Intracoastal Waterway Day 3

Oil change

Saturday 24 November started with a 0700 alarm call followed by an engine oil change.  How else would you want to start your day?  To speed things up a little, having anchoring the previous day we had got out all of the bits we would need from their various storage areas but, after a long day, we really hadn’t fancied tackling the oil change that evening [Ed: and besides the engine was too hot at that point].  Instead, we accepted that we would depart a bit later and get the oil change done first thing.  Our version of first thing that morning didn't really match that of the other yachts in the anchorage.  When we peered out of the window at 0700 we saw the last of the other 4 yachts we’d spent the night anchored close to heading off down the ICW.  A wise move on their part it turned out but more about that later.

The Alligator River – Pungo River Canal, almost 24 statute miles of ruler-straight motoring.  Just a couple of slight bends and 2 bridges to break up the vista

With the oil change done and everything put away we raised the anchor at 0900 and set off down the Alligator River – Pungo River Canal.  Stretching out 24 miles it has just one bend in the middle, so 2 hours to go before any steering was needed!  We did keep our eyes out for bears in the woods that we were passing but didn’t see any. However, we did see another pair of bald eagles and, with the southerly wind, the day was a whole lot warmer than we had experienced recently so it all made for pleasant motoring in a very straight line.  Looking at the scenery as we passed through, it was quite apparent why the early explorers and the first nation-builders had searched so hard for a route to the west via a river.  The woods through which the Alligator River – Pungo River Canal has been built look absolutely impenetrable, except where there is a watercourse.

The tannin-tinged water of the ICW

The water in this bit of the ICW is fresh or only slightly brackish.  It's great for killing off any sea creatures stuck to the bottom of the hull but it does create a brown ‘moustache’ on the bow of pale coloured yachts or, in our case, on our white waterline stripe.  The reason for this is that the water is coloured by tannic acid from the bark of juniper, gum and cypress trees.  The acid stops the growth of bacteria and in days gone by, before refrigeration, water from the area, and particularly water from the Great Dismal Swamp, was highly prized for use on sailing ships.  Stored in barrels on board it stayed fresh and potable for far longer than normal ‘clean-looking’ water.

The tug Royal Engineer pushing a barge.  Seemingly lots of space to pass?  Not so!

A few miles short of the end of the Alligator River – Pungo River Canal we heard a radio call from the tug boat Royal Engineer.  In a strong southern drawl the skipper notified all in range that he was entering the canal and heading north – our way.  For us, the issue was that he said that he was pushing a barge.  Nearly all of the barges we’d seen so far in the USA have been big, so this was something of a concern for us.  The charts of the canal are strewn with warnings stressing that vessels should stay in the centre of the channel because of the danger from tree stumps and sunken logs at the edges, so passing a large barge was potentially a bit of a challenge for us.  As we were in a slightly wider part of the canal we decided to stop and wait for the tug to come past.  Nicky, called the tug driver on the VHF radio and, in best BBC English, informed the skipper that we would hold our position whilst he passed us. He sounded somewhat surprised when he responded and well he might, as took another 20 minutes before he actually came past us.  In the pictures above it looks like there was loads of space and a motorboat did overtake, probably wondering what all the fuss was about, but then he may not have realised that we have a 2 metre keel underneath us.  Sitting at a third of the way in from the edge of the canal, as the tug got very close and whilst the motor boat was overtaking us, I advised the tug boat captain on the radio that we couldn’t get any closer to the bank. Luckily for us he confirmed that he had enough space to pass.  Just as well really because drifting at 0.1knots we promptly ran aground!  That at least meant that we held our position perfectly whilst the tug passed by and, fortunately, once it had cleared us, a big burst of power and some manoeuvring towards the centre of the canal got us free without the need for assistance.  We had been right to be cautious and wait for the barge.  [Ed: Wow, that’s quite an admission from ‘Captain Impatient’ himself]

The Wilkerson Bridge – 64ft clearance (and a remarkably narrow gap for that tug and barge to get through)

A mile further upstream was what we hoped would be our last stressful moment of the day, the Wilkerson Bridge. All of the bridges on the ICW are supposed to have a minimum vertical clearance of 65ft or to lift or swing to give the necessary height clearance.  A small number have been built with a 64ft vertical clearance – I guess that once they had been built the authorities just accepted the 1ft error.  For us though, with a 62ft mast and antenna sticking up from our yacht, a 65ft vertical clearance sounds a whole lot better than 64ft.  And we can confirm that a 2ft clearance between a bridge and the top of our antenna looks pretty tight when you go underneath!

Heading south down the Pungo River with 22+knots of wind across the deck

Once though the canal we started to head out across the wider expanse of the Pungo River.  Lydia had recommended that we try a restaurant in the town of Belhaven, which we left to starboard as we went down the Pungo River.  But we still had several hours of daylight and Belhaven’s river is pretty exposed to the SSE, which is where the wind was howling from, so we decided to continue with our plan to clear the Pungo River, cross the Pamlico River and head south into Goose Creek where there would be some nice sheltered anchorages.  Fifteen miles to go and just enough daylight to do that we thought, even though we were now motoring with 22 knots of wind across the deck slowing us down.

The offshore winds around Cape Hatteras and
 Cape Lookout Point that we had come inland to avoid

At this point it’s worth having a look at the weather chart to the right.  The red arrow indicates the Pamlico River which we were aiming to cross (we were in the tributary just above the arrow).  The chart also shows why we were doing all of this slow ICW faff: had we tried to sail outside Cape Hatteras by now we would have been ‘enjoying’ a 35-40 knot wind blowing us onto a lee shore whilst battling against the Gulf Stream surging northeast just a few miles offshore.  In comparison, hours of motoring in the ICW was easy work.

WhiteBrown water over the bow – heading south in the
Pungo River with 30 knots of wind across the deck

Easy work turned into very slow work when the wind increased to more than 30 knots across the deck directly on the nose.  BV started to ‘hobby horse’, nodding up and down between the waves, and mostly making less than 4 knots speed over the ground (SOG).  We plugged on for another hour, trying motoring at different angles to the wind (which improved the SOG) only to find, when we ‘tacked’ back towards our destination, that the wind had veered so that, once again, we were hobby-horsing into wind and waves.  Clearly, we needed a few more hours in hand to make that extra mileage.  That really early start made by the other yachts we’d been anchored next to in Deep Point now seemed like the best thing to have done but it’s easy to be wise in hindsight.  Instead we turned tail and ran towards Slade Creek.  Our GPS SOG went from 3½ knots battling south to 8½ -10 knots heading 6 miles back towards our new overnight destination.  We successfully dodged the sunken wreck in the entrance and dropped our anchor in the last of the light in what we hoped would be a sheltered and secure anchorage.  Just before we lost the mobile phone signal we got a message from Dianne Tetrault, OCC Port Officer for Beaufort; it was really blowing strongly there and the weather was very unpleasant.  We were very glad that we hadn’t pushed things and tried to sail to Beaufort offshore.

Slade Creek near Belhaven, NC, USA