Southbound again!

On October 12 we left Annapolis, headed down to the southern end of the Chesapeake and then along the almost 1,100 miles of Intracoastal Waterway as far as Miami. We'll probably sail to the Bahamas again, since we've heard that hurricane Matthew spared enough of those islands to welcome cruisers back. As we started south, we passed Thomas Point Light on the Chesapeake, just a few miles from home.

We anchored in two or three nice, quiet spots on the way south in the Chesapeake. That part of the trip takes several days, depending how fast you want to travel,where you want to spend time along the way, what the weather is like and if you want to get off the boat to ago ashore.  The photo below is from one of the creeks in which we anchored, with wispy fog lifting as we motored out in a rising sun. 

We arrived at Hampton Roads at the southern end of the Chesapeake after mostly motoring or motor-sailing the length of the Chesapeake. When we arrived we found most places that normally offer courtesy dockage chock full of boats due to a big schooner race that weekend in Norfolk, so we decided to spend a night on a dock at Hampton Yacht Club, which offers reciprocity to to us as members of our Eastport Yacht Club. This gave us a chance to stretch our legs a bit, buy some groceries, fill up on water and fuel and most importantly, get more ice for gin and tonics. The weather has been gorgeous this whole trip - sunny, 70-80 degrees, light winds, no rain.  This is the view we had at sundown of Hampton College.

The next morning we had to cross the very busy channel from Hampton to Norfolk, which is always a little exciting due to all the shipping traffic and serious restrictions on approaching navy ships (you have to stay at leaf 500 yards from them at all times or run the risk of being warned off by pilot boats armed with guns and flashing blue lights). As we got to the middle of the wide channel, motoring as fast as we could to get across (that's to say a paltry 6 knots or so - like about 7 mph?), we all of a sudden had a tug pushing a barge on our right, a massive warship coming straight at us out of the channel we needed to enter to get past Norfolk, and a SUBMARINE with a navy escort boat coming at us between those two other vessels. We hailed the submarine to let them know our intentions (not to get too close to the warship and not to be run down by the tug and barge) and they very politely told us that we could proceed. I took this photo with a new camera I got with a 40x zoom. In other words, we could not actually see the whites of the eyes of the folks standing on the submarine.   But it made the hair stand up on my arms anyway.

Once we got through that mess we proceeded southwards down the channel past Norfolk and Portsmouth, and past many, many naval ships of every size and description. All the same shade of grey (they must get a real deal on that paint) with the exception of one blazing white hospital ship with big red crosses on it.

Of course there are also lots of cargo ships in that area. We now have AIS on Neverland so we can identify vessels by name and know how fast they're going, their bearing, etc. So we knew well in advance of being passed close by this one that it was called the Zim Shanghai, traveling at least 2-3 times faster than we were.

It always amazes me how little wake a huge ship like this makes compared to some relatively small power boats that raise a massive wake and cause us such grief as we roll and smash through the waves they make as they pass us.

A little further south, cruisers must either take the Virginia Cut on the ICW, or the Dismal Swamp, an alternate route also on the ICW as it passes through Virginia. This year there has been so much flooding in the Dismal Swamp, even before Hurricane Matthew, that it is closed to all traffic and everyone uses the Virginia Cut. There is one lock on this route that normally drops boats 3-4 feet, but this year the flooding due to the hurricane is so serious than we only dropped a few inches in the lock, shown below.

There were dozens of cruisers tied up for the night along the walls both before and after the lock. We decided to keep going and spent the next couple of nights anchored just outside the ICW channel. In VA and North Carolina, you're pretty much in the middle of nowhere most of the time - very few towns or marinas. Two mornings ago we woke up to dense fog. In the photo below you can barely see the channel marker just to the right of the reflected rising sun. All the boats you see along the way go dark by about 8:30 pm (except for their anchor light, if they're at anchor) and everyone is up and moving by sunrise, since the days are shorter and shorter as winter approaches and we need to travel in daylight on the ICW. Barges do travel at night, but it's too dangerous and risky for cruisers to travel in the dark.

Here's another photo of a green marker in the fog, barely visible in about the center of the photo.

Much of the ICW looks like this. Long, straight man-made canals cut through swamp or marsh grass or wooded land. Kinda boring. But, depending on wind and weather conditions,  many (most?) cruisers prefer this to making a passage outside in the ocean in some areas like Cape Hatteras or Cape Fear - known ominously as "The Graveyard of the Atlantic" due to the high number of shipwrecks over the years.

This year many bigger sailboats with taller masts are having to wait for the flood waters to recede before traveling on the ICW. The fixed bridges along the waterway usually have a clearance of 65', but the flood water is still high in many places in the Carolinas.  When you approach a bridge you can read how high the water is on a marker. In the photo below the marker shows a water level of just over 63' from the water surface to the bridge. We only need 45' of clearance, so we're fine, but most masts are taller than ours. Non-fixed bridges (swing, bascule, railway, etc) open for traffic or a schedule or on demand. That makes travel possible for boats with masts of any height, but it is also verrrrry slow at times when you have to wait for several openings in a single day.  

Yesterday we arrived in Oriental NC after totally uneventful crossings in the couple of days of what can be hair-raising bodies of water in bad weather, like Albemarle Sound, and the Neuse River. It's been so warm and sunny and calm that I've been able to travel in a swimsuit and sun shirt and barefoot!!! In late October. Crazy. What a difference from last time we did this in mittens and winter hats!

More to come soon from Oriental and points south ...