Passage Coinjock Marina to Atlantic Yacht Basin
8:21 AM Underway
2:02 PM Docked starboard side to
6.6 engine hours 32 Nautical Miles

Wow, lots of rain last night opened to a beautiful morning. After getting underway I noticed a parade of three boats behind me. I check and they are all going the same speed and letting me lead. Whoa here comes a tug pushing a barge loaded with scrap metal. Kind of a skinny passing and I get a little too much out of the channel and the tug still passes me rather close. After a few hours I called one of the boats in the parade and talk some tech talk with him. I learned quite a bit from him about our AIS system that he also has the same model.
This stretch of the ICW is through swamp and coffee colored waters. This water is also very protected and cannot get any wave build up. After yesterday that was certainly a pleasure.
The boat directly behind me calls me and asks for a pass. After he passes me he calls again and says he is going to slow down as the bridge we are going to have to wait to open is 10 miles away and he can’t possibly get there for the next opening. This bridge and the one after it open on the hour and 1/2 hour. So, the guy had plotted the distance and got the speed set so our parade would get to the bridge just as it opens. Sometimes you get to a bridge too soon and have to maneuver around as the wind and currents just will not let your boat sit in park like a car. I don’t usually run a route of all the twists and turns to get the exact distance as this guy had done. So, I was happy to follow him. His figures and speed were spot on as we got to the bridge and none of us had to go into neutral and fiddle about. That was fine for that bridge. The next bridge is a little over 6 miles away and it is a race to get to that bridge in just 1 hour. Everyone passed Liquid Therapy and I ran her hard. Still my calculations were we would not get to the next bridge until 7 minutes after the opening. Just as I am about to call the bridge tender to ask if he can delay the opening or hold the bridge open until we get there, he makes a call to all of the boats saying he is going to delay our opening because he has to open early for a commercial vessel, will have to close and let some vehicular traffic clear and then reopen the bridge for us. Yea! Sometimes you just get lucky.
We docked at Atlantic Yacht Basin and may stay here a couple days. We can make it back to our home marina from here. But the next two days are going to be 15-20 knots of wind out of the northeast. No way am I going to go up the Chesapeake Bay in those conditions.
Today’s picture is someone’s home on the water. You see the strangest things when traveling by boat.