November 22, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
I have been telling you how early we get up each day. Even on the ICW, with the exception of our first day, we are getting up at 5:30AM in order to cover a lot of territory before dark. Anchoring in the dark is no fun. We want to be ready to stop around 4PM in order to be set and comfortable before the sun goes down.
Sometimes this strategy actually works.
When we were cruising this summer, we managed to adhere to this strategy with one exception: Provincetown. An assortment of issues conspired to delay our departure from Boston until noon, resulting in an arrival time in Provincetown, at the end of Cape Cod, around 8PM. We could see our destination as the sun began to set around 6PM that night, but it is a long trip around the little curl at the end of Cape Cod before you actually get into Provincetown Harbor. It was fully dark before we rounded the end of that curl. We crept into the harbor, almost running into the breakwater in the dark. We thought it would be an actual wall, but it appeared to be just a pile of rocks that stuck up a foot or two above the water. Provincetown is a very small town. There is very little light at 8PM down on the waterfront and no signs of life. The moon wasn’t much help as we anchored in deep darkness using flashlights, e-chart and grit. We didn’t do it because we love to prove ourselves; we did it because it was necessary.
We had to do the same thing in the Sassafrass River on our way back to Baltimore. We had run up Delaware Bay with the intention of transiting the C&D Canal before we stopped, because finding shelter along that monster bay is no simple task. We also were quite ready to get back home, and this was a good way to get there sooner. The result, of course, was that we entered the Sassafrass just after 2AM. Again, there was little moonlight, and again we felt our way to a successful anchorage.
We had planned to avoid such issues when in the ICW. In the first place, the ICW anchorages are almost all quite confined. There isn’t a lot of room for error, due to the constant challenge of shoals and stumps and snags. It would be easy to get in a mess if you try to anchor when you can’t see. Yet on Saturday (11/21) we found ourselves doing it again.
We had left Buck Island Harbor about 6:45AM. We got up early as always and were ready to leave as it got light. The run down the North River was uneventful. Crossing Albemarle Sound reminded me of cruising on the Chesapeake. We passed through the Alligator River Bridge and headed for the Alligator-Pungo River Canal.
It was about 1:30PM when we saw a couple of sailboats ahead of us pull out of the channel into a tiny little spot near shore where they appeared to be anchoring. We were near the entrance to the Alligator-Pungo Canal, and I asked Larry why they would be anchoring there. It isn’t a designated anchorage, and it was not long past noon. “Maybe they don’t think they can get to the end of the canal before dark,” he said.
That was a sobering thought that I had not considered. The canal is 25 miles long. It was 1:30PM. At best we were making about 6 knots. Sunset would be 4:55PM. Whoa! Maybe we would not get to the end of this canal before dark either, and there is NO place to stop in the canal.
The longer we were in this canal, the less I liked it. The scenery is quite picturesque, even a little spooky. I love swamp landscapes, and this one was lovely. However, twenty-five miles of it was almost more than I needed. The ambience was not improved when our 8-foot depth alarm went off in the middle of the channel, supposedly in 15 feet of water. There was a thump and a scraping sound, and then nothing. The depth went back to 15 feet and we went on. It was probably a log that washed into the channel during recent heavy rains.
At the end of the canal is a fixed bridge charted at 65 feet of clearance. I didn’t look, and we didn’t thud, and we soon exited that canal. Off to the right in the upper reaches of the Pungo River is a designated anchorage where we had considered stopping. However, we had also looked for a slightly better spot a couple of miles downriver, and that is a good thing. There were already eight boats in the designated anchorage. We could certainly have found a place there, but we don’t like crowded anchorages. Every time we see a crowd of boats anchored together, it calls up images of the anchorage at Newport, RI. We don’t like that kind of close communion.
We continued downriver to a spot where we could anchor in 8 feet of water in a more sheltered location. We were just about to finish our work when another sailboat came cruising in to be our neighbor. It isn’t that we don’t like friends and neighbors, but with all that water to choose from, why did this boat want to be right next to us? Oh well. We used our flashlight and our e-chart and our grit and we got the anchor set just the way we wanted it.
We were exhausted. We had arisen before it was day, and we cruised until it wasn’t day again. We ate a simple supper and went right to bed. Boy, am I glad we are retired and don’t have to work for a living any more, getting up at the crack of dawn and working until we keel over into bed at night. I bet everyone would like to be retired and on permanent vacation like we are!
Write a comment