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

Intracoastal Waterway Day 2

Dawn over the Virginia/North Carolina border.  This is the moon setting and it was apparently
a ‘Harvest moon’ which is brown

Another bald eagle – as common
 as ospreys around here!

Having spent the night at Pungo Ferry (Statute Mile 28, give or take a bit) and with another 175 miles to go to Beaufort, we needed to make an early start to the day on ICW Day 2 (Friday 23 November), in order to get back on the timeline for a 4 day transit from Norfolk to Beaufort.  So, the alarm went off whilst it was still dark [Ed: and jolly cold!]  and we had slipped our mooring before the sun showed itself  above the marshes of the Virginia/North Carolina border.  We passed the anchorage at Blackwater (too shallow for us) at which Active Captain reports mention yachties seeing bears at the water’s edge. It would have been nice to have seen a bear (from a distance) but the previous evening had been too cold for us to indulge in wildlife spotting.  After an hour in the cockpit whilst the sun was still up, we had rapidly retired below to the warmth, and sonorous whirring, of the diesel heater.  In the chill of this morning there were no bears.to be seen either.  If they were sensible they were all busy hibernating!

Coinjock

But there were bald eagles to be seen, flying over, and sitting on the lateral beacons in, the wide and shallow North Landing River that sits between Pungo Ferry and Coinjock, the next ‘major’ town (or so the books imply) on our route.  When we got there, Coinjock did not seem like a major town at all, though there are ‘marinas’ galore along the banks.

The Alligator River Bridge

From Coinjock we had another hour and a bit motor along another narrow dredged channel in a wide expanse of river [Ed: and, to use Charlotte’s description of Manchester in winter, “frickin’ freeeeezin’” it was too] until, oh great excitement, we reached the edge of the Albemarle Sound.  This wide (10+ miles wide) sound is a veritable ocean with soundings reaching the heady depths of 5-6m throughout.  With a favourable 18kts northeasterly wind we hoisted the mainsail, unrolled the genoa and SET SAIL (engine off) for the mouth of the Alligator River, 13nm away.  At the mouth of the river the navigable channel becomes very narrow (dredged) again, so we stowed the sails and motored towards the Alligator River Bridge. There is a surprising amount of road traffic on the bridge but, nevertheless, it still opens on request for traffic up the river, though the bridge tender tries to get several boats through at once.  We missed an opening for 5 or 6 boats but didn’t have to wait long for the yacht behind to catch us up and the bridge to open for us both.  And the bridge tender is very proactive, calling up ‘yacht southbound approaching the Alligator River Bridge’ to ask their intentions (head through the bridge or head west to the marina?) in a true Dukes of Hazard southern drawl.

Motoring up the Alligator River hoping to get to the anchorage before the light goes

From the bridge to our planned anchorage for the night is about 18nm and we had about 3½hrs of daylight remaining in which to make that distance.  Doable, but not easily.  The wind was tempting and, for a short while we did sail, but we couldn’t keep up a steady 6kts so we resorted to engine power and willed the Beta onto greater and greater things as the light started to fade.

We made it before sunset – just! And there was a veritable crowd of us anchored
off Deep Point (Mile 102)

Happily, we made it up the Alligator River and around the corner a bit to the anchorage behind Deep Point with about half an hour to go before sunset.  It’s another wide and shallow patch of river, with low banks around. There’s no protection from the wind and quite a fetch if it is windy but the bottom’s gloopy mud so the holding’s great and there’s plenty of space from other boats.  There were 4 of us in our anchorage that night – quite a crowd – and one boat a little further south.  But there was no socialising – it was just too cold to consider anything other than huddling below……. 

Digging out the Pela oil extractor so that we could do the engine oil change first thing the next morning

……except that the next morning we needed to do an engine oil change so Nicky used the last of the evening light to dig the Pela oil extractor out of the port lazarette.

A ‘Harvest’ (?) Moonrise

We popped our heads out from the warm fug of the cabin long enough to appreciate the moonrise (definitely a browner colour than normal) and then rapidly retired below, toasting Nicky’s wisdom/native wit in calling Customs and Border Protection to report BV’s entry to North Carolina from Virginia earlier in the day, rather than at our anchorage for the night.  When she had called, Officer Rushok had said that she needed to call at our evening destination.  Nicky had replied that she was concerned that there would be no cellphone coverage there and so wanted to report early.  Hint taken, Officer Rushok had made appropriate notes on the computer system. Just as well really – there is no cellphone coverage in the wilderness of the Alligator River, but there are some very pretty sunsets and moonrises.

Deep Point, Alligator River, North Carolina, USA

Intracoastal Waterway Day 1

We made an early start from Mill Creek on Thursday 22 November (Thanksgiving Day) as we wanted to get as far as possible along the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) and weren’t sure how things would go with bridges, locks and other traffic.  But to start with we had about 9nm of motoring to get to Mile Zero of the ICW and quite a lot of that was in pretty open waterway. Realistically we could (should?) have sailed some or all of it but we crept away from our anchorage under power and just kept going that way.

HMS Queen Elizabeth

About 45min after leaving the anchorage we were passing the main US Navy docks and there, in amongst the huge American carriers, was the diminutive figure and upturned ski-ramp of HMS Queen Elizabeth.  In real terms, HMS Queen Elizabeth is not diminutive at all, it’s just that alongside all the American naval power she doesn’t seem that big.  And the US Navy ships (and US Marine Corps ships, and US Army ships) go on.... and on…. and on……  It’s a hugely impressive display of military seapower – and these are just the ships, based on the eastern seaboard, that they have in dock for the time being….!

And the military might goes on… The armed forces docks here continue for about 4nm.  Clearly, not all the ships are in service but there are plenty that are.

Hospital Point (with, presumably, a military hospital).  There are small yacht anchorages on either side of the point and, had we arrived near Norfolk earlier the previous day we might have chosen to anchor here rather than in Mill Creek

Hospital Point is at Mile Zero on the ICW and almost opposite is the home (and dock) of the OCC Port Officers for Norfolk, Gary Naigle and Greta Gustavson and there is a good small yacht anchorage on either side of the point.

Grace of Longstone on the dock of Gary and Greta, OCC Port Officers for Norfolk. Their dock is almost directly opposite Hospital Point

The previous evening we had received a text message from Dave and Helen on Grace of Longstone, whom we had last seen in Halifax back in September. They were on Greta and Gary’s dock so we waved at them, and in the general direction of Greta and Gary’s apartment as we motored past.  We hoped to catch up with Helen and Dave at some point along the ICW but in the end that was not to be.

USS Battleship Wisconsinat the Nauticus Centre

A little further along is the USS Wisconsin, part of the Nauticus Centre in Norfolk. Next time we are in the vicinity we certainly will stop in Norfolk.  There’s a lot to see and do and I’m not sure Greta and Gary will forgive us if we rattle past in such a way again!

Approaching the hotel I stayed at when I visited Norfolk with work 17 years ago

Next up on the BV tour of Norfolk was the hotel in which I stayed when I visited Norfolk with work 17 years ago…..

Even central Norfolk is filled with shipyards

….. and then we were passing the shipyards in the centre of the city, including one owned by BAE.

Our first ICW bridge – the Norfolk and Portsmouth Belt Line railroad lifting bridge.  Vertical clearance 6ft when closed and 142ft when open.  Beyond is the Jordan fixed road bridge (vert clearance 270ft)

Beyond that we got to our first bridge of the ICW – the Norfolk and Portsmouth Belt Line railroad lifting bridge. It was fully open and was of no great concern to us at 142 ft vertical clearance.  Similarly, the Jordan fixed road bridge (270ft).

Bridge number 3 – the Norfolk and Western Railway lift bridge.  Vertical clearance 10ft when down and 135ft when up…..or rather less than 135ft when it is only opened just enough for the rather small yacht.  Scary but we got used to low bridges eventually

Bridge number 3, the Norfolk and Western Railway lift bridge was a slightly different story.  It’s opening height is advertised as 135ft so that is what we were expecting.  However, the bridge tender only opened it part of the way, probably about 70ft.  It seemed remarkably close to the top of the mast, though we would see much closer before we got to Beaufort.

Losing track of the bridges. Another one and, yes, it still feels low!

Nicky had wanted to take BV through the Great Dismal Swamp [Ed: if only for the name!] but recent reports on the depths along that route and warnings about the low hanging tree branches decided us to take the ‘commercial’ route, the Virginia Cut.  As it happened, perhaps because we were motoring along the ICW on Thanksgiving weekend, we saw relatively little commercial traffic and similarly few pleasure craft too.

A lock – hooray!  (Top) The Great Bridge lock. (Bottom) The Great Bridge bascule bridge,
which opens on the hour

A couple of hours beyond ‘Mile Zero’ we reached the lock at Great Bridge.  The lock opens at specific times to fit in with the hourly opening of the bridge just beyond it.  So, we stooged, waiting until the northern lock gate opened and we could go in. Locking down was a total non-event. A 20min wait outside and a 20min evolution in the lock to go down all of about 2ft.  And once we had cleared the southern gate we had a further 10min wait until Great Bridge’s bridge opened for us and we were free to helter-skelter onwards.

Great Bridge, famous for a battle and now a lock and a bridge

Our pilot book says that Great Bridge derives its name from the Revolutionary War battle of 1775. Apparently, ‘the Battle of Great Bridge changed the course of history. The complete defeat of the British at that battle allowed the local militia to capture Norfolk, giving the Americans a naval base from which to harry the British.  The battle ended the rule of the British Crown in Virginia’. We’re hazy on the detail as we didn’t stop to visit the battlefield site nor indeed have we done much (any?) Googling on the subject,  but we have visited a number of battlefields which similarly claim to be the site where the course of history was changed.  Perhaps I am just a cynic…

Great Bridge’s bridge in the rear-view mirror

More bridges (Top) Route 168/Highway Bypass Bridge (fixed) with vertical clearance 65ft (now we’re getting blasé). (Bottom) Centreville Turnpike Swing Bridge – the only ‘small’ bridge that on Thanksgiving Day didn’t open on request

Bald eagles

Beyond Great Bridge we passed the Route 168/Highway Bypass Bridge (fixed), which was exciting only because of its 65ft vertical clearance, and then we reached Centreville Turnpike Swing Bridge.  It being Thanksgiving, most of the bridges, certainly all the small bridges, were operating as if it were a weekend and were opening on request.  All that is, except for Centreville Turnpike Swing Bridge. This bridge was still only opening on the hour and the half hour, despite the almost total lack of traffic in the time we had to wait for the bridge to open for us.  Still, we kept the bald eagles amused – or not – they’re very serious looking birds!

Increasingly rural/wild scenery. (Middle row, right) Note the deadhead sticking out of the water a surprisingly long way from the bank. Hitting that would ruin your day

From here on in the scenery became increasingly rural or wild, depending on your perspective.  And with little rushing about to do, and no sail handling either of course, it was surprisingly cold too.

Moored alongside the old face dock at Pungo Ferry – a great place to stop

There was insufficient time for us to get to Coinjock with the remaining light and the only viable place to anchor between Pungo Ferry and Coinjock is too shallow for BV’s draught.  So, depending on how many other yachts we found taking up the space, we decided to anchor or moor up at Pungo Ferry, previous site of a marina and a ferry boat.  In the end, we were the only yachties in residence at Pungo Ferry for the whole night. A catamaran motored past, shortly after we moored alongside the old marina face dock at about 1530 but we have no idea how much further down the ICW they got that evening.  We had a lovely, if chilly evening at our piled mooring. We found the piles still to be in good condition and we saw no less than 2.5m of water alongside them.  It was a good secure berth for the night and we only saw/heard one tug go past overnight.

So, end of day one and BV was at Statute Mile Marker 28 (plus or minus a little).  Only 175SM remaining to Beaufort.

Pungo Ferry, ICW, Virginia, USA

Hampton VA USA

Leaving Fishing Bay near Deltaville

Based upon the weather forecast for the next week or so, we decided that leaving the Chespeake Bay and going outside Cape Hattaras would be very uncomfortable, verging on stupid/dangerous, so we made the decision to start making our way south on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW).  With the DuoGen fitted we were all set to go and left the Fishing Bay Marina at 0845hrs on Wednesday 21 November for a 40ish mile passage to Hampton.

The bulk of the passage was uneventful and we were able to sail from almost as soon as we were clear of the Fishing Bay area.  The forecast had suggested that the wind would be quite light and we had expected to motor much of the way which, given that we were about to undertake a further 4 days of motoring we had thought would be rather disappointing.  But we had wanted to get moving and in the end had a surprisingly good sail south, following the western coastline of the Chesapeake Bay down to Hampton which sits on the north bank of the James River, opposite Norfolk, just inside the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay.

As well as the lights and normal houses you’d expect to see, Hampton Roads and the approaches to Norfolk have all sorts of depots and accommodation blocks giving the area a distinctly military feel.  It’s not surprising really because Norfolk is home to the largest US naval base on the east coast.  Clearly we’d see more of that when we continued on to Norfolk in the morning, but for now we turned right towards Hampton on the north shore.

The Hampton River (left) Bluewater Marina (right) the east shore

We’d visited Bluewater Marina at Hampton by land with Bill and Lydia at the end of October and from chatting to some of the Salty Dawg Rally participants understood that it was possible to anchor up the Hampton River, close to the marinas.  There’s also an area up near the fixed road bridge (vertical clearance only 28ft so we wouldn’t be going beyond the bridge!) which is a recognised anchorage.  As sunset rapidly approached we entered the river to try to find a suitable place to spend the night.  The river seemed quite narrow and not knowing how much traffic there might be (it was the day before Thanksgiving so we rather hoped not too much) we weren’t keen on dropping the hook where we would swing into the channel.

Towards the top end of the Hampton River (for us).  Just around the corner to the right is the road bridge (vert clearance 28ft), with the yacht anchorage just this side

The anchorage up by the road bridge was already occupied, maybe we could have squeezed in, maybe not, and the wind was due to swing round 180 degrees during the night.  A tight anchorage and a big windshift are never a good combination for a relaxed night’s sleep…..

Mill Creek

… So we left the Hampton River at good speed and retraced our wake to Mill Creek an area protected from the north by the bulk of the peninsula on which Hampton sits, from the east by Old Comfort Point, on which sits Fort Monroe, an 18^thcentury fort, and from the west (at least partially) by the bridge approach to the Hampton Roads Tunnel.  We had seen one other yacht turn off into this large anchorage and they were clearly well settled in when we arrived.

Deltaville clams for dinner

We anchored somewhat north of them and rapidly retired below to the warmth of the Eberspacher heater and a hearty dinner, including a first course of the excellent clams that we had bought in Deltaville.  So, sailing was over for a few days; Thursday 22 November 2018 (Thanksgiving Day) would see us start the Intracoastal Waterway at mile zero – Norfolk VA.

Hampton, Virginia, USA

Deltaville VA USA

The developing autumnal colours on the Corrotoman River

We left Bill & Lydia’s dock at 1000hrs on Friday 16 November on a stunning autumnal day.  When we had been here in summer we had thought this part of the Chesapeake Bay to quite lovely with well-spaced, attractive houses nestling into the wooded shoreline.  In autumn it looks even better with the trees taking on their autumn colouring.

Sailing under the Rappahannock Bridge

We really wanted to be starting our transit south and irritatingly the conditions were perfect for heading out of the Chesapeake Bay and around Cape Hattaras.  Friends of ours were doing exactly that and Chris Parker, the east coast weather guru, was trumpeting ‘sail south now or get trapped for weeks by the imminent round of winter storms’.  However, we still needed to pick up the new DuoGen from Phil & Lesley’s.  Moving BV south a bit we decided on Deltaville as the best destination for us, primarily because Nicky had found out that Enterprise Car Hire run a shuttle service from the Deltaville marinas to their depot at Gloucester.  That solved a big headache for us (how to get to/from the car hire place without having to lean further on Bill and Lydia) so Deltaville was now the destination.  But, aside from all of that spare parts and transport admin, it was just really nice to be out sailing again.

Anchored back off Fishing Bay Marina, Deltaville

We dropped our anchor at 1415hrs a short distance off Fishing Bay Marina near Deltaville.  I think that we must have been within a few feet of the exact position that we had occupied in June and it felt strangely good to be back. We were certainly blessed with some lovely weather whilst we pottered about doing our chores waiting for news on the delivery of the DuoGen.  Fortunately, that news came quickly with a message from Phil confirming that the order from the UK had arrived at their house.  Great news, even though it had taken a week longer than we had expected to get cleared by Customs.  But it was finally there and so we were able to book a hire car and a pick-up from the marina on Monday morning.  That gave us the weekend to catch up on (some of) the rest of the maintenance.

Fitting the new AIS aerial

When we had sailed up to Bill and Lydia’s house on 29^thOctober, Lydia had tried unsuccessfully to track our progress on Marine Traffic and so we realised that, once again, our AIS signal was not as good as it should be.  We knew what the issue was: the ‘easy, no solder’ connection on the bottom of the aerial.  ‘Easy, no solder’ it might be but any tarnishing on the push fit connection and the effect on the transmission is marked.  Tracking down a dedicated, tuned AIS aerial with the right connections that would fit our mounting bracket was a little trickier than I had expected but some internet searches showed that there was just one close by and it happened to be in the big chandlery at Deltaville.  At the time we hadn’t realised that we would be returning to Deltaville and so we had driven down and bought the aerial along with a few other bits and pieces.  Now, anchored off Deltaville, we had the time to fit it.  So, Nicky got a short upper-body workout winching me halfway up the mast to remove the old aerial and, after a bit of soldering, I got another trip up the mast to attach the new aerial.  Hopefully, that will be the last time we have to tinker with the AIS aerial for quite some time.  The only buggeration about the job was that when I was returning to the cockpit from the mast, having completed the job, I slipped, landing heavily on the deck.  I was unhurt but my nice wire cutters flew out of my pocket in a lovely arc and landed in the sea with a loud plop.  Just as well that we were anchored close to a good hardware store!

I was able to put my woes behind me later that afternoon when we joined Bill and Lydia and Doug and Alison Selden in the ‘captains’ lounge’ at Regatta Point Marina to watch The Hoos (UVA) play Georgia Tech away.  Why Regatta Point Marina?  Well, that’s where Bill and Lydia were preparing Dragon Run for her winter haulout on the Monday.  Unfortunately, The Hoos lost this game too, so now Nicky and I are banned from watching them play!

(Left) The charger that abruptly failed.  (Right) The new charger shoehorned into the same space

Sunday provided us with a bit more ‘excitement’.  We had been considering doing an early oil change on the main engine and the generator but, given that we might be motoring through the ICW and that they both still had a few hrs left before they were due the oil change, we decided to wait. But we still needed some hot water, so we fired up the generator.  It had only been running for about 20 sec, with the battery charger switched on and working, when Nicky suddenly remembered that we hadn’t opened the cooling water inlet and exhaust for the generator.  So, I quickly shut down the battery charger and the generator and we opened up the necessary valves.  When we fired everything up again, the battery charger wasn’t working; there were no lights on its panel when there should be several.  A check for loose power supply connections or blown fuses revealed nothing; we had to assume that it had failed.  [Ed: Even if we had got it going, it’s too important a bit of gear to put up with it only working intermittently.]

At least we were in a very good place to get another one; far better it failed in Deltaville than at a Caribbean island in a few weeks’ time .  In fact, the large chandlery nearby had an exact replacement in stock, just with the USA brand name sticker on it.  We called the store and asked them to put it aside for us but then noticed that the reviews on it were dreadful with too many cases of abrupt failures [Ed:!!]. So, I started a search for an alternative.  This was quite difficult because the space the charger needed to fit into is quite limited on BV, plus we wanted a charger that would cover a 100-270 volt input range so that we could use shore power in the USA and Canada (110V), as well as our generator (240V) and shore power in the UK (240V) and Europe (220V).  However, after a bit of work I found a ProNautic model that would accept the right voltages, would just fit in the space available and which also had some half-decent reviews.  Even better, the local chandlery had one of those in stock as well and they price-matched the online competition, saving us nearly $200! Of course, having bought and collected our new charger, we had to spend the rest of Sunday fitting it, rather than getting the blog up to date.  Ho hum. It was an unexpected job but we were very happy that we had been able to replace the suspect charger so quickly and easily.

BV safely tucked up in her mooring in Fishing Bay Marina

With a quick trip up to Great Falls planned, we booked BV into the Fishing Bay marina for a couple of nights (the insurance policy doesn’t allow us to leave her unattended at anchor for more than 24hrs), so on Monday 19 November we had an early start, moving BV from the anchorage into the well sheltered marina berth we had arranged to take.

The slightly troublesome DuoGen delivery finally
made it to Phil & Lesley’s house

The shuttle run to Gloucester worked well, even if the SUV arrived a little later than we had been briefed, and we had a good fast run up the I-95 to Great Falls. It was lovely to see Phil and Lesley again, despite only being back for an overnight flying visit.

The return trip was equally slick. We left very early to be sure of getting through the rush-hour traffic and back to Gloucester in time for the last (1130) run to the marinas.  In fact, we made such good time that we got the packages back onto BV and even slipped into the seafood suppliers in Deltaville to buy some clams for dinner before arriving at the hire car depot 30mins ahead of schedule!

The new DuoGen fitted and wired up ready to go

So, I spent the Tuesday afternoon fitting the new DuoGen whilst Nicky assisted in between doing the laundry, some other chores and a good study of the weather.  Chris Parker had been right, it wasn’t looking good for sailing offshore. So, with a good sailing day forecast for Wednesday 21 November we planned to head down to Hampton under eco-friendly sail power before taking BV on a power driven canal-boating holiday through the ICW – now that we know the height of mast!

Deltaville, Virginia, USA