Oriental to North River

Oriental harbor was peaceful this morning. Just a lone sailboat behind us before dawn. A light breeze and slight Westerly waves had the makings of a calm morning for smooth sailing.

Our anchor was up at 6:45 a.m., and we were under way. We caught the sunrise on our bow, and everything seemed right with the world.

Today's trip was just over 100 nautical miles, which took us about 10 hours. We were inside the Outer Banks on the Pamlico Sound all morning and into early afternoon. Depths were pretty good, but we had to keep an eye on things, and there were many crab pots that we had to avoid, so we could not let our guard down.

When we arrived at Manteo, we opted to continue on for two more hours and cross the Albermarle Sound today to shorten our journey to Norfolk tomorrow. The river by Manteo has two bridges. The one pictured below is 66 feet, and the next one is 44 feet high in the center. Any reasonably sized sailboat will have a mast higher than that, so not surprisingly, we did not see any sailboats today. Empty Nest had no trouble with either bridge since our air draft is 28 feet (after I lowered the antennas).

The last couple of hours were less calm, as we were abeam of the waves, whereas earlier they were behind us. Our stabilizers did their job, and the action was tolerable. We pulled into the North River and found a nice sized anchorage. I set the anchor alarm on my AquaMaps app, as I always do.

The app showed us 130 feet from our anchor. The boat speed is just because the boat was swinging around the anchor. If the boat moves outside of the circle that I set, then an alarm sounds, and we know that the anchor has dragged. As a somewhat uptight person, I always keep a careful eye on the anchor alarm for the first hour after setting it. This evening, I noticed the numbers climbing slowly. When it read 200, I knew something was wrong. We are in 9 feet deep water, and so 50-60 feet of rode should be more than enough, and we had put out 66. But the anchor was not holding, and it was getting dark. There were crab pots all around us that we would not be able to see soon.

So, we pulled the anchor back in far enough to pull up our bridal. We then let out another 40 feet of rode. I reset the anchor alarm, and it seems to be holding as I write this. I'm obviously keeping a very careful eye on it. There are no other boats around, so there are fewer hazards than we might normally have. But before I'm able to go to bed tonight, I'll need to know that with certainty that we are good. 

As we completed our anchor maneuver, we caught the sunset off our bow. 

Our decision to press on means that we only have 53 miles to go to Norfolk tomorrow. However, it will be a very different trip from what we've done so far. The entire day will be in the ICW, and there will be many bridges that open on fixed schedules and a lock that opens once an hour. We will do our best to time our approaches, but no doubt we will have some long waits.

I've done this trip numerous times, and it is interesting, beautiful, and also a little stressful, as parts of the channel are narrow, and not all boaters know the protocols for passing and communicating with other boats. That said, it will be a lot of fun, and then we will take a slip at a marina in downtown Norfolk where there are restaurants and museums that we like. We'll stay two nights because the forecast for Thursday does not lend itself to boat travel.

We are now watching the US women's national soccer team in the She Believes final match against Canada. After that, to bed! Go USA!