After spending a couple days on the ocean, the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is a nightmare of shallow depths and obstacles to dodge. This post is a litany of complaints. If the ICW ever feels like a better option, read this post first.

Saturday started with a bridge that only opens on the hour, so we showed up at about 7:50. I was driving, so I practiced holding the boat in place against a strong current. The channel was also very narrow there, with marinas on both sides. On the other side of the bridge was a boat launch, so I was dealing with heavy small boat traffic as well. I was pretty tense, but it went okay. When the bridge opened we had to wait for a trawler (since he was going with the current, courtesy says he has the informal right of way). Then we blasted through the bridge and Kyle made me an English muffin and coffee.

After we made it through the bridge he said “I’m really proud of you, that was a really difficult situation!” I didn’t realize how many things I had working against me until he brought it up – the strong current, the narrow channel, the traffic. He took over driving, we had another bridge coming up that opened on the half hour. About quarter to 9 I could see the bridge, and I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it. I did the math (4.6 knots, 15 minutes, bridge 1.2nm away) and it looked like we might barely squeak in. Kyle hit the throttles and we ended up waiting a couple minutes for the bridge. I’m really happy we made it, otherwise we’d have to sit there for half an hour.

The third bridge opened every hour, and with an opposing current the chartplotter showed us arriving at about 12:10pm. Terrible. Throttling up didn’t help, so finally we slowed down and accepted our fate. We thought we heard the bridge tender talking about us to the sailboat ahead of us, so we hailed him to see what was up. He told us he’d put us through with the shrimp boat that was right behind us – bridges open on demand for commercial traffic. That was amazing timing, we would have waited at least 40 minutes for the bridge. You can see why the ICW is such a pain in the butt.

Mid afternoon it started raining, which was fantastic for washing all the salt off the boat. Even a calm offshore trip coats everything in a light dusting of salt. I also got to test out my new rain jacket.

We needed to stop for fuel today, so Kyle scoped out the fuel docks on our route. There was really only one that was conveniently right on the ICW. I called them and they said that their small diesel nozzle wasn’t working, but we could stop and see if the big (commercial) one would work. I scrambled to get fenders out, until Kyle pointed out that there were pilings at the dock so we didn’t need fenders, but we would need lines. Wow, I am out of practice. Luckily the wind and current had both died down so we drifted gently into the dock. Kyle had to hold the nozzle, but we were able to use the big commercial diesel line to fill our tanks. The rain stopped long enough for us to fill the tanks, but when we went inside to pay it started absolutely pouring.

The fourth bridge today was a half hour bridge, and we arrived about ten minutes before the next opening, but to our surprise the bridge tender started opening as we approached. I couldn’t make out what he said, something was closed (maybe the road on the other side of the bridge) so he was opening on demand. He must have been bored because we chatted a bit over the radio. We’ve seen so much hurricane damage, we’re passing through the area where the eye of Florence made landfall. Lots of shingles and siding missing, and tons of damaged docks.

Since the cockpit was soaked from the rain, I was inside reading when Kyle called me out. Apparently he was absolutely done fighting the current and wanted to try unfurling the genoa to see if we could eke out another knot of speed. The wind was almost directly against us, so I was dubious that it would work, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Just as he started operating the winch, I told him to STOP! because the channel markers ahead didn’t match what was on the chart. He took the helm and I popped inside to check out Skipper Bob, and it was a good thing I did, we were supposed to watch for shoaling around marker 63. We were passing an inlet with strong current. As we passed by, the strong current was pushing us sideways, the boat was turned almost 45° in order to keep moving straight ahead. Before we passed the inlet we were doing about 3.8 knots, afterwards, it was over 7 knots. I saw 7.7kt at one point.

After that there was no reason to try putting out the genoa.

We anchored in Swansboro. The anchor didn’t set on the first try so I’m not going to even bother trying to sleep tonight. We’re right next to a busy road so there’s a lot of noise. Apparently we are terrible at picking anchorages.

When I pulled the fenders out of the bow locker, I saw some water in the bottom of the locker so I pulled everything out to dry. In the bottom of the bow locker is an access port to our crash lockers (essentially, the sacrificial part of the bow below the water line), the access port seemed to be bubbling water up through it. After we anchored, we emptied both bow lockers and Kyle tried to pump the water out but we don’t have a good pump yet. There’s a tiny drain hole in each bow locker, so we’re guessing water got in during our rough delivery passage, and since the previous owners (bless their hearts) didn’t install watertight access ports, the water drained into the sacrificial lockers. Kyle didn’t want to leave the water there, but we will be at a well-stocked marina in just a couple days. And really, it’s probably been that way for almost a year, so a couple more days won’t hurt. I can’t wait to see what emptying those does to our water line though. This is the second time we’ve run into lockers full of water on this boat.

And with that, we wrapped up a massive 12 hour day and hit the couch with some dinner and sundowners. We covered 54 miles today (4.5 mph).

Around 10pm some music started up, as clear as if the speakers were right next to the boat. One of the bars on shore had cranked up some club music, so I had my own dance party on the bow. After that I slept fitfully on the couch, but the anchor held just fine. We got up with daylight to start another long day of ICW.

No bridges today!

In fact, pretty much the only excitement of the day was when I was driving through a huge body of water, but the channel was very narrow with 1-3ft depths on either side. That’s the worst form of the ICW, when you spend more time looking at the depth sounder and detailed chart than visually navigating.

So I was in the midst of that, plus a fishing tournament weekend in Morehead City, so there was constant traffic from center consoles. The worst one dropped off plane and came to a stop about a quarter mile in front of me. While I was trying to figure out what was going on, he suddenly tossed out a cast net right in front of my bow. I crossed my fingers he would pull it in fast because the channel was too narrow for me to give him a wide berth. As it was, I still ended up in shallower depths than I liked to avoid him. So rude! Who stops in the middle of the channel and drops a net when a boat is coming right at them? I know I’m overly cautious but I also think some of these clowns are overly casual.

Eventually the channel widened up and I had plenty of room to navigate around the weekend boaters.

Kyle spent early afternoon fighting a terrible current, doing 3 – 4 knots, but we unfurled the genoa and gained some speed. At one point he called out “I think that barge is hitting the channel marker!” The excavator on the barge was using his scoop to try to paddle away from the marker, but after the barge passed we could see the channel marker was pointing in a new direction.

We ended the day in the Neuse River, which should have been a great opportunity to sail, but the wind was right on our nose and we didn’t have enough daylight left to tack our way upriver. We considered stopping in Oriental, as we might have friends there (but they might be out cruising), and we wanted to keep moving as long as we had daylight, so we ended up anchored in Broad Creek.

It was an 11 hour day, covering 56 miles (5 mph).