As the temperatures turn cold our thoughts, and boat, turn south. LAMANTIN is heading towards the Bahamas!

We had a wonderful summer in Lankford Bay getting some boat work done and enjoying the upper Chesapeake. There are so many nice places to anchor out and enjoy a tranquil sunset. There are also great small towns with interesting history to explore.
On the way down south we spent time in St Michaels, a historical, coastal town on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake in Maryland. There is a great maritime museum there where we got to watch them building a replica of an old shipping schooner. St Michaels also has nice places to eat and shops to enjoy. Continuing south on the Chesapeake, we stopped in the Little Choptank River for a quiet overnight stay on a small tributary creek.

Weather seems to dictate nearly everything in our lives these days. Expecting some heavy weather, we decided to make a long, fast run down nearly the entire Chesapeake from The Little Choptank to Hampton. Unfortunately, we blew out our distributor cap on the starboard engine when it overheated. We think a loose belt caused the overheat that caused the coolant to spray out of the overflow bottle onto the distributor cap causing it to short. Luckily, we were able to find a mechanic who could (more or less) quickly fix the problem and confirm that the overheat did not cause any other problems.

From Hampton, we were able to enter the Dismal Swamp Canal. This canal is the oldest continuously operating canal in the US with a pedigree dating back to George Washington. It is remarkable peaceful with glassy water reflecting the long straight stretches of ditch dug 100’s of years ago.

The canal played an important role in the civil war as the Union thought the south would use the canal to move boats like the ironclads. In fact, the canal has always been too shallow and narrow for that type of boat. (And, nearly too shallow for our type of boat. We ended up hitting several underwater objects. We never saw them since the water is caramel colored owing to the pine tannins.) The Dismal Swamp runs between two locks, South Mills and Deep Creek. The current locks date from the 1940’s but at Deep Creek you can still see the original lock from the 1800’s. Commercial boats were so narrow then that you can nearly jump across the old lock.

If you want to see what the modern locks look like, check out our YouTube channel with time lapse photos of us going through the locks at Deep Creek, South Mills and Great Bridge (the larger lock on a parallel canal).

Great Bridge Lock and Bridge:

Deep Creek Lock and Bridge

South Mills Lock and Bridge:

The dismal swamp canal ends in North Carolina, where we’ll be spending the next couple of weeks visiting with friends before continuing our journey south towards our ultimate destination for 2021: Bimini in the Bahamas.