Day 121: Norfolk to Deltaville

Norfolk always seems a little too far for Ben and me to do for a weekend trip, so we weren't sure if we would make it to Deltaville in a day. After dinner Thursday night Ben routed the trip into the GPS and we discovered it was only 51 nm, which has become a pretty easy day for us at this point.

Norfolk is one of the busiest harbors on the east coast (here is where I should link to the source, but I just made that up). The harbor was busy with commercial and navy vessels as well as at least one other pleasure craft when we left Norfolk at 6:50 am. We heard an announcement on the VHF from a Coast Guard cutter about a commercial vessel that was requiring 1000 ft of clearance, we thought it was a little odd, but didn't really pay much attention. The wind was over 20 knots from the west, and we knew we might be able to sail a lot of the day so we went ahead and raised the main sail (with a reef) for the first time since Florida. About 15 minutes after we raised the main, we noticed a marine police zodiac with it's lights flashing behind us. We double checked that our radio was on and functioning, and continued on our way, assuming the boat would hail us if they needed anything. After some hand gestures from the police, and us raising up our radio several times indicating they should hail us, they finally came through on channel 16. I'm not sure what channel they had been on, but 16 is supposed to be used for hailing, so we're pretty sure they were accidentally on some other channel thinking they were on 16. The marine police asked us to keep to the right of the channel and out of the way of the approaching container ship. At the time the container ship was still aways behind us, but it did catch up quickly. It also had at least 3 marine police zodiacs, a coast guard zodiac and a coast guard cutter in the entourage. We also heard several more announcements on 16 about the container ship, it's Coast Guard buddy, and it's "no fly zone." We're not exactly sure what was on that container ship, but we've passed by many container ships on different trips to Norfolk and none of them ever required a 1000 ft.

We made it out of Norfolk harbor at about 9 and headed up the bay. We were a little nervous passing in front of this Naval Destroyer, and I had flash backs to the Coast Guard boat from our first gulf stream crossing, but it was pretty easy to see on the radar that we would pass way in front (and we did).

After we got into the bay, the wind died down a little and we shook out our reef. We thought about turning off the motors and actually sailing, but the GPS indicated we'd be back at the docks at 2 pm which made us realize we could actually get back to Charlottesville that night, so we decided use the motors to maintain over 7 knots. The wind died down a little bit in the afternoon, so we had to motor at the end anyway. We made it back to the dock about 2:30 and surprisingly my 1993 Mustang, which has been sitting in the marina parking lot, neglected since November 11, started right up. We packed the car to it's full capacity and had to leave a few choice things on the boat (including the pressure cooker, which we have fallen in love with). I'm sure we will be back soon to pick those things up. Also, the water was off at the docks, so we'll need to head back soon to wash the boat anyway.

We reset the GPS Trip Info on the second day, so completed just over 2708 nm in four months!

It was sad leaving Whisper, but we're excited to start our lives back up, and are proud of our accomplishment. It's also a really cool thing that we'll always be able to say we've done. We really enjoyed our time being part of the live aboard community, and are looking forward to being a part of that community again one day (although sadly we realize it will not be for a long time).

We are getting used to living on land again. Driving on the highway was a little scary - it felt VERY fast! We cannot believe how big our house is, or how much "stuff" we have. Ben has enjoyed the kitchen, although he is needing to "find" everything again. Daylight Saving Time was a good thing for us, we are now getting up at a reasonable time and are able to stay up past 10 pm. I'm really going to miss writing updates on my life, however my "regular" life is probably not interesting enough to blog about.

Great Dismal Swamp

The Great Dismal Swamp route was amazingly beautiful and stressful. The world was starting to look like a Virginia winter again and it was either drizzling or raining most of the day. The stressful part was mostly because that part of the ICW has a lot of deadheads, which are basically almost neutrally buoyant logs which mostly live on the bottom but sometimes get kicked up and take a little while to sink. They are not visable above the water (for the most part), but all of a sudden, "bam" one hits the hull. We hit about 4, keeping a vigilant watch, but we think there was no damage. In order to keep a good look out we had to open one of the front windows, so it was a cold and wet trip.



We had called the locks the night before to confirm the 8:30, 11:00, 1:30, 3:30 opening schedule and were told that one of the locks would open whenever. That information ended up being incorrect and we had to wait for almost two hours at the first lock. Luckily there was just enough room to drop the anchor, so Ben worked on lunch and we listened to our story as we waited. We were a little worried because it seemed like the back gate of the lock was having trouble closing, but the operator worked it out, the gate closed and the water rushed in. We went up about 8 feet. After opening the front gate, the lock operator jumped in his car and became the bridge operator.






The second lock operator decided to break the rules since it was winter, not very busy, and a storm was coming. He let us through the lock at about 2:30. Both locks took about 20 minutes between the southbound gates closing, the lock filling, and the northbound gates opening. It seemed like we were going to make it to Norfolk just before the storm hit. Sadly, we hadn't realized we had one more opening bridge which was restricted. The book said the bridge was restricted until 5:30, but when we called the operator said 6:30, but there was a commercial boat that had scheduled an opening for 4 pm and had not showed up yet. We got to the bridge and waited for about 20 minutes, watching the thunderstorm approach through XM weather on the chart plotter. At about 5:15 we decided to turn back and head to the marina 3 miles south. Just a few minutes after we turned around we heard the commercial tug hail the bridge. The bridge tender hailed us back and had the tug wait for us to come back to the bridge! We made it into Norfolk just as the storm started and got absolutely drenched tying up the boat (and then retying up the boat because the 30 Amp power on the first slip was not working). Once dry we headed to Joe's Crab Shack and spent a few hours the warm, dry comfort of the bar.

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P.S. We're home! More to come on the sail from Norfolk to Deltaville once we are settled back in at home.

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Happy Birthday Ben!!

Since Oriental we've had a few rough days on the Palmico and Albemarle sounds. We left Oriental on Monday and headed north, right into the wind and waves across the Palmico sound to Belhaven. We are very proud of Whisper for making it through in one piece. The waves weren't close to as big as they were coming across Whale Cay Passage to Treasure Cay from Green Turtle, but because they had a very small period (aka. were very close together), and were right on our bow, it was tough. There were times the speed dropped to under 1.5 knots and the whole bow was buried.

Since it was only about 50 miles to Belhaven we still arrived at Dowry Marina early enough to borrow the car and get ourselves thoroughly lost before stopping and asking for directions to the Food Lion. The options at Food Lion were slim, but we were able to pick up a few things, including some salad ingredients for the 5 pm pot luck at the marina. Advice to cruisers - have a few good recipes, and ingredients on hand so you are always ready for an impromptu pot luck - they are always a blast. Most of the people at the marina had been there for a while, and were in various stages of their cruises. Although everyone knew each other, they were all very welcoming and inclusive and it was great to hear everyone's stories. Even though two stories were about running a ground in the section of the ICW we were going through the next day. (We ended up being fine.)

Tuesday morning was first morning that we both woke up COLD! Part of that might be because we woke up earlier than usual, but it's also gotten cold as we've come north!






We were up early because if we could make it a little over 80 miles we could make it to Coinjock, otherwise we'd have to stop at just under 50 ICW miles - there was no where in between. We were making great time in the morning, sadly, once we hit Aligator River we slowed down a lot and unless we picked up about a knot (not likely since we'd be headed right into the wind and waves as we crossed the Palmico) we wouldn't make it to Coinjock before 8 pm. We decided to call it an early day and stopped at 2 pm at the Alligator River Marina. We were exhausted but we enjoyed the free wifi from and I did some birthday shopping for Ben online (The Jungle by Clive Cussler). Since we had been so cold the night before we zipped apart the sleeping bag (which has finally dried) and added 1/2 of it as an extra blanket. It made a big difference!






This morning we woke up early again and headed back into the wind and waves to cross the Albemarle Sound. The direction to Elizabeth City allowed us to bring out our jib and fight the waves less, which had our speed around 6.5 - 7 knots (fast!). So this time we will be on the Great Dismal Swamp route. We made it to Elizabeth City (The Harbor of Hospitality) in time for lunch, so decided to tie up to the free town dock. We were a little confused about where we could go because there was a no docking sign on a pier connected to the sea wall and we couldn't fit into the slips (18 ft beam). We called the number and they assured us we could tie up to the sea wall but we got a little nervous because as we were tying up a police officer walked up to us. We were ok though, she was actually the welcome wagon. She also gave us the ok to tie up to a smaller wooden dock just south of where we were. It was a little more protected from the wind generated wake and there were more places to attach fenders and lines.

Whisper has three water tanks: one on each side which run to the "cold" water tap in the galley and head respectively, and one in the middle which runs to the "hot" water tap on each side (the water is not actually hot, but it comes out the "hot" tap). Only the cold water in the galley is really sutible for drinking (once run through a brita filter). The other tanks just taste a little bit funky, but are fine for washing dishes and hands. In general we use the "hot" water for washing dishes, the cold water in the galley for drinking and cooking and the cold water in the head for washing hands and the occasional deck shower. We also have a large (10 liter) dromedary bag, which we fill up with water suitable for drinking, so we have something if the cold water tank on the galley side runs out. While in the Bahamas we also had a solar shower for the occasional post snorkel rinse. While docked at the Alligator River Marina our hot water tank ran out of water. Since we are coming north pretty early, and it's cold, the water at the marina was turned off and we couldn't fill up our tanks. Then, as we were coming into Elizabeth City, our galley cold water also ran out. We ferried some water from the starboard side over to finish washing dishes, but sadly the free docks in Elizabeth City did not have water. We thought we'd be ok since we were planning on eating out for Ben's birthday, but we knew we'd need to fill up soon.

After lunch in Elizabeth City, the boat was moving quite a bit, even on our protected dock. We decided between the water issue, not having power (and therefore heat), and the opening bridge just north of the city that maybe we should move a few miles north to Lamb's Marina for the evening. It was the right call, despite getting here and realizing the slip they had planned for us was only 18 ft wide (exactly our width), they quickly found us another spot to dock. We were also able to fill up our propane tank in addition to gas and water. There is only a very small restaurant nearby, so instead of eating out we took advantage of the seafood store at the marina and purchased fresh clams for a clam spaghetti birthday dinner. We did go across the "highway" to Track One for an appetizer and a drink. We were a little confused by the menu though. We did not realize that a $7 carafe of wine was going to be an entire liter!

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Everything is Wet

Our third weekend on the ICW was the least crowded. This weekend, the weather wasn't quite as beautiful and we saw about the same number of boats we had during the week - there wasn't the spike in recreational boaters like in FL and SC. Yesterday, we realized we weren't going to make it all the way to Beaufort, NC so we stopped at at Dudley's Marina at ICW mile 228. Shortly after we docked and fueled up, it started to rain and it's been raining ever since.

For the most part Whisper is a great boat. We're (usually) warm and dry inside the cockpit/living room watching other sailors bundled up on their mono-hulls with out even a bimini. However, when it rains, the open bridge deck design shows it's downside. The windows don't make a perfect seal with the hull, so water drips in down the mast and sides. The deck gets wet, and basically everything stays that way.

In the middle of the night on Saturday Ben realized that the window over the bed was not completely closed and the bed was soaked. We quickly realized we would need to ditch the sleeping bag for some dry sheets. Luckily we had power, the heat was on, and we had taken the extra blankets from the night before off the bed, so they were safe and dry. Luckily we have heat again tonight because that sleeping bag is not drying anytime soon.


Despite not getting a good nights sleep, we were up this morning and off the dock early because there was thunderstorms forecasted for the afternoon. We ended up making it all the way to River Dunes, north of Oriental, despite the XM Weather/Thunderstorm alert around 1 pm. The waves were pretty rough and the wind was over 30 knots, so combined with the rain and thunderstorm warning, it was a stressful trip up the Neuse River. As much as we love to squeak out every bit of speed, we both got pretty nervous when Ben saw 13 knots on the GPS/speedometer. Of course, it started pouring again right before we made it to the dock, and I was soaking wet by the time the boat was tied up. The redeeming factor: this is by far the nicest marina we have stayed at, which is why we came back, and the rain and cold probably made the steam shower feel that much better.

Ben says calling this place a marina is like calling a Hilton a motel, it is really in a class by itself. Right now we are sitting in the marina "lounge" in front of the fireplace watching college basketball, enjoying the internet, and trying to decide where we're going to go out to dinner. Not too bad.


The other interesting moment today was when we passed a dredge boat in a narrow part of the ICW. The boat seemed to be taking up the entire channel, so we hailed to ask if we could go around them. He said we could go by on his starboard side, but like an ugly dog we had trouble telling which end was which, so he had to hail us back and say, "my starboard side" (which was to port for us).

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A Long Day and a Few Boring Short Ones

About five miles north of Charleston along the ICW is the Ben Sawyer Memorial Bridge which is restricted (doesn't open) between 7 am and 9 am. Because of the strong tides and currents around Charleston, five miles could either be 45 minutes or an hour and a half, and we didn't want to risk arriving just after 7 am, so we left at 7:45 aiming to make it to the bridge for the 9 am opening. That gave us plenty of time before we left to fill up the water tanks.

Once under the bridge we stopped for a pump out and to fill up the gas tanks, but other than that we had a pretty long day of motoring arriving at Georgetown just after dark and were docked and plugged in by 7 pm.





While in Charleston we had gone ahead and ordered a new propellor for the dingy from Gregory Poole in Southport. The part was scheduled to arrive either Thursday or Friday, so from Georgetown we had less than 100 ICW miles to make in two days. Pretty easy cruising. Wednesday we made it to Myrtle Beach and were docked before 4 pm. We were greeted at the dock by Tator, the "marina mutt." I actually can't believe this is the only picture I took. Every time we looked out he was sitting right on the dock with a toy in his mouth waiting for permission to come aboard.

Thursday we didn't leave until 9:20, after taking showers and cramming a (free!) 20 lb bag of ice into the cooler. Despite the 20 - 30 knots of wind coming right at us, we made it to Southport by 3:30. Both days, having docked so early, we didn't know what to do with ourselves!

In Southport, we enjoyed the high speed internet and decided to check out our Netflix account which we have just reactivated. We had some problems after watching a few episodes of Friday Night Lights Season 2, which seemed to be related to our account settings, and possibly a Netflix bug which was misidentifying our account. We decided to upgrade to the "full" unlimited streaming account, but we discovered it would not take affect until the next billing cycle in a month. Ben called Netflix customer service to ask if there was anything they could do. Netflix has amazing customer service. The person on the end of the line said, "this requires drastic measures" but was able to fix the problem by canceling our account, refunding us the money for this month, and then reactivating our account with the upgraded plan. I think it's a testament to Netflix as a company that they give their customer service representatives enough training, and provide them with the flexibility and computer systems so they can identify and fix these types of problems. It was a huge contrast to when we had to call XM radio the next day (for the second time this trip). Back in December we called because after being charged $20 in October and $25 in November for the Skywatch Weather ($9.95) and News, Talk and Sports ($9.99) plans, we were charged $62 in December. The person on the phone in December was reading from a script and was having a hard time understanding what she needed to enter into her computer to get the right script. At one point no matter what we said, she just kept telling us our charge was $62. At some point she also said we were on a quarterly billing cycle. She was unable to explain why we had been switched to a quarterly billing cycle after being charged monthly before. After over an hour on the phone, and getting into the same feed back loop with the customer service person, we finally gave up and decided to just check the next few credit card statements to make sure we were only being billed quarterly. I thought I had reviewed the statements earlier, but yesterday I discovered we were in fact being charged triple every month since December. Ben went back to battle and spent two hours on the phone. The first customer service person would do nothing but continuously tell us that our bill was for $62 and it was a monthly charge. When we tried to ask him how they got to $62, he was unable to break down the charges between the weather and talk portions of the bill. Finally he transfered us to someone else. When that person answered Ben asked if she had been brought up to date on what the call was about and she said, yes you are disputing the price of the Skywatch program. It just seemed like the first person had to make a selection to be able to transfer the call, and that was the best selection he could make. Finally someone at XM figured out that there was something wrong with our account settings, and then, since we convinced them that since they set up our account (over the phone), the account settings problem was their fault and their responsibility to fix. They are supposed to call back in 24 - 48 hours. We will see. My guess is we are still going to have to fight to get our actual money back and at this point I don't really want a credit since we are probably canceling the service. XM needs to take some customer service lessons from Netflix. (Ok, back to the sailing blog)

Since the propellor didn't arrive on Thursday, we knew we had until about noon on Friday, so did a few loads of laundry, washed the boat and filled up the water tanks in the morning. The part arrived around noon, and we headed off, but were making less than 2 knots in the considerable current and wind so headed back to the dock, watched another episode of Friday Night Lights, and waited out the tide. We're glad we did. When we left (again) at 3, we were making over 4 knots. We made it about 20 miles, just south of Wrightsville Beach, and stopped for the night. Since we got there about 7, no one was around in the marina office, and there weren't any options for 30 amp power where we docked, so we had no heat. It was a cold night, but luckily it was only forecasted to get down to 48, almost 10 degrees warmer than the night before.


We remembered the overhead cable car at this golf course in Myrtle Beach, so this time I had the camera ready. It makes me want to play golf!

36 Hours in Charleston

It was actually a little more than 36 hours in Charleston, but it included one day where we did almost nothing sailing or living on a boat related. We didn't wash the boat, fill the water tanks, get gas, pump out, or fix that one thing that needed to be fixed. We just explored Charleston.





It's about 70 ICW miles from Beaufort, SC to Charleston, but we made great time, arriving at about 4 pm on Sunday. It was a beautiful day on the water and we were joined by a lot of recreational boaters also enjoying the warm weather. We knew we wanted to have another meal at McCrady's, so we checked into Charleston City Marina and caught the last free shuttle (at 5 pm) downtown. It wasn't quite dinner time so we walked around the market as it was closing, but decided we should stay in Charleston another day and plan on coming back to the market. We also strolled around the river front on the east side of the peninsula where there were two fountains, including the one I remember wading in on my first visit to Charleston about 15 years ago.

After that we headed over to McCrady's for another excellent meal - Octopus, Crispy Lamb, Duck, Sweatbreads and sorbet sampler for dessert. All excellent. We also had some excellent wine pairings and got a few restaurant recommendations for the next night from another couple and the bartender (also named Ben). We took a cab back to the marina and then got a great nights rest - sleeping in past 8:30!

The next day we knew we wanted to check out the market again, and explore some more of Charleston. Ben also had a request to see a movie - our first in a theater since Harry Potter back in December. We had no idea what was out, so we did a little fandango searching and decided since King's Speech had won the Best Picture Oscar the night before, it was probably a good pick. It was playing just a few miles away at the Terrace Theater at 4:20. We decided to again take advantage of the marina shuttle to do a Harris Teeter run. We didn't have a ton of things to pick up, but when you have time, a nice grocery store, and a free shuttle, you don't pass it up. Plus we were low on milk. After the grocery run we headed back downtown to peruse the market and a little spice shop Ben found. We went to a little BBQ, Brewery and Brick Oven Pizza place for lunch, and then decided it couldn't be that far to walk back to the marina - plus it was a beautiful day. We ended up walking along the water almost all the way around the tip of the peninsula, but it was worth it. Charleston is home to so many beautiful houses including rainbow row and all the old houses along the battery. We think the walk was about 2 1/2 miles. It was great to get out and move and between that walk and a few weeks at ACAC when we get back to Charlottesville, we should be back in top form.





Also, Charleston City Marina is the "home of the megadock" which is basically a fancy name for a very very long floating dock. Great idea unless you are docked at the very end of the "megadock" and have to walk the entire length of it to get to anywhere.

After the walk we had about an hour before we caught a cab over to the Terrace Theater for King's Speech. We didn't realize it when we picked the movie/theater, but Terrace Theater is the art theater which means they serve beer! and popcorn. It wasn't a fancy pants theater with reclining chairs or anything, but the seats were comfortable, it was clean and it sounded good (according to Whisper's resident audiophile).

We made the evening a typical date night going straight from the movie to dinner at FIG (Food is Good), another fancy pants Charleston restaurant with another James Beard award winning chef. The food was better than good - the preparation seemed designed to not take away from the excellence of the ingredients. It was also amazing to see how packed the restaurant was on a monday night. We were lucky to snag the only "walk in table" because the dining room was fully committed and the bar was completely full.

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Home Sweet Home

In high school I went on a week long backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. Part way through the trip we started talking about all the things we were going to do when we got back to civilization. Shower, shave and ice cream were all high on the list. Just because we missed those things from home didn't mean we weren't having a good time. The last week or so, to ease the pain of going home, Ben and I have begun coming up with a similar list.


First, Second and Third on the list goes with out saying - Luna. We cannot wait to see her and hope she will be as excited to see us.

The rest of the list is in no particular order.

Showers: Hot, frequent, dependably clean, and private
Dishwasher: the appliance not the job
Not hitting my head (Ben); Not stubbing my toes (Laura)
Maya: Sitting at the bar, drinking a firefly ice tea (Laura) or tempernillo (Ben) and eating an entire rack of ribs
A reliable supply of organic/humanely raised meat and fresh vegetables and a real kitchen in which to cook them (with 4 burners whose temperature is consistent and not dependent on how much propane is left, and an oven).
Cooking pizza (Ben); Eating Ben's pizza (Laura)
A choice of delicious restaurants (Maya will be first, but we are coming up with the list of must hit places after that: Ten, Mas, Bang, Tavolo ... )
Ice Cream (Laura); Ice (Ben); A Freezer (both)
Toilets that flush at the flip of a lever
Sinks that drain
Unlimited power (apologies to my energy conscious dad, but I am looking forward to not needing to check the battery before charging my laptop or toothbrush)
Season 5 of Dexter (Is that available on DVD yet??)
Season 2 of Friday Night Lights

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