The Passage

The outside sky is black. Emily is asleep below and will not awaken for another 3 hours or so. I am inside the pilothouse studying the instruments that have all been dimmed to the maximum extent or have been put into “night mode”. Kim is on the foredeck and the chain is being raised and clatters below down a long tube into the rode locker below. Even she is using limited light to rinse off the anchor and chain and keep her night vision that we may need as we sneak out of Cape Lookout Point in North Carolina just before 4:00 AM. We needed this early start to make it safely to our destination before sunset.

Since we touched the sandy bottom on the way into this anchorage, I am carefully looking at the two chart plotters to make sure we head directly towards deeper water. The anchor lifts free of its grip of the bottom that has held us safely overnight…and we are free. The transmission shifts into forward and we creep into the black night. The navigational markers that we are searching for blend easily into the lights on shore, but using RADAR and the chart plotters remove much of the confusion.

As we round the last navigational aid, we realize that most hazards are behind us and only 10 hours of open ocean separate us from our next anchorage. The first few minutes are the hardest. As the boat plows into the black emptiness, my mind starts to think of all the unseen objects we might hit. Will it be an empty metal container that has fallen off a ship at sea and is drifting just below the surface where it can escape my radar yet rip into my hull? Will it be a sleeping whale that just decided to use my route as the perfect place to have his slumber?

But as the minutes turn to hours, our mighty little ship keeps moving steadily where I have directed her. All the systems are working well and our confidence gains another notch.

I see the first signs of dawn at sea emerge. The first thing I see are the waves tops as the sun bounces off the clouds and reflects down to the sea long before it has actually decided to appear. The sea is calm this particular morning. There are long steady swells coming from Africa and it appears that our ship is moving across the chest of a great being as it slowly and gently breathes in and out. Then I begin to see the birds that have been awakened by our approach and take flight under our bow. Finally, the sky brightens and a great ball of fire erupts from the sea. No land is in sight.

Emily wakes up and joins Mommy and Daddy in the pilothouse just in time to see a pod of dolphins discover our boat and use our bow wake as an excuse to play. I have heard that they enjoy the pressure wave created at the bow but I would like to believe that they are safely escorting us South. I have no words to describe how cool that is.

Enjoy the video.

Tom

Dashing South

We made it through the Chesapeake, stopping twice quickly to see old friends that Tom used to work with back when he was designing nuclear submarines. After the visits and taking on more than 700 gallons of diesel fuel, we went through the Dismal Swamp route that brought us to North Carolina.

There are two routes south on the ICW from Norfolk, Virginia and we chose the Dismal Swamp route since it is frequently too shallow and current conditions allowed us to pass through with our 5 foot draft requirement. Even so, we heard about a dozen submerged logs get whacked by our 30 inch propeller along the 51 mile route. The Dismal Swamp land was owned and surveyed by George Washington and the entire canal was dug by hand by slaves. Edgar Allen Poe also wrote “The Raven” while staying in a hotel along this canal. Despite the few bottom bumps, the trip was enjoyable and we successfully made it through our first two locks of the trip. The first lock brought us up about 8 feet to fresh water and the second lock lowered us back to sea level just before Elizabeth City, NC. The only thing dismal about this part of the trip was the cold outside temperatures which required several additional hours of running the generator to keep the boat toasty.

We met two cruising boats with kids in the Dismal Swamp and we stayed with them at Elizabeth City during a period of high winds and unusually cold temperatures. It was nice to be plugged in and have unlimited heat for 3 days,

Since then, we have been moving quickly south making about 55 miles per day. We are now anchored in Cape Lookout (near Beaufort, NC) watching dolphins play and wild horses feed on the dunes on Shackleford Banks. Tomorrow, we awake well before the sun to depart here for an ocean passage at 4:00 AM. We will need to leave in the dark to make the passage and comfortably arrive at Wrightsville beach, NC in daylight. The captain plans to reward the crew with 2 nights “shore leave” at a nice marina there to stretch our legs.

All the boat systems are working well and our plan is to keep moving steadily south towards Florida and hopefully, we will find warmer weather.

Tom

Family & Friends

We enjoyed seeing the Inner Harbor in Baltimore having grown up near this area when this city was much rougher around the edges. We toured Fort McHenry, ate dinner at Phillips Crab house, had more crab in Lexington market and enjoyed the wonderful aquarium. We went to the aquarium on Halloween night and we left Emily on the boat and took Harry Potter with us. Sharing that night with John and Mary from Navigator made it all the more special.

A short trip down the Bay brought us to good friends Doris and Jerry who live on a creek off the Magothy River with their own dock. Despite the numerous verbal warnings from my navigation program that the “depth is too low”, we plowed though the mud right up to the dock and stayed for a week. We used their water and electric and spent most of the week trying to give money to them only to have them sneak it back on the boat. Good friends are priceless. Kim and I both saw several other childhood friends and it was nice to relive some old memories.

My Mother drove over from Ocean Pines, Maryland and stayed on the boat for most of the week and it was truly a joy to have her with us. She survived some marathon walking in DC and the Spartan conditions on the boat with true grace. I managed to see my brother Jeff and much of his family on Emily’s 8^th Birthday and they fixed a nice meal and made it special.

We are now working our way down the Chesapeake Bay towards some more old friends and finally, Dear reader, we will be entering the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) and making a dash (as if that that word could ever apply to trawlers) for warmer waters.

Tom