I have been fortunate to see many beautiful places in my life and this trip has been no exception. What I have learned is that there are beautiful landscapes and then there are beautiful landscapes that speak to my soul and allow me total peace. The trip today as we moved up the Pasquotank and across the Great Dismal Swamp was the former.

It was a stunning morning; cold enough that the morning mist was rising from the water. We started out with a crescent moon still up. The river is heavily wooded on both sides and twists and turns so that we came in and out of the rising sun's path which gave us incredible lighting and some gorgeous reflections. The dawn chorus greeted us as we moved along, which added to the beauty.

The Great Dismal Swamp is the largest wetland wildlife reserve and there is a 50-ft wide canal cut along the edge of it. You enter and exit the canal through locks which means there is no current to contend with in the canal. The down side is that it is only "guaranteed" to be 6 feet deep. Charlie on White Seal and Nuvo (another boat that we have been playing leapfrog with since Charleston) said they hit LOTS of submerged logs as they moved through. They each draw about 6 feet. We had pulled up our centerboard which put us at 5.5-foot draft. That must have been enough though since we only bumped a few times. We had to dodge a few overhanging trees to protect the top of the mast, but it was easy-peasy going.

It was nice for me to go through the locks with the mast up so that I brushed out my cobwebs about how to do it before we are doing it with 10 feet of mast sticking out forward and backwards. These only have 8-10 feet of level change which also made them easy.

The last stretch of water for the day took us through Norfolk VA. Boy was that different! We went from beautiful wilderness to Navy and big commercial waterfronts with crowed highways running along and over. We ended the day with a very short sail across the James River to an anchorage in Hampton, VA. Tomorrow, we should have a great sail up the Chesapeake to Deltaville.