We spent our day in Solomons doing some errands (showers, library to post blog, West Marine for gear), having a wonderful lunch at a cafe on Solomons Island and chatting to other cruisers. We had cocktail hour on Romana with some friends we made up in Maine and saw when we got in the night before and we got a great night's sleep before setting off early the next morning.
We did another self serve pumpout of the holding tank and I'm happy to report that everything went well, and then we motored off into the sunrise behind 14 other boats and in front of 6 or 7 towards Deltaville, Virginia. We saw pelicans for the first time, which means we are definitely getting further south. It was a pretty long day but uneventful and we dropped the hook for the night planning a shorter day on Monday.
We were now traveling through an area densely populated by the US Navy. When we were entering Solomons we had been flown over by a number of Navy planes flying pretty low as there is a Navy air base at the mouth of the Patuxent River across from Solomons. Often during the time we were there we had to suspend our conversation while a military plane flew over, because you couldn't hear anything over the noise. When we left Solomons we started hearing the 'warships' on the radio in the York River. When we got there one was ahead of us in the channel and one was behind, and we even got to see the bridge at Yorktown swing to let one through, which was interesting. In addition very loud helicopters have been flying overhead at sporadic intervals and varying altitudes.
And then there is Norfolk. It is impossible to understand the vast number of people employed by and supporting the US Navy in Norfolk without seeing it. There are huge ships in various states of construction and repair all along the waterfront and it is an impressive sight. We heard some more warships on the radio including one with a 500 yard perimeter where they threatened you with arrest or 'defensive measures' if you got too close to them but we didn't need to take evasive action as we were south of them.
We had heard that Yorktown was an interesting place to visit, so on Monday we had a relatively short day and motored (no wind again) from Deltaville to Sarah Creek, which is on the north shore of the York River across from Yorktown. We anchored in the creek and dinghied in to a marina where they kindly let us tie the dinghy up there to go for a walk. The marina grounds were just lovely - nicer gardening than many houses (including ours). We walked up to the main road to see about biking over to Yorktown, which we were hoping to do, but after seeing the four lane traffic, looking at the bridge on google earth, and talking to a local sailor who said we weren't allowed to bike over the bridge, we decided that was a bad idea, so we went to plan B.
Plan B was to motor across the York River on Tuesday and pick up a mooring, as they were apparently available just off Yorktown. So that is what we did. By 10 a.m. Tuesday Romana was on a mooring just off the Yorktown Victory Monument, which celebrates the victory of the Americans and French over the British in 1781, starting the peace process that led to the Treaty of Paris in 1783. We dinghied in to the dock and paid for our mooring and got lots of good information and a map. Yorktown is a lovely little place and they really have it set up nicely for visitors. They have developed their waterfront and there are good walking trails along the river and up to the Yorktown Victory Centre, which we went to visit.
There we learned all about the battle of Yorktown, saw a cannon firing (and Dave participated in the 'practice run'), learned about medicine of the time, and living on a rural farm. They had people in period costume talking about what life was like back then, and you should see how small the army tents were for six men to sleep in. It was a very well done museum and we enjoyed it.
Yorktown also has a free trolley bus that drives around in a loop from the Victory Centre to the Battlefield and stops at a few other places in town, so we planned to take the trolley over to the battlefield. As we were waiting, we overheard some women from a group that we had seen earlier in the day talking about how someone had a flat tire. Dave went over to see if he could help and ended up changing the tire to the spare for them. The group calls themselves the YaYas and they have been getting together for quite a few years and touring around while their husbands attend a yearly conference. They were very grateful for Dave's help and one of them said "oh, he is so handy. Do you take him everywhere?" which I thought was hilarious given our present circumstances where we are together pretty much 24/7. You better believe I take him everywhere (whether I want to or not)!
Good deed for the day done, we got on the trolley and headed over to the battlefield. We were pretty much battled out by then, so we decided not to visit that this time, as it was huge (they suggested you tour by car and not on foot). Instead we walked back down to the waterfront via the Victory Monument, which was very impressive, and 'Historical Main Street', which really was. They had a big section of it roped off for pedestrian traffic only and most of the buildings had information plaques outside of them explaining who had lived there with some historical context, so we learned a lot.
After heading back to the boat for a late lunch, we went back to shore to get showers, wifi and have supper at a waterfront cafe, which was very good. It was a really good day. Unfortunately it wasn't such a great night. Because of the very strong current in the river, the boat was not sitting on the mooring the way it should have been and that made for a noisy and uncomfortable night. So for the non boaters: when there is no significant current, a boat sitting at a mooring or at anchor will typically point with the bow (or front) of the boat into the wind. This makes it comfortable because if there are any waves with the wind at least they are hitting the bow and the boat will ride them reasonably well. If there is a large current and not much wind, the current can 'override' the wind so that the bow of the boat points into the current instead of into the wind. In this case waves can come from the stern or from the side of the boat, causing an uncomfortable roll. This is what we had that night. In addition, the dinghy was bouncing in the waves and rubbing against the stern of the boat right next to where we sleep. After a few hours of this, I moved up to the main cabin but it wasn't much quieter there as the mooring ball was banging against the side of the boat. Finally sometime after 1 a.m. the wind died and the current changed and it was quiet and calm again, so at least we got some sleep, but we certainly won't be picking up a mooring in the York River again! Lesson learned.
Wednesday we got up early and left in the dark, as we wanted to get through a bridge with some restricted opening hours just south of Norfolk. Again we motored as there wasn't much wind and not too much exciting happened until we got close to Norfolk and saw a whole bunch of dolphins (maybe 20) and to our delight some of them came over to swim beside the boat. As we motored past all the navy ships, Dave was googling them to find out about them and one of them was being called 'the warship of the future'. Too bad they need that.
Just before 2 p.m. we reached mile 0 of the Intracoastal Waterway (which I think I had incorrectly called the Intercoastal Waterway in an earlier blog). This is a series of rivers, lakes and sounds just inshore of the coast, protected by land and connected by man made canals where necessary, to allow boat traffic to travel with some constraints (draft and height). It's known as the ICW for short, or 'the ditch'. Our 6 foot draft and 52 foot height from the water means that we can travel this route all the way to mile 1243 in Key West if we want to. The miles in this case are statute miles instead of nautical miles but that just keeps us on our toes doing the conversions.
Near the beginning of the ICW you have a choice of two different routes. On our last trip (and previous trips that Dave has done) we went the more common way on the main waterway, but this time we decided to try the Great Dismal Swamp route. This route only 'guarantees' a minimum depth of 6 feet (which is what we draw), but we know that other boats with that draft do it, so after calling to check on the latest conditions (sometimes it is closed because there isn't enough water in it) we thought we would go for it.
We made the restricted bridge opening that necessitated our early start and turned into the Great Dismal Swamp, holding our breath a little. I was expecting it to be close to six feet deep all the time, but it wasn't that at all. The lowest we saw on the entire route was 7 feet and usually it was 8-10 so that was a relief. The Great Dismal Swamp canal has a lock at each end of a 22 mile long man made canal. These locks only open 4 times a day and we got there in time for the last opening of the day at 3:30 p.m. Although we have gone through the Canso and St. Peter's locks at home in Nova Scotia usually the level difference is only a couple of feet. Here it was 10 feet, so that was quite an experience for us. It was very strange after we went up ten feet to look back at where we had just came from ten feet below us.
There are limited places to tie up in the canal, so we opted to stay at the dock just after the lock and we ended up rafted up there with 7 other boats that night. An impromptu wine and cheese party was held on the foredeck of one of the catamarans there and we met a lot of nice people. Robert, the lockmaster even joined us and filled us in on some more history and stories beyond what he had told us when we locked through.
The next morning most of the boaters joined Robert for breakfast before the first lock opening and then all of the boats set off together to get through the lift bridge that opens in conjunction with the lock. Once we were through the bridge we were just a big parade of boats motoring down this narrow canal for mile after mile. Trees were hanging overhead and falling into the canal from shore and occasionally you would hear a thump as a piece of a tree or saturated wood hit the hull. It wasn't as 'swampy' as I expected it to be, but it was very interesting. From time to time we would hear traffic on the road that runs beside the canal for a good portion of it, or glimpse a vehicle through a break in the trees, but mostly it felt like you were in the middle of nowhere.
About five miles from the southern end of the canal, just across the Virginia/North Carolina border, there is a Welcome Centre that serves both the boats on the canal and car traffic entering North Carolina. We decided to spend our second night in the canal there, and we tied up to the dock along with two other boats from our little parade.
When I left the Welcome Centre the passenger bridge was open to let some boats through. I thought maybe some more boats might tie up with us, but I wasn't expecting to see this:
We were originally planning to get away first thing this morning in order to get the first lock through, but given our position there was no way that was going to happen. One boat on our raft did leave, but everyone else stayed until 9:30 when we all took off again and locked through together - twelve boats in total. This time we went down eight feet. Coming out of the canal we went through another man made section and then out into a river, but it still wasn't very wide. We changed our mind a couple of times about how far to go, but ended up deciding to anchor in behind an island called Goat Island. Because we were at the back of the pack we arrived to find five of the boats we had spent last night with already anchored, along with a couple of other ones, including some people we had met in Solomons. We had a big gang over on Romana for Happy Hour and they left just as it started to rain.
Because it wouldn't be cruising if we didn't have something go wrong, as we were motoring along this afternoon when I was on the helm, I smelled something burning and I said to Dave "Is that us?" with memories of the fire we had in the engine room on our last trip. He went below to have a look and told me that the bilge was full. Our third replacement bilge pump level switch had failed and the bilge pump hadn't been working for the past few days so it had slowly filled up with water until it reached something hot and I smelled it. Dave manually started the bilge pump and got the water pumped out no problem, but we will have to pump it out regularly until he can install a new switch.
One interesting thing about cruising in the Great Dismal Swamp is that we went noticeably slower than we usually do. Dave thinks maybe it is because we are in fresher water with low salt content, so it is less dense and we are sitting lower in the water and the prop can't push us as quickly for the same rpm. Who says chemical engineering doesn't come in handy when you're boating?
Tomorrow we plan to stop in Elizabeth City (about 10 miles away) to get some groceries, do some laundry, explore a bit and hopefully find wifi so we can post this blog and photos. Our next leg will take across Albemarle Sound and to Beaufort.