Goin' to Carolina

We are underway southbound through the Pamlico Sound, on the second half of a mostly open-water passage toward our next stop in the Beaufort/Morehead City area. We've been making good time and will very comfortably make our schedule to Myrtle Beach.

Wednesday after I posted here we had an uneventful crossing of the very busy ship channel at Hampton Roads, made our way into Willoughby Bay through its north entrance, and dropped the hook more or less mid-bay, about equidistant from the marina dinghy dock and the public boat ramp (map). We splashed the tender, rode over to the boat ramp, locked up, and walked a few blocks to Swell Charcoal Grill & Raw Bar, a casual neighborhood joint on the Willoughby Spit. The food was decent and they had a few decent canned beers, and we were happy to have a stretch. A 7-11 is next door. I had explored this neighborhood when we were docked in Little Creek back in June.

Sunrise over Virginia Beach and Norfolk from our anchorage in Willoughby Bay.

While at anchor I spent a bunch of time researching whether we could leave the bay via the west channel in the morning. The channel begins and ends in unrestricted water but it passes just inside of the boundary of the naval security zone. I could not get a good answer, so in the morning we left the way we came, via the north channel, a diversion of about a mile and a half.

We left on a fair tide and had a nice push upriver on the Elizabeth. Our day plan had been to end at the High Street Landing in Portsmouth, one of our regular stops, or maybe the nearby Hospital Point anchorage, just to have a short day and a relaxing evening in Norfolk/Portsmouth. But we would arrive before lunch time, and on our way upriver we discussed passing it by, for two reasons. One is that my replacement battery was already sitting at Walgreens, and they had called me to say it really should not be there due to hazardous materials content. And second is that there is a diesel shortage in the region, and we did not want to put off our fuel stop any longer than necessary.

Cheers from Swell on Willoughby Spit.

Thus it was that we cruised right past High Street and continued on to Top Rack Marina, which had the best diesel price in the region at $6.04/gallon. We bunkered just 350 gallons; it will most likely be cheaper in Myrtle Beach, and this way I did not have to change valve settings in the engine room during fueling. The 20 minutes we spent had us missing the 12:30 lockage at Great Bridge, and we dropped a lunch hook in front of the lock to wait for the 1:30.

We pulled up to the free bulkhead in Great Bridge just before 2pm to find a large chunk taken up by a crane barge conducting a diving operation. We were just able to squeeze in at the very west end of the wall (map), after first spinning around to come in port-side-to. This in case we needed to offload a scooter for some reason during our stay. Call it a premonition.

After getting tied up and squared away I offloaded our little folding wagon and walked down to Walgreens to get our packages. A large box of fabric that Louise had shipped here was waiting for me, but the all-important battery had been returned to FedEx. It was marked in the system as "refused," even though it had been accepted and signed for on Tuesday. They had literally handed it back to the driver just hours before I arrived; I had no idea you could refuse a delivery after you'd already signed for it. I spent the next 20 minutes sitting in the store with my phone out, opening a case with FedEx to try to track it down and retrieve it before it went back to the shipper in Utah.

Sharing the dock with a crane barge running a dive operation. Some kind of drainage project.

At dinner time we walked across the bridge to the Lockside restaurant, which is the pinnacle of mediocrity, if you will permit me the oxymoron, but is also, sadly, the best remaining option within walking distance of the dock. At least they have a couple of decent beers on tap. We came right back to the same shopping center in the morning for bagel breakfast sandwiches at NY Bagels, also mediocre but also the only bagel game in town (the Sunrise Breakfast restaurant a few doors down is a better choice when in the mood for something more).

After breakfast I called FedEx back, seeing no progress on my case, and I asked if the local station could just hold it for me for pickup. FedEx agreed, and the package was still at the station, so we deployed one scooter and I headed across town to pick it up. This is not a customer service center, just a distribution hub; you ring a buzzer out on the street outside the gate and someone comes out with your errant package. As soon as I said it was a package refused due to haz-mat they said "I'll be right out with it" without even asking my name. I did have to show ID and sign for it. The little voice that had told me to bypass Portsmouth and dock port-side-to, it turns out, had been right.

As long as I had to ride across town, on my way back I stopped at Home Depot to drop off some small rechargeables for recycling, and swung by Walmart to pick up a couple gallons of motor oil and a few other items. I had caught the crud that Louise had and this was probably the worst day of it for me, so I had to rest up before going back out to drop our accumulated recycling off near city hall, and get a can full of gas for the dinghy. While I was out I stopped off at Big Ugly Brewing to pick up a couple of four-packs of their excellent 22 Porter, which I first discovered, I think, out at Swell. A full day on the roads taught me that traffic in Chesapeake is miserable.

The CG had been making announcements about a boat aground near North Landing. This crane passed us on its way to go get it.

With all those errands done we decked the scooter; I did not want to have to do it either after dinner or in the morning chill. We walked to Chili's for dinner, mostly because it's next door to the Kroger, where we filled out the provisioning list before walking home. A pumpkin pie was my reward for soldiering through the day while under the weather. This was my second visit to Kroger; I had stopped by earlier to see if they recycled glass, the one item the city does not take. They do not; VA is not a bottle-bill state.

Saturday morning we took a short and chilly stroll before dropping lines, knowing we would not get off the boat again for several days. We dropped lines for the 9am bridge opening, getting out ahead of the conga line coming out of the lock. I expected at least a couple of boats to pass us after Great Bridge, starting the clock on getting the Centerville bridge opened, but no one did, perhaps because they thought the bridge only opened half-hourly.

The tug came back and tied up with us; the next day we passed the barge with someone's pride and joy on deck. They strayed off-channel and hit the cypress stumps at high speed.

We arrived at the bridge at 9:25, which would have let us just catch North Landing at 10, but the Centerville tender did not open the bridge until 9:37. On top of station-keeping for a dozen minutes, this guaranteed we could not make the 10 at North landing, and I had to slow-roll for 50 minutes to make the 10:30. I was pretty hopping mad at the time; bridge tenders do not have the authority to delay an opening for 12 minutes, but there is little consequence when they stray from the rules. The rest of the day was slow, uneventful, and mostly relaxing, and we had the hook down in the North River (map) just before 4pm. We could have gone further, but north wind dictated stopping at this end of the embayment.

I charged up the new battery underway with my regulated power supply, and with both it and the rest of the bank at full charge when we dropped the hook, I spent the first half hour or so integrating the replacement back into the battery bank. It was an exact fit, the only difference from the older batteries being the addition of bluetooth monitoring, which is nice but only moderately useful for just one out of six batteries. We are now back to full capacity and were able to make it all the way to morning without running the generator.

New battery installed. I put it in the middle to keep an eye on it.

Yesterday we expected a delayed departure due to winds decreasing throughout the day, but when we got up it was flat calm. A quick check of conditions revealed we could take the Sound route as long as we had a place to tuck in for northerlies overnight, and as soon as we entered the Albermarle Sound we veered off from the conga line to come this way instead. I spent yesterday's open-water segment making hotel plans for our upcoming trip, and diagnosing the water heater coolant loop, which has again quit working. We had a fine ride with the wind picking up all day behind us, but got slapped a bit when we made the turn around Long Shoal.

We tucked up as far as we could into the Long Shoal River (map) for acceptable conditions overnight. It is pitch dark and very quiet here, one of the most remote anchorages we visit. There is no cell service and a surfeit of stars to be seen. The wind started to lay down after sunset and we had a comfortable night.

That choice of anchorage makes today a very long 60-mile day to the protection of Adams Creek, so we were underway just after 7. We're both still recovering from the crud and the long slog with little to do apart from supervise Otto is actually a bit of a relief. Tomorrow we will be back in civilization, where we might take another day or two before moving on.