Intracoastal Waterway - Dolphins and Bear!!!

For us to satisfy our insurance company we have to be north of Cape Harratas by the 1^st of June which is the official start of the hurricane season. Our initial landfall at Morehead city is not north of this point but from here we can head North on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) which is a series of rivers, creeks, canals and sounds which run along the east coast from Virginia to Florida all protected from the atlantic ocean.  We had 200 miles to transit in this way to reach Chesapeake although once halfway we would be north of the imaginary hurricane safe zone.

Day 1  – We were not quite sure what to expect, we had some paper charts which were kindly given almost a year ago in Corsica (thanks Peter and Sue) and had spoken to a few people about their trip but our knowledge was limited. We also had a problem with a brand new memory card which contained all our electronic charts for this area, it was blank! So we were doubly grateful for the paper charts and also to a Canadian guy (think he was called Alan) we met in Sint Maartin who decided to hop aboard one day to copy a navigation program, charts and software to allow my handheld GPS to interact with our PC. We never did find out his name, he just asked if we had the program and charts, we said no, so he returned and gave them to us. Whoever you are, many thanks they have been invaluable.

As we left Morehead City to join the first canal we were slightly surprised to see a stream of sail and power boats already heading in the same direction! 

Start of ICWon a grey May morning

It was a grey day as we entered the Adams creek canal which was about a quarter of a mile wide surrounded by marshland. As we motored along the heavens opened but this couldn’t dampen our spirits as it was such a new adventure!

An excited Mark

We were still of the outskirts of Beaufort and they were some impressive properties lining the canal, they even looked lovely in the rain!

We motored along the canal hoping from buoy to buoy for 15 miles before reaching the river Neuse which was a large expanse of water but still there is a very clear channel that you need to follow as even the river is often too shallow for Magnum but there was slightly more room to manoeuvre and we were even able to sail for some of the 25 miles.  The shore here is still lined with some spectacular properties dotted in the woodland and there is  the town of Oriental is on the north shore but generally it still feels like you are in the wilderness with the shore lined with hundreds of huge trees which look like they go on for miles.  Although we had left in a flurry of boats we only passed a handful of boats and apart from the annoyance of the engine it was amazingly peaceful.

Following the river the channel again narrowed off into Goose Creek.  Here we had our 2^nd surprise visit of the day from dolphins! This really was the last thing we expected in the shallow, very murky water of the ICW, they were bottled nose dolphins and were happy to pop over to say hello.

This made for a nice end to the day, a few miles up Goose creek, we found a small deep pool where we could pull out of the channel to anchor for the night, we were still a little concerned about depths and the accuracy of the chart which we were using from our laptop, so we edged over a much as we dared and threw the anchor over.  It all felt very remote with just a few houses on the shore but just as we were off to bed we heard a noise and Mark popped his head out of the hatch to see the biggest/longest barge we had ever seen less than 100 feet away motoring down the canal, wow glad we were out of the channel!

Day 2 – Up anchor by 7.10 as the wind was forecasted to increase in the afternoon, we were joined in the early morning by the fishing men visiting their buoys – we assume they are crab pots.  

Little fishing boat in middle of photo, lovely surrounding houses

A few mile along Goose Creek we were out into Pimlico River, this seemed huge, it was probably around 5 Miles across, to the west we could see a road bridge crossing the river but still the majority of the shoreline is lined with trees and no sign of civilisation.  Good news was we were able to sail some of the river as we had force 3 although we had to stick to our buoy hopping as there were various shoals and even the area in which we were sailing was only around 5 metres deep.  We sailed for 20 miles on the river before entering Alligator River –Pungo River Canal which is suddenly very narrow, at only about 100 metres wide but it is also lined with fallen trees and tree stumps where the shoreline is obviously eroding.

The boating traffic had been relatively quiet all morning suddenly we were inundated by power boats wanting to pass us.

Surrounded by powerboats

But it soon became quiet again as we continued to motor down the middle of canal on the constant look out for debris in the water.

There seemed to be a constant stream of giant butterflies almost bumping into Magnum on their flight across the canal and we were both feeling a bit itchy from being so close to the bugs! There were very few properties along this stretch of canal and even when Mark stood on the boom to get a better look it was just wilderness far into the distance.  We saw many birds of prey and the for us the best bit of the day was seeing a bear!!! We never even realised that there were bears in this area but there he/she was stood on the canal bank completely undisturbed by us even as Amanda shrieked with excitement.

An amazing Black bear

The day ended with a little too much excitement as we emerged from our 90 yard wide canal in the trees into a large expanse of open water and 35knts of wind which threw waves and spray at Magnum. It was a bit tense for a while because although we had miles of water all around the ICW is only a 90 yards wide channel dredged through the middle and the water either side is sometimes less than 2ft deep. Magnum is 7ft, so staying in the channel that we couldn’t see was very important !

We managed a couple of miles and then spotted, on the chart, a slightly deeper pool just off the channel (8ft) this offered some shelter so we inched our way in and dropped anchor.

An hour later the wind had calmed and we were serenaded by frogs in the swamp and the buzz of flying things……………