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| Kelly-Peterson 44 | ||
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Deltaville to Portsmouth to Coinjock, NC
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We finally departed Deltaville on Saturday,
January 21, at sunrise on a day that started out beautiful and mostly stayed
that way, except for a windy spell out on the Chesapeake Bay for awhile.
When the boat pounded and the water would spray over the bow, Nolan loved it and
asked for "another big wave!" Not many other boats were out that
day until we neared Norfolk. At that point, we saw a few other sailboats
and a countless number of "big boats": cargo ships, container
ships, aircraft carriers, frigates, and other boats that we don't know the names
of. After staying the night in Portsmouth, VA, we started out at
Mile 0 of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), arriving in Coinjock, NC, that
evening. We made great timing across the Currituck Sound with the engine
running and the sails up, over 8 knots at times. Then in the footsteps of
many others, and less than a mile from the marina in Coinjock, we hit a shoal in
the channel (thankfully just mud). We desperately tried to get ourselves
unstuck - put the sails back up, hung the outboard on the end of the boom,
etc. A passing tugboat even cut close to us, trying to rock us off with
their wake (they were too big to stop and tow us), but a call to TowBoatUS is
what finally worked - ! Money well spent - $120 for a year of unlimited
towing. We consider this incident to be our initiation into cruising down
the ICW as we have heard that if someone tells you they did not run aground in
the ICW, then they're lying. We believe it... We stayed in Coinjock
the next day because the weather forecast was a bit "iffy" for
crossing the Albermarle sound.
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Crossing the Chesapeake Bay
As Ria took the helm as we departed Deltaville, we had a beautiful sunrise which led us through our first set of markers (notice how narrow the channel is). Once in the Bay, it was time for breakfast in the cockpit.
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| It remained a beautiful day, and we were happy to finally be underway. Nolan enjoyed every moment. Since it was a little rough starting around mid-day, we all hung out in the cockpit. Going below when it's rough is a good way to get seasick. | ||||
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| Norfolk | ||||
| It was apparent that we were approaching the Norfolk area as we crossed the shipping lanes. We saw ships and all kind of "big boats"... Nolan was in awe of them but he did sleep while we passed a pretty cool tugboat. | ||||
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| We also went under the first bridge of the trip, and began to get comfortable with radioing the bridge tender and requesting the bridge be opened to let us pass through. Here you can see a railway bridge being lifted - the first one we requested to be opened for us. | ||||
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And if bridges and big boats aren't enough to worry about in Norfolk, there's always floating logs and other debris to watch out for. |
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Portsmouth to Coinjock |
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| With the wind finally in our favor, we got to raise the sails on Currituck Bay. This really helped us gain a little speed. And Nolan got an early start in learning how to work the winches to trim the sails. | ||||
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| Here's the one lock on our trip. It would have been more interesting if the water had risen more then one foot, but it was still an adventure. Nolan got a lesson from Brian about how locks work. | ||||
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In Coinjock, we experienced our first overboard incident: Brian couldn't find his other shoe, and then Nolan casually announced that it had "floated away". After prodding for more details, we realized that, several hours ago, while Nolan played in the cockpit as Brian worked, "the crane had let go and it fell in the water". We finally saw it floating under the dock, and Brian was able to rescue it.
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