day we woke early and made the 8:00 opening of the Great Bridge Bridge, which lined us up for making the next two drawbridges in good time. Actually, most of these bridges so far have been swing spans, where the roadway sections rotate sideways in order to open, rather than bascule spans, which are the classic "drawbridge" opening bridge. There have also been a few lift bridges, where the center section of roadway between two towers lifts straight up, and there is one pontoon bridge further along the route. There are also quite a few fixed bridges with 65' clearance. Until we hit the ICW, the lowest bridge we'd gone under was 110', and even with that clearance it still looked like we were going to smash into the span until we got right under it. Going under our first 65' bridge was a little scary. (Our mast is about 57'.)

love that dirty water

We'd read about the "ICW mustache", a yellow-brown stain on the bow at the waterline, and seen it on several boats this summer. Now that we're in the ICW, we can see why it happens. The water is the color of weak coffee, not silty brown like the Colorado River but sort of a translucent tannic shade, leached in from the surrounding cypress swamps. The reddish-cream foam pushed aside by fast-moving boats hangs on the water for several minutes.

We don't see how fish can live in this stuff, or how they can even see the lures that fishermen drag, but the narrow section of the ICW through Coinjock was lined with fishermen trolling from skiffs. Britt's trolled a few lures and drowned a few worms, but so far we haven't caught a thing.

The ICW is pieced together from rivers with dredged channels, man-made canals, and a few bits of more-or-less open water. When going from an open river into a canal, often the canal isn't visible until we're practically on top of the entrance. It's weird to see channel markers apparently leading straight into the swamp! A lot of the route goes through very shallow water, so staying in the channel is important. It's marked with reds and greens, but in some places the marks are fairly far apart, and in other places the channel twists around so that only one or two marks are visible at a time, and in still other places (notably in the canals) there are no marks at all, because the Army Corps of Engineers assumed that boaters are sensible enough to go straight down the middle. So in addition to watching the markers ahead and behind, we play a lot of "Find The Channel".

This game requires only a depthsounder to play. The objective is simple:  get the boat into the deepest water you can find, and stay there. To start, head down what you think is the channel. If the numbers on the depthsounder go up, keep going. If they start going down, pick another direction. Quickly. Big numbers are the best, of course. We've seen it over 16 quite a few times, and even over 20 once, but the project depth of the ICW is only 12 feet, so sometimes we have to be happy with that. And while looking for the elusive 12-foot contour, it's not unusual to stray down into the 11s or even the 10s. It's bad form to get down into the single digits, although both of us have done it a few times, but neither of us has hit bottom, which of course means losing the game entirely.

We have been warned about how easy it is to get grounded here, and one day, as we approached the complicated entrance to Adams Creek, we saw a sailboat aground. Several powerboaters waked them on request (this is the one time you want a big wake!), and another sailboat was trying to tow them off, with no success. After we negotiated the entrance, we found a place to anchor temporarily, and started dropping our dinghy so we could help, but by then another boat had sent its dinghy to their aid, and they got free. It was nice to see how quickly and unselfishly other boaters go to aid someone in trouble. After all, we could be next.

Narrow channels, restricted bridges, and land-shaded cuts mean a lot of motoring, but our third day on the waterway was a great exception. The North River widened considerably just 15 minutes out of our anchorage, and the wind was strong and almost directly behind us. We sailed under jib alone making good speed down the channel and across the Albemarle Sound. We had to motor a bit in the middle of the day, through a lull in the wind which fortuitously coincided with a tricky channel and a swing bridge, but then the wind picked up again as we headed perfectly downwind in the Alligator River, and we sailed all the way to our chosen anchorage.

the crystal coast

After our first short day, we pushed fairly hard, getting underway by 8:00 a.m. each day and putting in a full day at the wheel. On the afternoon of Tuesday November 9, we pulled into Beaufort, North Carolina, the first place since Norfolk that we're going to spend a little time in. Partly it's because we had our mail sent here for pickup, partly it's because Beaufort is a pretty little historic town with a museum we've heard is very good, and partly it's because we're finally warming up enough to slow down our relentless trek southward. We're not in the tropics yet, of course, but rumor has it that tonight's low won't even be below 50 degrees. Balmy! I'm looking forward to wearing shorts for a change.

We'd printed out charts of Beaufort, since it looked like it would be hard navigating, and it was. The "Russell Slough" channel, which leads from the ICW to the dredged cuts around the town, is natural rather than dredged, so it winds all over the place and varies widely in depth. Just behind one of the marks I could see birds perched on a barely-awash sandbar. I had a few nervous moments when the depth got down to 9 feet, but we never actually touched bottom. The sailboat behind us clearly thought we knew what we were doing and followed us in! Silly them. We also noticed a SeaTow boat zipping around the channel, and our first thought was, "What ambulance chasers!  They're obviously hoping we go aground so they can pull us off -- for a fee."  But then, after we'd anchored, we heard many other boats on the VHF calling SeaTow for information and guidance about the Russell Slough, and realized that they were just helping people come in the confusing channel. We also heard on the SSB that at another difficult spot on the ICW, SeaTow was piloting boats and giving advice on the VHF for free, so I guess they're good guys after all.

Beaufort is really a nice town and worth the effort it takes to get here. We spent some time in their maritime museum, and watched the museum boatbuilders at work making traditional craft. There are nearly a hundred houses which were built between about 1770 and 1870, all very simple but neatly kept, and the "Old Burying Ground" is on the National Register of Historic Places. We spent some time wandering its grounds, looking at the tombstones both simple and ornate. The anchorage we're in is between the town's waterfront and a low marshy island which is a wildlife preserve. Wild horses, whose ancestors were shipwrecked off the shore, graze along its shores.

We've been here a few days, since it's been staying toasty. The anchorage is quite crowded. Many of the sailboats we saw in Annapolis and in Hampton are here too. We're getting to notice familiar boat names, from seeing them in anchorages and hearing them on the radio. Somehow it makes us feel much more a part of the big social fabric to see a boat we've seen before, even if we don't know them. And it gives us a ready-made excuse for getting to know them -- for example, today after we anchored, we dinghied over and introduced ourselves to a couple on a boat we've been more or less following for the last several days. When we came up to their boat, they smiled and waved. "Oh yes, Windom. We've seen you several times this week and we were just going to come over and say hi!" Nightwinds and Shamal organized a small potluck that was attended by maybe two dozen cruisers, so we got the opportunity to meet even more people.