Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) Travels Begin Wed. Nov. 10th

While we couldn't get a reservation for the night to stay at Coinjock marina located at about mile 40 on the ICW (we had stopped at Coinjock on our last trip south), Harry did the math and figured we could still start our travels and make it to an anchorage just beyond Coinjock before dark.  The ICW is essentially a 12-15 foot deep ditch in a large swamp/wetlands where he average depth is just a foot or two.  Suffice to say, one has to pay close attention on this part of the ICW as one can easily run aground. The shallow depth of the waters on the ICW between Norfolk and Moorehead City, NC also means that sailboats that draw 6 feet like Juno, can't just stop anywhere they want to for the night.  We have to ensure that we anchor with at least 6 feet of water at low tide.  

With Harry giving the green light to go as we had a good 90 minutes buffer to make the anchorage at the other end, we hauled anchor at 7:00 am so as to make the first bridge opening at 8:30 am, only to find it was almost 15 minutes late opening due to repair work (the same that had kept the bridge closed for the past three days. This delay meant that we missed the lock that comes after the bridge and had to wait 55 minutes for the next lock opening.  After the locks, we put the pedal to the metal and made the next bridge opening but missed another, forcing us to sit tight for 30 minutes (many of the bridges open on an hourly or half-hourly schedule). All in all, these delays cost us our entire 90 minute buffer, but the sun was shining and the temps were in the 70's again, and there wasn't much we could do but motor on. We didn't make it quite as far as hoped but we did make it to one of the fall-back anchorages before dark and had a quiet night on anchor in the middle of nowhere.

Nature along the ICW

 

Our day starts waiting for bridge to open