(Deep Creek Lock)
I pay the bills (the repair shop people are an hour late to open the office) and push off the dock at 9 in fog and drizzle. The tachometer is a lot different...I'll have to get used to it. Mr. Pushy runs rougher than he used to...what's with that?
The fog dissipates and the drizzle ends before we reach the 11 am scheduled lock opening at Deep Creek - the start of the Great Dismal Swamp Canal. We lock through with about 7 other boats...sailboats and trawlers, all pleasure craft. This is one of my very favorite stretches of the trip, and I spent most of my conversations at Portsmouth convincing other cruisers to take this route rather than the Virginia Cut route. "My friend said I'd need to bring a chainsaw to get through!" I'll bet you that friend has never seen the canal. Or maybe he wants to keep it for himself. Of course, I discourage any boats with over 6' draft to take the route, although I never saw less than 9 feet on the depthfinder (granted, I wasn't spending a lot of time looking at the depthfinder, having 22 inches of draft...well, maybe 24 inches loaded down as we are). The canal is not very wide, and snags line the edges (old tree trunks, etc...), but basically all the traffic is going south in the Fall, and north in the Spring, it's "no wake" throughout, so no boats are going to be passing you. There's no tug boats, barges, fishing trawlers, or workboats that you see constantly in both directions on the other route, and, since the locks open only 4 times during the day, you can drop anchor anywhere in the canal at the end of the day if you're "locked in" or tie up with other boats at the visitor's center about half way through the canal near the Virginia/North Carolina border. And it's gorgeous...a primeval cypress forest full of birds and other creatures.
We reach South Mills lock in time for the 3:30 pm opening, but decide to get "stuck" between the bridge and the lock and tie up to the bulkhead - free dockage provided by the waterway. Although there's room for probably 20 boats, we are the only boat there (the others either stopped at the visitor's center or locked through). And despite being still early in the day, we will be the only boat, since neither the bridge to our north nor the lock to our south will open until 8:30 tomorrow. We had heard that the convenience store at the bridge (a 3 minute walk) sells pizza. With due skepticism, we order a pie. Actually very good! The canal here has a neighborhood street directly on each side with a mixture of styles of modest homes. Lots of kids, and people riding bikes. They wave or say "hi" or compliment the boat...friendly little out-of-the-way North Carolina town.