Fri - Sat, May 31 - June 1, 2019

We left Coinjock, NC, on a bright, sunny and hot morning, already 80 degrees at 8:30AM. Crossing Coinjock Bay and the Currituck Sound went smooth and easy, but that also meant no wind to help keep us cool. We found a stow-a-way dragonfly on the flybridge but it decided to fly off before we got too far along… those dragonflies were everywhere in NC! The other thing we found all along the east coast was the presence of military jets overhead. Nearly every day, we’d hear them fly by a couple times. We’d typically miss seeing the first one because it would be long gone by the time we noticed the increasing volume of the noise. There were usually at least a few more, sometimes single jets, sometimes in pairs, all very loud. 

To-swamp or not-to-swamp?

Between Coinjock and Portsmouth, the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (AICW, also just ICW) provides two options: the Virginia Cut or the Great Dismal Swamp. WOW – you might wonder, “Why would anyone go through a place called the Great Dismal Swamp?” Well, the GDS is actually supposed to be quite peaceful and remote, with the beauty of nature all around. The VC, on the other hand, is another boring canal-type un-adventure. So, now you may ask, “Why would you NOT go through the Great Dismal Swamp?” There are great debates about this among Loopers, as well as those who regularly travel the AICW. 

The GDS is narrow and shallow (can be as little as 6-6.5 ft deep) and is known for debris in the water and/or on the bottom of the canal. Boat speed is limited to 6 mph (less than that is safer) and it is advised to travel at least a half-mile behind the boat in front of you. Why such a long way between boats? It creates the time needed for items, such as logs, that are brought up off the bottom by prop-wash, to resettle before your arrival, thus saving your props and hull from unwelcome dings and damage. It is slow-going, yet a beautiful part of the ICW, though boaters must remain vigilant in watching the depth, and hopeful that no logs have re-settled poorly under the water where you can’t see them. The two locks along the GDS are 22 miles apart, and only lock through 4 times a day, at 8:30AM, 11AM, 1:30PM and 3:30PM. If you want to traverse the GDS in one day it is possible if you enter the 1st lock at the first time and get to the 2nd lock at the last time, which is do-able even at the required slow speed.

The VC has several bridges, one lock and many go-fast boats that show no hesitation to wake slower boats. (Wake a boat: Boat-1 goes past boat-2 at high speed causing boat-2 to rock wildly from side-to-side as they go over boat-1’s wake... we are always boat-2) There are only 3 bridges that need to be opened and one is timed with the lock next to it, though it only opens (and the lock only runs) on the hour. The other two bridges open on the hour and half hour, so most north-bound boaters try for the first bridge on the hour, second on the half-hour and last one and lock at the top of the hour.

All in all, the choice is beauty with risk of damage, or efficiency with plenty of time to get to the next marina. We chose efficiency and therefore: not-to-swamp.  

It was a fairly uneventful trip other than getting waked a couple of times and speeding up to travel the 5-miles between the 1st &  2nd bridges in less than 30 minutes. (Doing the math: We typically travel at 9-10 mph without no-wake zones; 10 mph would get us there in 30 minutes, IF there were no no-wake zones, and IF it hadn’t taken several minutes to get all the waiting boats through the 1st bridge in single file; so we pushed the engines a bit, to over 13mph – we were zooming!) Toward the end of our seven-hour day on the water, we passed by many, many navy vessels, as we arrived at our first stop in Virginia, the Tidewater Marina in Portsmouth. We were just across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk and at the end of our trip on the ICW. It is actually the beginning of the ICW because we were at mileage marker zero, having come from the “end” at Key West which was 1240 miles away. Not only is the city of Portsmouth the midway point between Miami and Maine, but it is also the world’s largest and deepest natural harbor – thus the naval yards!

The marina had a great restaurant called Fish & Slips, and it was right next to the historic area of Portsmouth. After a morning of rain, the sun came out and we took "Brian’s Walking Tour" around town. He’d found a map online that he used to find some interesting places. While we walked past many well-cared for historic homes, we came upon the Bier Garden German restaurant, also on his personal tour, for a delicious late lunch. More walking tour then back to the boat.

The evening’s good news and the bad new…

First the good news: The Minor League Baseball team, Norfolk Tides, beat the Louisville Bats! Yay! They play in Harbor Stadium right across the river, so we got to see a nice fireworks show!

Now, the bad news: We discovered our holding tank was full even though it was pumped out only a couple days ago. The last couple times we pumped-out, the output was mostly clear (unexpected as you may guess). Uh-oh - head problems again! We determined that our aft toilet was syphoning water through the toilet hoses and into the holding tank when we were underway. This had not happened in the previous three years on the boat. Shutting off the intake to the aft cabin’s head stopped the problem until we could make permanent repairs – again we were thankful for having a second head on board! (Just have to say it again… as we all know, two heads are better than one! 😊) Installation of an anti-siphon loop will stop the syphoning, but this toilet has been a source of much unhappiness, so it has to go. Knowing that we’d be at our transmission-seal repair marina soon, and they have a West Marine on-site, Brian ordered a new toilet to be sent to that West Marine. Enough is enough with that problematic head – let’s just replace it!  If we had a plank, and if the toilets could walk, there would have been a plank- walking taking place prior to the next marina.

With a plan in place, we could sleep easy … and during the night go carefully up 4-steps, across the salon and down 3-steps to the forward head, and make the return trip without bumping into anything, tripping, falling or giving Bo the idea that it was time to get up. (Note – we were successful at doing that -- it seems that it is only during the daytime that we get bruised heads, shins, etc!)

And so it went for the next few days without incident or injury, at least during the nighttime head trips.