Elizabeth City

We left the Dismal Swamp welcome center at 9:00 as the next lock to go through was about an hour away and was due to open at 11:00.

The visibility for steering the boat when in tight areas is not the best, especially with the dinghy on the deck, so I found the best was to stand on the seat behind the wheel and steer with my feet! Not the best after a while. This morning I just tied a couple of ropes onto the wheel and it was sooo much easier, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it yesterday!!! “stupid is what stupid does…….” Well actually Forest probably would have thought of it yesterday :)

Here is a picture of Heather using the ropes.

We got to the lock early and had to tie up on a wall before the gates, as it was, we were the only ones there for this “lock ride”. Usually this time of year it is quite full.

After leaving the lock we noticed that the canal is a bit wider and another foot deeper, I think this is because it is actually part of the Pasquotank River and not the 22 mile hand dug part. As the river slowly continued to widened we started seeing more of these types of trees which are very distinctive with the wider base near the trunk, I started looking for alligators as I figured we were in the Bayou :)

We also came across one of the rare “chair trees” which are found through out Canada, but this is the first one we have seen here!

After a few more hours we came to Elizabeth City, oh yah, we are now in North Carolina and it is getting warmer…….. We had to call on ch 13 to get the main bridge lifted to go under, I feel guilty holding up busy traffic in both directions while we go under, so we go as quick as we can.

Right after the bridge was our destination, Elizabeth City marina where you can stay 2 days for free! They also have a wine and cheese reception if there are over five new boats in, which there was. At the reception they gave us good information about the area and we got to meet some other cruisers. But I am getting ahead of myself, we were expecting a dock to go to, but all there is, is four pilings (one for each corner of the boat) and you are somehow supposed to magically place your boat in the middle of this with the wind driving you at 20 knots onto shore, eek!

Before trying this nightmare out, I put every fender and we had out, with the thought that if I played pinball with the pilings that the damage would be minimized…..

I also brought out these devices that attach to a boat hook which makes a loop of rope, in the hopes that we could lasso the stern pilings to stop the boat from crunching. There are also different width’s of pilings available, the boat is just under 12’ wide, so we could have chosen the 13’, but instead went with the 15’ wide space.  

Anyways, despite the crazy wind and never having done this before it worked out ok and of course everybody is watching from shore also……

The next 2-3 days are high winds and 5-7 ‘ waves for the Albemarle Sound, which they advised us not to go out in with this weather as it is shallow (18’) and the waves can be really bad, so we may be stuck here for a bit, plus watching the latest hurricane…..