06/20/2008, Georgetown, Sassafras River, MD
Not anxious to go home and go back to reality, we've been playing around on the bay. We spent the last couple of days on the Sassafras River by a town called Georgetown on the eastern shore of MD. It's located north of Batlimore and south of Havre de Grace. Since our last update, we spent 4 days in Hampton, VA, 3 or so days in Deltaville, 3/4 days on theRhode river right by Galesville, 1 day in Annapolis, and a variety of other anchorages along the way.
It's pretty wild because even here on our "home turf" we're still bumping into people that we've seen in various parts of the Bahamas as well as people that we met and/or saw on the way down the ICW last fall. It really is a pretty small community. In fact we suffer now from cruiser snobbishness by virtue of the fact that when we pull into an anchorage we evaluate the other boats to see if they're real cruisers or just weekend amateurs and then stop by and say hi to the "real cruisers" and find out we're they've been and where they're headed to. Quite a lot of them are from MD and there are a lot that are headed north up to Long Island Sound and Maine.
05/29/2008, North Carolina
We tried to leave Beaufort at 0600, but had trouble getting our 2nd anchor up, so we missed the bridge opening at 0630 and had to go around. Then we had 2.5 kts of current against us till about noon, when we entered the Pimlico River. Now we had 20 knts on the nose with 4-5' seas. Other than that, we had a nice run up to Elizabeth City, NC. We anchored at the last "Gizmo rest area" before heading into places which have "allagator" as part of the name (alligator river, alligator creek, little alligator river...)
We arrived Elizabeth City @ 1755 for the 1800 bridge opening - still blowing 20 kts. We did get so sail for 4-5 hours which was very nice.
I called the bridge and requested an opening. Bridge said "opening now, bring it up." Only the right span opened. "Bridge. Only one side is open, should I back up and wait?"
"other side is broke" replied the bridge. " can you make it through?" "Bridge. I'm 221/2 feet wide"
"oh. No problem. The bridge is 45 feet wide" "Rodger that" I said, "But you only have half of it open!"
Quick math....45/2=221/2. If I don't hit the rigging on the port side, I can scooch a little to port and not hit the wall to starbord. And the mast is about 11' from the bridge span to starbord. Of course, it's not exactly what you'd call straight up and down (more like 45 degrees, if you ask me). OK. Only one way to tackle this. Push the throttle and close your eyes.
No problem. Had an easy 6 inches on either side to spare (I'm glad I couldn't see the mast).
OK. So on to the Dismal Swamp...
Turns out. The guy who named it, got lost and ran out of rum. I can fully appreciate that. But if your not lost and you do have rum, it's anything but dismal. We had an excellent time doing the swamp. We passed through 2 locks, which actually raised and lowered the water (last year,they just put you in,closed one door, then opened the other). We stayed the 1st night at the North Carolina Visitors Center (I think it's route 13 or 17) rafted up to another boat. There were 8 boats rafted together that night. We had the best happy hour since we left Maryland last October!
We spent the next night at a dock just south of the Deep Creek Lock. Robert, the lock master, came by and said we had to come up to the lock at 0730 for coffee before we could lock through. That was great. He made coffee, brought out donuts, told some stories about the lock, some of the people that have gone through. What a way to start the day!
Then he locked us through and we headed up into Norfolk & Hampton.
Link to Pics:
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| Dismal Swamp |
05/22/2008, Beaufor, NC 34.42.71N; 076.39.01W
File photo (from our 1st stay in Beaufort, Nov,2007)....
Made it back to Beaufort, NC for memorial Day weekend. I figure all those people with jobs will be out clogging up the waterways this weekend, so we should just hunker down in a 'no wake zone' for a few days.
We left Southport Wednesday morning and motored up to Wrightsville Beach, NC planningto spend the night before comming to Beaufort. It got so incredibly crowded around 1700, we decieded to kick out and do an overnighter to Beaufort (I wasn't going to get much sleep anyway, with those morons parked right on top of me). So, here we are, just a stones throw from the guys pilings we dragged to last year. I only have 2 anchors out in my version of a Bahamian Moore (which we never did in the Bahamas), so hopefully, we'll stay put.
Nice Memorial day weekend. Lots of motor-boaters putting up and down the creek. We spent one after noon in the Back Street Pub with some new friends. Just can't go into that place without something good happening.
It's Monday night and the wind has picked up to 20kts from the SE and is blowing us uncomfortably close to the pilings that we 'borrowed' last year...not to mention that our ass is now hanging out in the channel...the one the shimp boats use early in the morning. OK. So I'll be doing the 'goffer' thing tonight.
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| Beaufort-2008 |
