Cruising the ditch in North Carolina

Wednesday November 3^rd, 2010

Tonight as we look out we are surrounded by a sea of anchor lights. The winds will increase during the night so we have sought out protection on the NW side of the channel along with 20 other boats, only 4 trawler and the 16 sailboats. The larger yachts or fast boats have all gone to seek shelter at marina docks for the night. You hear the rumbling of the generators but soon everyone will retire for the night after a long days run and the anchorage will be quiet except for the occasional wind generator to break the silence.  Cruisers midnight is nine o'clock because by then it feels like midnight since we have all been up since 5 am.

Our days start early, before daybreak we check the oil levels and do the necessary daily maintenance to ensure that everything works optimally. Everyone is ready to lift anchor at daybreak or some even earlier. In single file we leave the dock or anchorage for another day of cruising the channels, lemmings on the water with one purpose to get the best spot at anchor or at dock before dark.  Large faster boats pass slower boats and take the lead, making time and distance between themselves and the slowest of trawlers and sailboats.  As a slow trawler we pass other boats at what we call “warp trawler speed”.

I will attempt to answer questions which we are often asked about our life afloat. One common question is about our batteries and generator. We have an 18 Kilowatt generator that we run twice a day, once in the morning making breakfast and in the evening making dinner. This is enough to keep our house bank of 12 batteries charged up. The house batteries then work with an inverter to convert DC power to AC power for our refrigeration and lights. We need to run the generator for our stove, dryer and hot water heater which are all DC power.  We shut down our fridge and freeze overnight to conserve battery power (which is okay because unless it is opened it keeps everything cold.  We try to conserve power whenever possible when we are away from dock. We replaced all of our batteries this year before leaving Toronto which is impressive considering our old batteries lasted us five years.  

Today was the least scenic of our entire trip. At Norfolk, Virginia you must choose to go to either the Dismal Swamp Route which is shallower or the Virgina Cut Route which we like to call the Less Dismal Swamp. Once we leave Coinjock, NC, we cross Albermarle Sound , its a 14 mile crossing and it can get sloppy because of its shallow depths. We have never had problems but we have heard that sometimes boats get holed up in Coinjock waiting for a crossing.  Once across the Sound, we enter the ditch and as you can see below it is a long dredge out canal with tree stumps on each side and on a grey day it really does look dismal, just one long canal. You will note the rain drops on our windows.

I spend the day reading to the captain to pass the time. We are often interrupted with calls on the VHF radio of boats trying to pass each other. Luckily the depth in the ditch are no problem for passing.