Adventures

Left Portsmouth, VA at 0900 headed down the ICW for the Dismal Swamp. In the Norfolk area, made it through all the bridges with no delay and arrived at the start of the swamp (11 nm) about 1100. The Dismal Swamp was without a snake, or a mosquito, so not much wildlife. It appears that every living thing might all ready be tucked in for the winter. The coolest part of the adventure were going through the locks. Blondie was joined by 4 sailboats, 1 catamaran and 1 tug trawler as we tied up and waited for the water to rise to continue down the swamp. About 3 hours between locks, and the second was just Blondie, one boat from Maine and one boat from Annapolis, as the others had stopped along the route to spend the night. The advice was to anchor off of Goat Island for the evening, and not approach Elizabeth City under darkness, however, Blondie was doing about 6.2 and the ammenties in Elizabeth City vs a night sleeping on the river with not much grub to eat kept Robin and Jim going. The Colorado 400 GPS was very handy in allowing the navigation of the river beyond the 18:00 sunset. Approaching the drawbridge, we communicated with a very nice bridge operator who stopped the traffic and allowed us immediate access through the bridge around 19:00, it was quite an experience. Blondie tied up to the town piers which are complimentary for 48 hours. This is known as the "Hospitality City" and it was nice to go ashore and find a bar called Thumpers for drinks and dinner. It has not been determined what will get accomplished today on the journey south, but we do need groceries and hope to get some meat for the grill.