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Our final passage was from Cape May NJ back to ILENE’s mooring at the Harlem Yacht Club, Eastchester Bay, Long Island Sound, a distance of 140.5 nautical miles. I was unhappy with Utsch’s Marina’s pricing policy. They do give you a bottle of cranberry wine and three biscotti upon arrival and the cost of $2/foot is not unreasonable. But we had arrived at shortly before four pm and departed from the fuel dock at shortly before 7 pm the next day spending only 27 hours – and they were unwilling to budge on charging me for two full days!

The wind was blowing from our port side at the fuel dock and the staff  let go of our bow line before our stern had swung to starboard so we were drifting back sideways into shallow waters, Lene got us in forward gear and far enough forward that we were able to grab the aft piling of the leeward slip. Then Bennett and I held on for dear life until the stern was blown to starboard and we got out fine.

The roughest part of the journey was a mile or two later, going out into the Atlantic through the two parallel sea walls designed to protect the harbor. The problem was that we were forced to head SE and the wind was from the SE and the waves were high, in the channel, some breaking over our bow. Lene was below making her delicious casserole of steak, sausage, onions, peppers, rice, chickpeas and parmesan cheese. Down in the cabin she did not feel the problem which was one of pitching, not rolling. I had put up the main with a reef in it but while such a sail will stabilize against roll, it does nothing against pitch. Lene reported that I had not dogged down the forward hatches quite tight enough and small amounts of seawater had intruded.  The engine is not strong enough to move us very fast in such conditions because each wave we slam into cuts our speed. Bennett later admitted that he was afraid during these few tense minutes. What had he gotten himself into?!

But once we cleared the channel , put out the jib and turned to port, first east, away from the coast and then NE, along the coast, we picked up good speed, heeled and stopped pitching. It did not get dark until  after 9, these being the longest days of the year, and with teamwork from the crew, I  clipped on tight, went forward to the mast and put the second reef in the mainsail (“I told you to do that before we left” muttered the Admiral), reducing heel but not reducing speed much.

My objective was to try to get to Sandy Hook at 11 am the next day, because that was “one hour after low tide at the Battery”, which provides six hours of fair tide from Sandy Hook all the way through New York Harbor, Hells Gate and indeed to the ThrogsNeck Bridge, only two miles from home --  the final 32 miles. We had planned our departure for this arrival time and were lucky enough to make an average speed as planned.

Lene and Bennett took the first watch, from after dinner until midnight, but they did not rouse me until 1 am when I came on for the duration. We sailed about one to one point five miles off the beach, in deep enough water and had no adverse close encounters during the night.

The Jersey coast is curved, permitting us to sail more north than NE as the passage continued. For the last ten miles before Sandy Hook, the wind was from the south, too close to directly behind us to give us good speed and the waves continued to be high, so we steered further off the coast and then jibed into the southernmost channel through Lower NY Bay. Bennett turned the InavX on during this portion of the trip so there would be no mistaking one set of buoys for another.

We sailed under the Verrazano Narrows, Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, before the wind got lost in the city for a while and we turned the engine back on. But we kept the sails up and motor sailed the rest of the way past the Throgs Neck Bridge. Ten point five knots in Hellsgate!  We grabbed our mooring at 4 pm and were off the boat with dry clothes to change into,  and the cats by 5. Here the are. The synchronized sleeping team:

We drove Bennett to his car parked in midtown and then drove home and had a good night sleep in our own bed.

Future postings will attempt to summarize our trip and report on ILENE’s future more localized sailing.

Thanks for reading. Comments, questions and corrections are always welcome.

Baltimore to Cape May

Leaving Annapolis for the 29 miles to Baltimore, we were passed by this small cruise ship, which (or its sister) had also passed us when we were leaving Charleston and Yorktown. A nice way to see this part of the nation—they drive by night while you sleep and you tour by day.

 Then we passed under the bridge across the Bay from Kent Island to Annapolis -- views east then west.

 I had walked across this bridge with Janet and John and viewed the start of the Annapolis to New York leg of the Volvo Around the World Race from it in 2006.

The wind was from the northwest and we were able to sail north into the entrance to the Patapsco River, at one head of which is Baltimore’s inner harbor. We were not able to stay in the shipping channel because the wind was too close to north to permit this, nor did we need to because the water at both sides was plenty deep for us. As the morning wore on the wind clocked around more to the west, one degree at a time, letting us steer closer to where we wanted to go. But once at the Patapsco, the wind was in our face so we turned on the engine for the rest of the trip. We showered in the cockpit, underway, with the sunlight to dry us and keep us warm.

Baltimore is an industrial town.

 We passed Fort McHenry, the defense of which, in the War of 1812, was the subject of “The Star Spangled Banner”.

We tied up to the same municipal dock where I had met four friends who helped me bring ILENE home for the first time in mid June 2006, Bruce, Jim, KC, and Ricky. It is a nice municipal dock—no water, electric or services but cheap and centrally located. So scenic that a wedding photographer chose our dock as the site to shoot his wedding party, with ILENE in the background, lower left.

 Upon arrival, about 1, we got busy cleaning madly for the arrival of our guest, Bennett, on whose boat “Defiance”, I had sailed last summer in the Club Cruise.  He recently has both fixed Defiance up and purchased a time share in “On Eagles Wings” a classic boat sailed in the Virgin Islands. The nastiest job for me involved the forward holding tank. Let’s just say that the source of a bad odor in ILENE has been eradicated. But the inner harbor is polluted to stinky so that it was hard to tell, at first.

When Bennett arrived from the train station, about 7, he wanted to partake of Baltimore’s favorite crustacean: steamed crabs with Old Bay Spice. We looked for Obrycki’s, where I had done the same menu in 2006 but that venerable house is alas defunct. Mo’s now is the place within walking distance of the waterfront for crab; a dozen good sized ones were dumped on out paper topped table.

Next day we headed for the marina on our starboard side in the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal, the same one at which I had stayed in 2006. But its entrance had silted in making it too shallow for us, the marina reported when we called. We had our sails up but the wind was light, so we had the engine on too. This is the biggest thing that passed us in the narrow confines of the canal and you can see that our sail is not doing any work.

 Five miles further than that marina, and on the port side,  was the Summit North Marina in the village of Bear ,Delaware, 48.1 miles from Baltimore. It is larger, deeper and caters to a more mature clientele. Its Latin themed restaurant, Aqua-Sol, serves not only boaters, who are there in the summer, but local residents, year round.  Our dinner was quite excellent, with a menu designed to resemble Miami’s South Beach’s flavors. We had dinner inside and then went out to the patio for dessert and coffee, where the live music was good and designed for dancing.  It was the closest we came to "partying" on this whole journey!

Next morning the alarm was set for 5 am and we got underway at 5:20, but were delayed by a lowered railroad bridge for about 15 minutes. We had 63.4 miles to our destination at Cape May, NJ. Here are two pretty and high bridges across the canal.

Once out in the Delaware we had very favorable tide most of the way and were motor sailing at 8 knots when passing the Salem Nuclear Plant:

Bennett at the helm which he took for most of the passage down the Delaware.

Delaware Bay had a lot of big boats and one yelled at us by VHF to stay out of the channel.  If ILENE’s mast was less than 55 feet high, we could have avoided the always potentially dangerous waters off capes by cutting through Cape May via a canal between Delaware Bay and the Atlantic. But we don’t fit so we had to round the Cape. At the entrance to Delaware Bay from the Atlantic we passed through Prissywick channel, very close to the beach with its lighthouse to the north

 and Prissywick Shoal to our south We did so easily in essentially calm wind and with the excellent aid of InavX.

Once in the harbor I almost ran us aground looking for the entrance to Utsch’s Marina, where I had stayed on “Aria” with Jim in the late 90’s and again on ILENE in 2006. But at the last minute, sensing that we not right, I put her into reverse before the depth sounder started screaming “It’s only seven feet deep here stupid!” and we went in the proper way.

The town and beachfront of Cape May are perhaps a mile and a half walk from the marina. We went there to gawk at the architecture

and had a lovely and excellent dinner at Ticia’s.  Next day we sat on the beach which costs a $5 per day admission, plus the cost of a chair rental. Having traveled 112.5 miles in three days from Annapolis, we planned for the last leg home.

Five Nights Up Four Creeks In VA and MD

Our sail from Yorktown to Reedville on June 3 was God’s birthday present to me. It was a cool morning, long pants and long sleeved shirts, but a lovely sailing day to make the 50.1 miles on a port reach with winds just right and small waves. We declined the ill buoyed “Swash Channel” north from the mouth of the York River, which would have saved us about four miles – safety first.  In fact, just when Lene went down to make our salads for lunch, the wind lessened, reducing our heeling. We anchored in Cockrell Creek, at Reedville but did not lower the dink to go ashore because we had visited Reedville in 2006. It was a very wealthy town;  the home of the Menhaden fleet – fishing boats that rounded up whole schools of what we call “bunker” in Long Island sound – baitfish -- very useful in all kinds of products. The main street is known as Millionaires Row for the lovely old homes of the captains. The only problem in the small anchorage, which we did not experience last time, was that our anchor dragged – three times – before it set properly for the night. The mud is too loose.

Next day we planned to sail to Solomon’s, MD, where we had also stayed in ’06 but we did not get that far. We went only 40.1 miles because the wind was too strong from the north, even motoring with reduced sails. I had read that there was a creek that fed into the Potomac near its mouth on the Virginia side, and we diverted there. But this destination required two more hours, beating to the west on the other tack. At one point, when a 38 knot gust heeled us to a severe angle, Lene, at the helm, started to cry. I told her to "round up" (head closer to the wind). She did; we righted; and she stopped crying and went on with steering.  Ya gotta love this girl! We headed for the Grebe River, which had been recommended. It shares an entrance harbor with the Coan, which was better buoyed, so we went up the Coan, past red 22 and anchored in a cove.  The bed of the river, I’d call it a creek, twisted as we followed it up and our anchorage was thus well protected from the wind and waves. It was a lovely spot with farming and boating.  Here are four panoramic views on a peaceful morning at sunrise: NE, SE, SW and NW

We ended up staying two nights because the strong north wind persisted the next day. The internet showed that there was some sort of dining place, the only one, and open only for breakfast and lunch, about two miles walk from the end of a .6 mile dinghy trip.  Lene did not want to go, so we spent the day aboard. This was our laziest day of the trip. Lene cooked but I did nothing but read, write and plot courses and distances for the rest of the journey – a very lazy day. 

Next day, however,  we had mileage to make up because we had not gotten as far as Solomon’s and had taken a lay day. So it was 65 miles to the area of St. Michael’s on Maryland’s eastern shore. We got underway at 6:45 and later in the morning called Janet and Mike and their friend, John, all alumni of the Harlem Yacht Club who live in this beautiful area, to see if we could take them to dinner. “Come to my house” said Janet. It is up another creek into the south side of Kent Island through Eastern Bay. “We don’t know how long it will take us with the tide partially adverse and the winds too light to propel us.”  “Don’t worry; you will get here when you get here.” Sailors are very hospitable people. The last time we had seen these folks was in 2006! Except for one half hour of 16 knot wind, we had the motor on the whole way.  The final few miles showed us the value of the InavX program Lene installed on her iPad. It displays the actual paper chart with all of its soundings, except zoomable to larger than the original, and also our position on it, and a yellow line showing the direction we are going. The RayMarine system shows only some dark blue colored areas, indicating shallow, without much help in getting us through the deep enough parts of this shallow water. We got to their house about 6:45 after anchoring, lowering the dink and going up Thompson’s Creek to the dock behind Janet and Mike’s condo. The only other boaters who have visited them in this manner were Craig and Kathy on Sangaris, currently sailing somewhere in the Adriatic; so we are in some pretty high powered company in this regard. The food was delicious and healthy. Here are Janet, John and Mike.

After dinner, Janet drove us to a nearby Food Lion to provision and gave Lene a towel to wrap around her shoulders for the chilly return dink trip. And we were invited back for breakfast; which we accepted in order to bring back the towel. John and Janet in the electric powered dink.

The next day’s sail was only 33.6 miles to Annapolis, specifically to Weems Creek, up the Severn River, past the Naval Academy.

This is not a big ship race; they are anchored here due to lack of work.

This was a motoring day due to lack of strong wind and punctuated by a fueling stop in Annapolis’s Back Creek. Weems Creek is a popular (crowded) place to anchor during the height of the snowbird migration seasons, according to Dean and Susan, of Autumn Borne, who we anchored next to and invited over for some wine.

 

We had not seen them since Charleston.  The place was 1/3 filled with boats that live there on moorings but the anchoring area was wide open except for our two boats. They suggested a few local restaurants and liked Lene’s suggestion to dine at the Annapolis Yacht Club, where our HYC membership gives us reciprocal privileges. I did not realize how near that Club was to our dinghy beach, only about 1.5 miles by foot (longer by water) each way, just enough to work up an appetite and walk off the meal. We compared notes on the rest of our trips and realized that we would probably not meet up again until after we both got to our summer destinations: they at Hop O Nose Marina, way up the Hudson and we at the Harlem at City Island in Long Island Sound. We said we would check the tides and if fair in the afternoon, would have breakfast with them. But the tide was favorable in the morning so we headed off to Baltimore before breakfast.

So: four passages to four different creeks in five nights, with two sets of friends brings us 187.8 miles closer to home.

Portsmouth and The Peninsula

This posting brings us the 45 miles from Coinjock NC to Portsmouth VA, and the 36.5 miles to Yorktown VA on “The Peninsula”.

We inaptly timed the trip up the canal. If we had left half an hour earlier or later, it would have meant a half hour less of waiting time for the first bridge opening, though other such delays were inevitable.  We motored at 2.5 knots to get to some bridges on time, and caught up with power boats who had sped past us and waited at the next hurdle. There were no low bridges to worry about for the first 60 percent of the journey and then about five and a lock in the last part of the trip as we approached Norfolk. The lock, our only one in the whole ICW, was at Great Bridge. It raised us only two feet but there would have been one terrific current running through there if not for the lock. This is the Bridge at Great Bridge, down, followed by a gaggle of boats passing through behind us once opened.

Norfolk is quite industrial/commercial with this scrap metal bound for perhaps China?

 It is a repair place for many vessels.

We had planned to stay at a free tie up to a sea wall between the Renaissance Hotel and the ferry dock in Portsmouth, across from Norfolk. Dick and Elle and the Skipper Bob Cruising Guide told us that the sign “No Overnight Dockage” relates to a rule that is not enforced.  No water, electric or help tying up, but we didn’t need such services. Approaching Norfolk we got a call from Autumn Borne and made a plan to join them for a pot luck dinner aboard. They were anchored in a pretty open space, north of Lambert’s Point and east of Craney Island (which island is now joined to the mainland) shown on this map of a battle line during the War of 1812, in an exhibit at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Historical Museum.

Lene and Susan were planning the menu for our first rendezvous since Charleston when a strong windstorm erupted. Autumn Borne is only one foot longer than ILENE but weighs about twice as much and hence is more comfortable in big winds. Having gone about three miles past our planned destination, we backtracked to it. I felt bad about changing the recently made plan but Dean and Susan understood the reason.

 

 The ferry.

Alphie jumped up onto this piling.

Next day was an all day rain so we stayed for a second free night. During the day we planned on our first breakfast off the boat for many months. But the bagel store/deli that had been recommended did not open till 8:30! What kind of breakfast place is that! So we had an excellent but expensive breakfast at the Renaissance Hotel, during which a torrential rain occurred, causing us to wait half an hour, reading, before returning to the boat. Then OH NO!! We always double check each other when leaving the boat to make sure all hatches and ports are closed, even when no rain is expected. But this time the two hatches over the salon were open and the big cushions on the salon settees had to be dried out, as did the ends of each chart in two chart kits. Lots of mopping up, wringing out, blotting, the insertion of paper towels between each page of the chart books and two sunny days put all things right again. BAD mistake...hopefully never to be repeated!

We had dinner in a 50’s style restaurant one night – the early bird special. This place was not a retro 50’s place, it had simply not redecorated or updated its menu or its musak since then. But the food was ok.

I gave Lene some alone time and went to the museum. It is run by the City of Portsmouth which has been the site of shipbuilding and repairing since well before this nation was a nation. The Navy Shipyard's role in every war was outlined. I learned about the battle of Great Bridge, through which we had passed enroute from Coinjock – more of a skirmish and the only aspect of the museum that was poorly described; so I’m still not sure who won that skirmish but the place apparently had strategic significance. The lightship PORTSMOUTH is permanently sited in a cement filled drydock and the museum explained the role of such ships, which were used instead of lighthouses until they were all replaced a few decades ago by large unmanned buoys or fixed towers.

Notice her anchor, a mushroom type, the same as our mooring at home, only much bigger, designed to keep her on location during hurricanes.

 

I also took a walk in Portsmouth's Olde Town and saw the “movie set” streets.

 

We motored from Portsmouth to Yorktown in calm seas, really calm,

 

after passing Hampton, VA, from which ILENE had left the US in early November 2010,

 

and Thimble Shoal Light, protecting big ships from the shoal which is 12 feet deep, extending back to the land behind it. We passed on the “safe side” though we draw less than half of 12 feet.

Notice the men (and women these days?) lining the deck of this war ship fore and aft, just as we did back in the day; I always wondered at the waste of manpower.

We planned to visit a marina in the James River, on the southwest side of The Peninsula, because we had never been in that river. But we learned that the road was being reconstructed to that marina which would have made it difficult to connect with our friends Stan and Carol, who live in Williamsburg on The Peninsula, so instead, we went back to the municipal marina, Riverwalk Landing, in Yorktown, on the York River, on the north side of The Peninsula, where we had stayed in 2006. They were having a tall ships gathering

and thus had no dock space but rented us a mooring about .6 miles down river. Good thing because the river is 50 feet deep and has a strong current, not a good place to anchor.

The highlight of our visit to Yorktown was our friends, Stan and Carol. I figured out that it being 2012, I’ve been friends with Stan for 50 years. He is a professor of genetics at William and Mary and she is an extremely talented quilter and a general good person, giving up the day with us because she had made a commitment to accompany an older lady to a quilting show – a three hour bus ride away each way! 

They had lent us a car in October and November 2010 while we waited for Hurricane Tomas to pass so the Caribbean 1500 could begin. We got a new 4G Android cell phone for Lene and a charging cord for the laptop and did some provisioning. We also toured historic Jamestown and College Creek where Stan catches trophy fish.

All told, we enjoyed three dinners with them, one at their home. That evening the airwaves were filled with news of a rapidly approaching squall line with many tornadoes in it; so they put us up for the night.  Sort of a “training wheels” approach to our sleeping ashore again after having not done so for the past seven plus months.  The kitties survived without us. Carol gave us four “coffee themed” quilted placemats that she had made.

The Peninsula is full of history: Jamestown, where Captain John Smith and Pocahontas lived in the 1600s; Yorktown, where General Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington in the 1700s; the indecisive “Peninsula Campaign” during the Civil War in the 1800s; and  Williamsburg, once the capital of Virginia.

Posted in New York City where we have arrived safely home.

North Carolina

Apologies for paucity of photos; I was asleep at the switch or forgot camera, or its battery failed -- so I will have to describe mostly with words.

These big boys are not colliding in Charleston Harbor.

Here is a passing shrimper whose nets we managed to avoid, and a few of the following flying critters hoping for a handout.

We entered North Carolina at Beaufort, at the end of a 35 hour, 207 mile, ocean voyage from Charleston.

We had planned for the possibility that it might take that long but hoped for a shorter passage. We were well ahead of schedule during the first day but had to motor sail most of the night and second day when the winds just died out.  NOAA’s 5 pm broadcast mentioned thunderstorms so we swapped the genoa for the small jib. No thunderstorms or other storms though we did see lots of lightning from under the horizon to the west, in the direction from which such storms come. We had waited for tropical storm Alberto to leave, and he took most all of the wind with him, leaving too little to propel us.  A big ocean swell was running however. We had a brief visit just before dark: a dolphin jumped clear out of the water about 10 feet off our quarter and the members of his small pod played with us until their shapes became indistinguishable from the black crests of waves. The most traffic we encountered was around the end of Frying Pan Shoal, which extends many miles out from Cape Fear. There is a passage through that shoal marked by a red and green and we probably could have made it through except: the chart plotter had no scale below 6 miles, the red and green buoys are not lighted, the moon was slight and the shoal was upon us at 1 am. So discretion won out over valor and we took the longer way around.  Once clear of the shoal I got about three hours rest while Lene stood watch. Having plenty of time before dark, we gave the motor a few hours rest and sailed most of the way into the harbor, during which a half hour of 18 knot wind came up and we were glad that I had resisted the temptation to put back the Genoa.

Our friend Dean, of Autumn Borne, had suggested anchoring at the old Coast Guard station at Fort Macon to the left of the wig well marked Beaufort Inlet. It looked good on the chart, but Dean contacted us by email, VHF and cell phone, when these came alive as we closed the shore. He advised that with the direction of the wind that had come up at last, this would have been an extremely rolly anchorage. So we ended up anchoring  at the town of Beaufort, off from the town docks.

Lene got a phone call as she was steering slowly past the docks of the marina on our way to the anchorage and all I heard was: “Is this a joke?” But it wasn’t. Bob, of “Pandora”, another of the 53 Saga 43s that were built before the company went bankrupt was the caller. I had helped him sail Pandora from Norwalk to Mystic last summer, as described in a posting to this Blog. Bob was helping another friend with two other guys sail “The Abbey,” a 55 foot sloop from Nassau, Bahamas to New York. He was standing on The Abbey’s dock, recognized ILENE and gave us the call. No joke. After the anchor set we lowered the dinghy and brought over a bottle of wine to celebrate our unexpected meeting.   The Abbey, Bob with Lene:

I had visited Beaufort last year while helping to bring “Sea Leaf” up from Florida and did not go ashore; Lene did  -- to deliver garbage from our two days at sea in the proper receptacle. We dined aboard, rehoisted the dink to its davit and got an early start the next morning – but not quite early enough: The bridge at Beaufort opens on request only once an hour so we had to drift for 48 minutes for the 8 am opening.   

     A short 38 mile day brought us to Oriental NC, actually to the River Dunes Marina, in Broad Creek, off the Neuse River. Oriental  is named after a bit of wreckage of the sailboat “Oriental’ which washed up there. It is the self proclaimed sailing capital of North Carolina. Folks say that they have about 800 residents and 2500 boats.  The Neuse is claimed to be the widest river in America, though certainly not the longest or deepest. Its width creates a body of water like some stretches of Long Island Sound for pleasure sailing.  We beat our way down the Neuse in heavy winds with engine and small sails. At the end, we furled our sails and headed directly into the wind using only the motor, which took as much time as sailing the zig zag, because our speed was so much lower.

Our reason for calling on Oriental was to see Bill and Sandy, who we met in Maine in ’08 and we had last seen in Iles des Saintes, during our passage south last winter. They keep their boat, “Lucille,” another of the Saga 43s, at River Dunes. It is quite a nice Club, made by dredging a channel to a shallow lagoon and deepening it, and hence well protected in hurricanes. They provide a free loaner car for two hours at a time: “just put some gas into the tank,” wifi, a health club, showers, and quite a good restaurant. They charge only $1/foot per night which is quite a bargain here in the States. The developer bought lots of surrounding land with the idea of building a community of homes, but the recession has put a hold on those plans. Lene had a bad allergic attack here, later diagnosed as a cold or flu of some sort.  (She is all better again after three punky days.) All she wanted to do was to lay alone in her berth, sniffle, cough and drink tea. Thus, on our planned lay day in Oriental, Bill and Sandy took me on a tour of the county, including the towns of Lowlands (the land there is very low) Hobucken (almost like Frank Sinatra’s home town) and Aurora, which was celebrating its annual Fossil Day. One highlight of Fossil Day was a free one hour guided motorcoach tour of the pit mine and plant of Potassium Corporation of Saskatchewan. They mine potash, used in fertilizer and a lot of other things, using huge cranes which they call drag lines, that drag up buckets of earth. Two cars can be parked in one bucket!  They skim off the top 60 feet of dirt (“overlay”) to reach the 30 feet thick layer of the sought after potash, use lots of water to wash it, clean the water and then put the dirt and clean water back in place. Monster dump trucks transport what the drag lines pick up. Our narrator had worked in the mine all his life, as has his dad, and his pure NC accent reminded me of my friend KC. Potash is the result of a sediment of animal bones and there are many fossils in the dirt and a fossil museum in town, where the festival was held, which we also visited.  Several collectors of fossils were displaying and selling specimens of their collections. The company spreads a few yards of dirt outside and kids are given shovels and frames with screening to sift through the dirt and finding tiny fossilized sharks teeth.  Bill and Sandy helped us with the hazards of the next few day’s navigation and provided medicine for Lene. They are great folks who we hope to see in NY on their way to Maine this summer. The cats were out on the docks all night, and Whitty had a panic attack when he jumped onto what he thought was ILENE, but in fact it was Lucille; he woke up the whole marina with his loud hysterical yowling, I’m afraid. Here is Alfie are after a hard night’s dock prowling.

Our next anchorage was off to port at the south end of the Alligator – Pungo River Canal, 46 miles from Oriental. We cast off at 9:15 and dropped anchor here at 4:35 with three hours of pure peaceful quiet sailing and the rest motor-sailing with the small sails. The anchorage’s marsh grasses provided lots of wave protection but none from wind and were the apparent source of the insects that we had to screen out; those that got in were hunted down and killed by Lene and the kitties.  There is room in that anchorage for many boats but only two others were with us that night, lots of privacy and room for lots of scope on the anchor to prevent dragging.  A brief heavy rain during the night, after Lene won the card games, caused us to dry out the cockpit cushions the next morning before getting underway.

The Alligator – Pungo  Canal was in the first 20 miles of our 69 miles to Coinjock. We had the sails up the whole way but the motor was on because with so much ground to cover we did not have the luxury of turning off the noise maker. And it was particularly noisy because the locking nuts that hold the cutlass bearing to its strut had worked loose causing a terrible loud rattle of the propeller shaft.  
Our first obstacle was the bridge over the canal, close to its southern end. This bridge, unlike all the other “high” bridgeson the ICW, is not 65 feet but only 64 feet above the water at high tide (and there is only six inches of tide because it is so far from the sea). The problem is that if winds have blown hard enough and long enough in the wrong direction, the water level can be driven upward, possibly causing the bridge to take off our mast. Here is an approach to a 65 foot bridge, not the one in question (which we were too afraid to photograph):

But the wind had cooperated, we slowed to a crawl and we were OK. In the canal the wind only got to us at places where the trees let it in, so it came in puffs, heeling the boat from time to time.  A brief heavy rain caused me to re-dry the cockpit cushions. A crossing of Albemarle Sound would have provided good sailing for twelve miles with no narrow channel to worry about, but darn: the wind died there.

We passed homes of people who have forgotten (or never learned) that the South lost the civil war. Confederate flag and rising sun.

We also passed homes whose residents, hawks, don’t mind bright lights at night:

And we passed some heavy traffic in the narrow canals:

I had enjoyed the prime rib at Coinjock when stopping there aboard Sea Leaf last summer and wanted Lene to experience it. I declined their featured 32 oz. hunk in favor of one half that size which Lene shared. The marina is one long seawall along the starboard side of the canal, as one is heading north. They had a mechanic with diving equipment which dove under the boat and tightened up the loose nuts and ended the rattle. The engine continues to hum but without the rattle accompaniment.

All told, four passages, aggregating  361 nautical miles, and four ports of call brought us from South Carolina to near the Virginia border.