For reasons which have escaped us for now, we thought it would be great fun to enjoy motoring the 208 mile stretch between Beaufort , North Carolina and Norfolk, Virginia via the ICW. We'd never done it before... how hard could it be ...what could go wrong.... blahdy blahdy blah. One of our biggest fears was coming across a barge, like the one shown in the video below, in a narrow channel which the ICW is famous for. Mike too the below video while we were docked at the Jarrett Bay Shipyard near Beaufort. There are many long stretches where the channel is less than 100 feet wide.

ICW Barge Video

So off we headed North along the tree lined waterway in 12 feet of tea coloured swamp water. Parts of it are heavily wooded with pine and cypress while other sections are low flat swampland. We passed many lovely homes and docks where residents obviously enjoy the passing parade of watercraft outside their doors. 57 miles passed with nervous ease on the first day along the Neuse, Bay, Pamlico and Pungo Rivers which flow into Pamlico Sound (west of Cape Hatteras). We anchored for the night at Deep Pungo , the closest town being a pleasantly named Leechville, NC feeling very pleased with our adventure so far.

The following day under bright blue skies, we found ourselves in the straight 20 mile Alligator River - Pungo River Canal following a confident looking down east Duffy boat named "Two's Company", who we dubbed our 'submerged log buster'. We stayed in the middle of the waterway at all times never straying one side or the other for fear of running over fallen trees and stumps lurking below the surface. Trees seem to be constantly falling and rotting away. We could see that the ICW has grown wider over time with erosion as there is no speed limit but sections are controlled with No Wake Zones. We did not pass a single vessel heading south during our 3 days on the ICW. Thank you ICW angels. On the evening of the 2nd night, we anchored at 36 12.2'N;75 56.5'W a beautiful flat anchorage in a wide area of the North River, just north of Albermarle Sound and watched a distant storm followed by a gorgeous sunset (above photo). The past two days had been quite tiring with the intense concentration and hand steering. We did not want to make any mistakes but it turned out that navigation was the least of our problems.

Mike awoke on the 3rd morning at 5am to a very weird sound. He thought it sounded like a high tech fan we'd set up in the salon to bring air throughout the boat so he moved his mosquito netting aside and came up on deck from his crew quarters to see an unforgettable sight. The entire aft deck area was a seething biomass of black swarming blind mosquitoes called midges flies. The sound was like a turbo engine from the millions of midges beating their wings while clinging to Vanish as they busily laid aqua green eggs with gay abandon.

(Turn up the sound on your computer....)

Midges flies video

It was a scene out of some hideous nightmare. The deck was sticky with egg casings. He called Maynard but it was hard for him to breathe as they were buzzing thickly around his head. Maynard bravely went outside and tried to shoo them away with a towel but they went into a frenzy before he and Mike ran to the bow where there was a breeze and fewer midges. The aft bridge deck was also a sea of insects as they covered the dinghy, the outside table, cushions, the kayaks and SUP covers. A few hundred had come inside Vanish which needed to be sought out and destroyed before they laid their eggs and stained our furniture and carpet. Overnight, we'd left one of our aft doors open to catch the breeze although luckily the screen doors were closed. The midges had clumped between the screen door and the now closed aft door to a depth of about 4".

What to do? Maybe they'll fly away if we leave. No. They didn't.
Maybe they'll die fast. No. They didn't.
Let's hose them off. Ok.
Oh no, the writer in her early morning fugh left a tap running, for the first time in her life, by mistake and our tanks were now almost empty. Scrap that idea. We'll have to find a dock with water to wash-down as we can't run the watermaker in this dirty, silty, brackish water. First we have to pass under 5 bridges, 8 swing or lift bridges and negotiate a lock today in order to get ourselves out of this ditch.

To get through all of the bridges, we needed to time our arrival at each of the them by doing around 9 to 10 knots to pass through them at a specific time by radioing ahead to advise our approach. It took calculations and concentration on top of the constant disgusting reminder outside. On we went, weighed down with about a billion midges flies clinging to every previously clean waxed surface on Vanish. But then the dragonflies caught wind of the unprecedented banquet to be had onboard so they too swarmed our boat enjoying the party. The number of dragonflies was astounding. We were an absolute smorgasbord for Earth's food chain. I half expected bald eagles and alligators to join in the party.

As we continued our voyage, discussing how best to deal with this debacle, we were passed by a power boat whose name I won't repeat (even though I'd like to), at too high of a speed. Before this, we didn't think we needed to take all of the sea precautions of bolting down every drawer, door etc. in the ICW nor did we think we needed to engage the stabilisers. The wake he left was the worst we've ever encountered in over 9,000 sea miles. Let's just say we didn't think it was ...... Pure Bliss. A coffee table tipped over, drawers were flung open, a kettle full of hot water spilled all over the galley but worst of all, Mike's full sized fridge in the crew area flew open and spilled its guts onto the lazarette floor. The soft food flew out first followed by the heavy items crushing everything into a colourful paste. Milk, yoghurt, orange juice, tomatoes, split coke cans and sticky donuts. Gee and it's only 8 am. The day is going well so far!

We entered the Great Lock about 10 miles from Norfolk, Virginia and as Tammy, our Lock Tender took our lines to tie us to the side of the lock while the water dropped by 2 ft, she spied our disgusting passengers clinging to our little cruise liner. "Whatcha got there, Vanish?" she said just loud enough for the other couple of boats nearby to overhear. Tammy had never seen anything like it on a pleasure boat in her life. Of course, there was plenty of time to stare at Vanish in the lock as the lock broke down due to debris getting caught in the lock gates. Meanwhile, Mike decided to phone a pest control company in Norfolk and after explaining our predicament was told that this was the worst infestation of midges flies he'd ever heard of in 20 years. He kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," as if he was somehow responsible because he was a Virginian. He said we were the unfortunate victims of a midge fly swarm. He also said they never travel more than ¼ mile from their nest meaning we anchored less than ¼ mile from them in an offshore breeze during a swarming. We were just unlucky.

As we exited the ICW in the Chesapeake Bay, we all cheered as we clicked over 10,000 miles on Vanish since 2012, all of them done by both Maynard and Vicki. Had we been able to go outside and enjoy a bottle of champagne, we would have done so, but instead we slunk our way onto a dock amid a cloud of midges. A few thousand jumped ship along with some very fat dragonflies once they saw their cousins dying en masse under clouds of Baygon. Mike took vengeance with bug spray, a high powered hose, soap, and brushes to wash away the piles of brown bodies mixed with turquoise coloured rivers and puddles of midges goo. 11 hours of work has been invested in the clean-up to date. There is still much to do as the green egg casings have stained some of the gelcoat and teak which will need scrubbing, polish and wax. Vanish will be back to normal in no time.

So is there a moral to this story? No. Not really. Live for today. Life is a wonderful unfolding story especially if you decide to do the ICW.

(For more photos see Gallery 'Gnat Pretty')