Miles and Karma in the Bank
14 May 2023
Susan DeSimone
Saturday night we planned to move through the Pongo River-Alligator River canal at night (after starting at 6 am) so that we could move north up the Alligator and across Albemarle Sound ahead of the forecasted strong north winds that would be on the nose on Sunday. However, by about 9 pm, it became clear that I was struggling with navigating the narrow channel with charts and occasional lit markers during my watches. I was getting disoriented in the flat dark and struggling with visual obstructions blocking my view of the lights. If you haven’t noticed, I’m short and though Pathfinder is truly practically perfect in every way, she was designed by a 6’4” tall person so it is not always friendly to me. With the dinghy on deck in addition to rails, lines, and shrouds there were just too many obstructions that I could not tell were there in the dark. When I totally lost sight of a navigation marker light and could not see it no matter how I moved around we decided to reevaluate our plans. Though I felt miserable pulling the plug, Roger gave me the space to do that, and I did. We set anchor with good shelter from the strong south winds and got to bed by 10:30 pm.
We started moving at first light on Sunday morning with the goal of putting in an ~75-mile day (i.e. long!). We had to work against current and some wind moving through the canal but did not have to work the engine too hard in the morning. We even put some karma back in the bank by helping to extract a power cat stuck in 1 foot of water, adding about 30 minutes to our long day. By the time we moved out of the canal though, the north wind was established and building. We were still moving at 5 kts but had to push the engine harder to do that.
Then we entered the sound and added lots of waves and more wind to the mix. The ICW and other established routes are shown by a magenta line on nautical charts. People religiously follow the magenta lines! It is generally the best way to move through shallow water and is supposed to be clear of man-made obstructions, with notable exceptions. We stayed on the “magenta line”, moving directly up wind and wave for about 7 nm in Albemarle Sound. This would set us up for about 10 nm of motor sailing or even sailing to finish the sound and set up for the Pasquotank River entrance. We knew this chosen course would expose us to more crab pots, but it was worth it. Not only did we shorten our trip by several nm, we were able to sail much faster than we had been motoring. We went from moving at ~3 kts upwind to 6-7 kts once we fell off the wind using our full genoa sail. We moved faster, were much more stable and it was way more fun. We did keep the engine on for awhile in reserve to allow us to move quickly in the event of a missed crab pot. We shut it down after building confidence in our ability to sail among the crab pots and enjoyed a wonderful sail at the end of the day.
We had a beautiful sail to the mouth of the Pasquotank and were looking forward to reconnecting with the magenta line since we expected to lose the crab pots within the channel. Sadly, we could not have been more wrong- there were strings of crab pots running freakin’ everywhere! Luckily, they stopped just as we were losing the light and our ability to see them relatively easily. We planned to pass through a draw bridge in Elizabeth City and anchor about 2 nm upstream but as we exited the bridge and passed the free docks we heard people calling Pathfinder! Turns out we had caught up with Briguiloo (Brigand and Tranquiloo’s chosen hailing names now) 😊. We pulled up to the dock after a 14 hr day of travel and spent the night there. It meant we would leave at 5 am instead of 5:30, but it was well worth it.