After spending weeks working on the boat on the hard in the North Carolina heat during July, and then spending time at home in Minneapolis for work and family, we are headed north. We are aiming for New England, where the weather and the water are cooler.
We provisioned in New Bern. It was a big shop since we’d worked through our non-perishable stores in the Bahamas. We had the marina in North Carolina upgrade our freezer, so we now are able to keep the freezer very cold, even when it is warm outside; something our old freezer struggled to do when it got above about 85.
We set out up the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) from our marina. It makes the most sense to take this path to the mouth of the Chesapeake. If we opted to go “outside” (on the ocean) instead, we’d have to head south for a day to get out the Beaufort, NC inlet and then head off shore to go north around Cape Hatteras. The ocean passage north would be 2 days non-stop after the day going south to get to sea. This trip north on the ICW can be done in 3 long days, but we decided to stretch it into 4 easy days. While the travel isn’t exciting, we thoroughly enjoyed our quiet anchorages!
Taking our time allowed us to use new anchorages and docks. One fun stop was in the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal, where we tied up to a free dock with free electricity — a rare opportunity — in the town of Chesapeake, VA. The dock is next to the Great Bridge bridge (that is not a typo!). Great Bridge was the site of a small battle between the Patriots and the British in 1775, and they had a beautifully appointed museum about the battle and the waterways in general. We got a chance to do some last minute provisioning in the town nearby and to go out for pizza dinner.
We will tie up at a marina in Norfolk, VA to pick up friends. Our plan is, weather permitting, to head from there out onto the ocean to Block Island, RI.
It’s good to be back on the water again!