Hysterics in the Chesapeake

An old canal mile marker?

Virginia is for lovers!

Junction of Coinjock and Dismal Swamp route

We thought that we had already published this post, but it apparently didn't make it. So this is our account of coming into Norfolk and is slightly out of order.

We left the Dismal Swamp Visitor's Center early the next morning in order to make the 11 a.m. locking time at our last lock in the canal. The entire length of the canal is a no-wake zone, so we leisurely crossed the 17 miles to the lock over the next 3 hours. We met the sailboat Roane who stayed with us the previous night and he waved us on and told us to have a great day. We believe that, since he was solo, he had to stop and find another person to help him lock through. We also caught up with and locked through the Deep Creek Lock with Gene and Trace on Dream Catcher. Once we were through the lock the Dismal Swamp route joins up with the route through Coinjock and heads into the Portsmouth/Norfolk area.

The shipping channel- note tug's prop wash

Geeez! Will this ever end?

As we entered the shipping channels we tuned the radio to listen to the bridge and ship traffic. There were several bridges and we were trying to sort out which ones we had to hail for an opening and which ones were usually open. We came around a bend and found a tug holding a large container ship against a wharf, and judging from the prop wash, it wasn't shy about using its massive horsepower. Capt. Larry noticed that a trawler in front of us was careening all over the place when it entered the prop wash. He revved the engines to maintain control of Bavarian Cream and was still turned around 90 degrees. We came to our first bridge to find 2 sailboats and 3 powerboats idled in the channel. From the radio we learned that a couple of tugs were turning a large ship so that it could head out to sea. By this time the wind had also picked up to around 15 kts. and we were dancing around trying to maintain our position.

A lift bridge

We noticed that a couple of boats had proceeded through the bridge, but we had to wait until a tow got in front of us before we could follow. When we got on the other side of the bridge we found that the channel was still being blocked. We waited until things cleared and started to proceed behind the tow when Capt. Larry found the boat difficult to control. When he looked at the tachometers, he found that the port engine was idling at 500 rpms and the starboard engine was turning 1500 rpms. Moving the throttle cable didn't change the port engine speed. So here we are in the middle of a heavily trafficked shipping channel, boats and tows all around us, bridge and ship chatter on the radio that we are having trouble deciphering, increasing wind gusts that are affecting maneuverability, and we are further handicapped with a broken throttle cable!

Navy ships being overhauled

Capt. Larry sent Jane to the lower helm to see if we had full control from there. We did, so we quickly transferred everything to operate from the lower helm. We tucked in behind a tow when we heard that one of the bridges was closing to river traffic. But we had no idea which bridge it was. A tow radioed the bridge and asked the bridge tender to hold and the bridge tender agreed. Capt. Larry was still trying to determine which bridges were talking on the radio when he looked behind the boat and saw that a bridge that we had just passed through was closed. The tow that had radioed to have the bridge held was right in front of us and we passed through without ever contacting the bridge. This really shook Capt. Larry and we could not get to our marina soon enough.

We finally got to the channel that would take us to the marina. By this time the wind was blowing 15-20 kts. so we knew that it wouldn't be fun getting into the slip. We radioed the marina to find out how to proceed and explained our situation and asked for all of the help they could provide. We had only docked the boat from the lower helm on one other occasion. The marina informed us that our friends, Lace and Dick Lacey from Elizabeth City, were two slips away from our slip. Normally we have found that there usually aren't many people around to help with docking. But when you are going to have a difficult time, there's a crowd anticipating a feeding frenzy. We approached our slip and it looked like the Vatican on Easter Sunday. In fact, there were so many people that we really didn't have much help with the lines unless we directed them. Capt. Larry made two attempts to go stern-in, but was turned by wind gusts and finally gave up and went in bow first. We got the boat secured, got cleaned up, and had dinner with the Laceys aboard Confetti.

Mallards in the canal

Honkers at our marina