4/27/18 Friday: What a nice morning! The wind and waves finally calmed down last night, and we slept well. The gang decided to leave by 7:00 today, so we were up physically, but not totally atum. As Captain was out on the dock getting ready for departure, Eddie from Total Eclipse commented – “Ken… you aren’t really a morning person, are you?” HA! That made us laugh. It’s that obvious, huh?😳☺😴 But we were ready and pulled away from the dock just before 7. It was glaze glass calm out there! So nice! Our route would take us up the Pungo River to the Alligator Pungo Canal. I read that this was the last piece of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway to be completed back in 1928, connecting Norfolk Virginia to Miami Florida with a complete inland waterway.
Captain checked the AIS (that’s the thing that let’s us see other boats, their size, speed, etc.) There was one tug coming our direction, which we passed before we got to the canal. No more in sight until waaay at the other end. YAY! This canal is known to have dead head logs, stumps, all sorts of debris, especially along the edges, so it is not really a place you want to have to pass something that big.
We had about an hour of rain, so went downstairs for awhile. It was such a nice calm day, and no boats zooming by once we were in the canal. Just gentle ripples on the water, which made it much easier to watch for logs and debris. It was very peaceful and pretty. You can see some of the rotten stumps on the side of the canal here. Why is it called the Alligator River? And there is also the nearby Alligator River National Refuge. It seems like alligators like to live where there are palm trees, and I haven’t seen any palm trees for awhile. They say that they do see American Alligators this far north, but they are rare. However, bears are known to live here! We kept a lookout for critters, but the only thing we saw was a couple of turtles.
Check out the color of the water here! It is very dark tea colored. “Oh Black Water, Keep on Movin’ ..”
We came out of the canal into the Alligator River, which was really wide and splat flat as a pancake. The charts all said to still stay in the channel, even though all this water looks tempting after being in the canal. It would be very hard to stay in the channel without a chart plotter, because the markers were very far apart! Pretty soon we passed mile marker 100. That meant that we were 100 miles from Norfolk Virginia, where the Atlantic ICW starts.
Alligator River was beautiful today! Marine weather reports say that there can be six foot waves on this. I’m sure glad that our timing worked out to be here on a flat water day! And it was warming up – we got to be in short sleeves this afternoon.
Here is one of the tugs that we passed in the Alligator River.
And then this one was rigged up with one tug pulling the barge, and the other tug in the back keeping all the the flotilla aligned. The one in front was painted very red, and was really a nice looking tug boat. And it was chugging and working really hard!
Just as we passed these guys, we were approaching the Alligator Swing Bridge, which only has a clearance of 14 feet. All of us cruising boats need it opened. There is currently a lot of construction going on at the bridge, so even though it is “open on demand”, the bridge tender likes to bunch boats together as much as he can to minimize the openings. With these two tugs, we knew there would be an opening soon. We monitored VHF Ch.13 to keep track of what the bridge and the tugs were planning. There were four pleasure boats ahead of us, and four behind the tugs. As it turned out, we only had to wait about 10 minutes. The boats behind the tugs caught up, and all of us went parade style through the bridge. The tugs were very kind and let all of us get out of their way before they went through. I didn’t even get a picture of it, because as soon as we were through the bridge, we turned to the port to go into the Alligator River Marina. I had to get my lines and fenders ready! Two boats in front of us turned in to the marina as well, so we held back a little bit for our approach. This marina will make you laugh. It is pretty much just a gas station on the side of the highway. Seriously!
This shot shows the long bridge going off to the left. This is highway 64 that goes out to Nags Head on the coast. In fact, we have seen a zillion motorcycles going both ways. I did some research…. It is “Outer Banks Bike Week” out there. A nine day party with bikers from everywhere. Anyway, here we are, parked alongside a dock at a gas station. It is convenient for boaters as a place to stop to make two short cruising days out of one really long day. We travelled about 54 miles today. We were going to go on up to Elizabeth City, but that’s another 30 miles, so decided we would stop here instead. But hey – they have a little grill/cafe inside the gas station. Captain had a good po-dunk burger and onion rings. His arteries should be oiled up for awhile now. 😉
It is nice and calm here, so no rock & roll like yesterday evening. Our boat buddies are looking forward to the 6:30am greasy spoon breakfast at the gas station cafe. Captain and I like to be up for awhile before we eat, so we’ll sleep in….HA!… for a three-boat departure at 7:30. Then we’ll have coffee and pop tarts en route. Yep, really! Remember, I can’t use the stove unless we’re plugged in to shore power or running the generator. But the coffee maker and toaster work fine while we’re under way! 😋. And toasted cinnamon pop tarts with coffee are pretty darn good when there aren’t any other pastries on board. It’s no wonder we’re so fluffy. We are crossing the Albemarle Sound tomorrow, which is over 10 miles wide at this point. The forecast is for calm wind and water, and the breeze that we will have will be going with us. YAY! We’ve heard that this Sound can be the worst big water of the entire trip. We plan to run Island Girl across to let her stretch her turbolegs for an hour or so. We are having a great time, and looking forward to what lies ahead. Soon we will be seeing the last of these “wilderness” areas – with marinas in the middle of nowhere – and moving into the more populated areas of the Chesapeake Bay. But every day, no matter where we are, we are thankful for the adventure and for such fun new friends!
Good to hear you guys are doing great and having fun. Keep safe and continue the posts i love the adventure.