6/12/00 | Back on the ICW

yet another anchor story

After our passage from the Bahamas, we arrived in Beaufort under stormy skies on Memorial Day weekend. The harbor was packed. We managed to find a spot a ways down the narrow Taylor Creek, which the chart claimed was only 9 feet deep but our depthsounder told us was nearly 20 right up to the shore. Despite the strong wind blowing one direction and the current sweeping us in another, Britt did a masterful job of placing two anchors in the Bahamian moor (fore and aft, both off the bow). The first time we came to Beaufort, last fall, was the first time we ever anchored this way, and we probably used this method more frequently along the ICW than in the Bahamas, despite its name.

We showered and then took a four-hour nap. When we awoke near sunset, the tide was just turning and Windom's stern, swept sideways by the 20+ knot wind in the slack tide, looked like it was only inches from the creek's edge. The depthsounder still read over 17 feet, though, so we relaxed, ate a small dinner, and prepared to go back to bed. Shouts and horn blasts from nearby got us scrambling on deck.

The current had finished reversing, and we were lying to our second anchor, pointing in the opposite direction we'd been before. The boat which had been behind us and was now in front of us had anchored using bow and stern anchors, rather than two off the bow; we hadn't realized it because they were lying to their bow anchor, in the same direction as the other boats. This had held it somewhat sideways to the wind, placing stress on the anchors, and their stern anchor had dragged. The current swung the boat around its remaining anchor and right into our bow.

We fended off and adjusted the scope on our anchors so that we sat a little further away from them, although still awfully close for comfort. We all sat out on deck for a while in the drizzle and wind, watching to be sure both boats were holding. When we were satisfied nobody was moving, Britt and I went back to bed and slept another twelve hours. It was glorious sleeping so long after four days of uneasy and often-interrupted slumber. I don't think I've ever enjoyed sleep so much!

oh yeah, red right return

We got back into the ICW swing of things quickly. Back to the tannic red-brown water, the shallow channel, the profusion of markers, the powerboats heedless of their wakes. The alternative, though, was Cape Hatteras, and we weren't too excited about that option. It's a long way around, and if weather sneaks up on you there it can get really bad. During the storm our last night out, three (possibly four) boats were caught out off Hatteras in 70+ knot winds and horrendous waves. The Coast Guard rescued ten people that night.

So we retraced our steps up the ICW. We stopped and spent an afternoon in Belhaven, which we missed on the way down, but mostly we treated it as a journey to rather than a journey through until we got out of the Alligator River.

On the trip south, we'd taken the "standard route" through the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal since the Dismal Swamp Canal was filled with debris due to flooding in the wake of Hurricane Floyd. It had been open, but the controlling depth had been only 5 feet, and our loaded draft is closer to 5'4". While in Belhaven, we called the Dismal Swamp Welcome Center and were told the canal had been redredged to 6'6". So at the junction of the Alligator River and the Albemarle Sound, we angled left, heading for Elizabeth City and new territory for Windom.

a rose buddy by any other name

Elizabeth City's reputation as a cruiser-friendly stop is as carefully cultivated as the roses which grow alongside the city docks. Transient dockage is free, and a mailbox by the rosebushes holds city maps and coupons for local businesses. And as every ICW cruiser knows, at 5:00 each evening the Rose Buddies hold a wine and cheese party for the visiting boaters.

The rain which had been falling most of the afternoon had finally quit by the time we tied up at the city dock, but the clouds were still low and threatening when old Fred Fearing, Mr. Rose Buddy himself, showed up. Fred is 86, still erect and fit if not exactly spry, with the slow and courtly speech of a lifetime Southerner. As it was too cold and gray for the usual outdoor wine and cheese party, he invited us all back to his house on East Fearing street. "Named after my daddy," he told us.

We sat in hundred-year-old chairs in front of the fireplace, drinking box-vintage white zinfandel and eating Cheez Doodles. He grew solemn when he found out that it was the wedding anniversary of the couple on Gratitude (not the same Gratitude we'd traveled with in the Bahamas). "Yesterday was my 64th anniversary," he said. I went to talk to my wife. Brought her flowers, as I do every Sunday."

He showed us paintings on the wall, Florence Fearing at 20 and again at 40. She was a beautiful woman, and he was still in love with her, sixteen years after her death. "You know, she is the reason I started doing this."  He gestured toward the wine. "It was September, 1983. She'd passed away the year before, and I was visiting her at the Episcopal Cemetary, right across from the docks. I was there with my friend Joe, whose wife was also in the cemetary, and I said to him, 'Joe, we gotta do something. We're too old to golf and we're too old to chase women.'

"There were seventeen boats at the dock. I looked at the boats and I said, 'Let's get some wine and beer and have a Thanksgiving party.' He said, 'Fred, you're crazy. Thanksgiving isn't for two months.' I said, 'We're going to thank the people on those boats for coming to Elizabeth City.' Joe went back to his house and cut seventeen roses, for the ladies on the boats, and we had our Thanksgiving party."

Now it's a tradition, and Fred tools around town carrying his wine boxes and Cheez Doodles in a golf cart with a big "Rose Buddies" logo, a gift of TV weatherman Willard Scott. His newscast on Fred's hospitality greased the publicity machine many years ago, but the Chamber of Commerce still keeps it going; every pamphlet about the Dismal Swamp, every cruising guide, every article mentions the Rose Buddies of Elizabeth City.

doing the dismal

After two rainy days in Elizabeth City, we made the 9 am bridge opening on a foggy morning and headed for the upper reaches of the Pasquotank River. The wide and deep river narrowed with every S-curve until it finally straightened into a man-made channel which seemed barely broad enough for our boat.

We arrived at the South Mills lock shortly after noon, almost an hour and a half before the next scheduled locking. The gates were closed, and there was nowhere to tie up while waiting, so we dropped anchor in the center of the narrow canal, along with the two other boats which had left Elizabeth City when we did. At precisely 1:30, the gates opened and we entered the lock. It was funny to watch the world lower itself down 8 feet to meet us -- at least, that's what seemed to happen, because there was no sensation of upward movement at all.

We exited the lock and entered the Great Dismal Swamp wildlife refuge. The trees lining the sides of the narrow canal dripped lushly with leafy vines, and the occasional stumps and stakes near the water's edge were topped with bright green moss. Birds called to each other in the treetops. Every so often we heard the splash of a turtle, and a few times we saw them, too-round rocks perched on partly submerged logs. We couldn't agree with Colonel William Byrd II of Virginia, who in 1728 called the swamp a "vast body of dirt and nastiness." Then again, he had to tromp through the mud, since the canal wasn't completed until 1805. It's the oldest continually operating canal in the US.

When we quit for the day, we were alone; one of the other two boats had tied up ten miles back at the Welcome Center, and the other had gone on ahead to the second lock. We carefully anchored just barely up the Lake Drummond feeder ditch, setting a stern anchor so we wouldn't swing into the trees. The ditch was even narrower than the canal, and its undisturbed dark water shone like a black mirror.

The next morning, we dinghied up the feeder ditch to Lake Drummond. At the head of the ditch, next to the dam, we found a little electric marine railway, like a mini cable car. We drove the dink onto the car, pushed the button, and our dinghy crept up the hill to the level of the lake. At the end of a short upper canal was the lake: coffee-colored, nearly perfectly round, three miles wide and six feet deep. The cypresses around its rim were filled with birds we heard but could not see, and when we went out a ways and looked back, the way we had come was completely hidden. (Fortunately, there was a big yellow sign marking one of the trees by the entrance. Otherwise, we'd probably still be there.)

We returned to our boat and got underway in time to make the 1:30 opening of the northern lock. Shortly after being dropped back to the level of the ICW, we were back in suburbia, and after a few more miles we rejoined the main ICW just south of Norfolk. Now that was a shock!  Big ships, big barges, big bridges, and 40-foot depths. We squeaked through the northernmost bridge just before it closed down for rush hour, and made it to the Hampton city marina in time for cocktails with both Gratitudes.

back in the bay

We spent a few days at the marina (a marina! wow! electricity! water!) doing all the things that being in a marina allows you to do. We washed the salt off the boat, vacuumed the carpets, did laundry, got mail, used the phone line for a good internet connection, and so on. On Saturday morning we headed out and into the Chesapeake. The sailing was so nice that as evening approached we decided to keep going, straight through to Annapolis. It turned out to be a great night for sailing, lots of wind directly behind us but negligible waves, and we spent much of the time wing and wing. The only negative was the amount of tug-and-barge traffic, and some of those tugboat captains were rude! One in particular had been approaching from behind for at least 10 miles, barely faster than we were, in a place where there was deep water all over the place (no marked ship channel). There was absolutely no reason he had to come right up our butt, but he did exactly that, getting real close and giving us five horn blasts. We were wing and wing and had to jibe to get out of his way, which was a pain. In our haste to not be run over, we ended up wrapping our jib backwards around the headstay, no doubt amusing the heck out of the obnoxious tugboat captain.

After a few days on a mooring in Annapolis, where we finally caught up with Effie (who we hadn't seen since Georgetown) and Ariel (who we hadn't seen since Lake Worth, Florida), we called our friend Keith on Colleen (who we'd met in the Bahamas) who arranged a deal for us at a marina in Deale, a few hours south of Annapolis, where he works as a yacht broker. We're there now, where we'll fix all the things that broke in the Bahamas, and install all the new things we want for New England.