2020: Pungo River NC to Albemarle Chesapeake Canal VA

16 May 2020

Depart: Crabtree Bay, Pungo River Anchorage, NC 8:45

Arrive: Free dock east of Great Bridge, VA 9:45

Distance:  101 nm; 13 hours travel time

Even tucked in as we were in the anchorage, we noticed several small boats zipping around. As we exited our overnight spot, I took a couple of pictures of the area.

As if there weren’t enough traps in the area already, we saw someone in a small boat putting out tons more.

When we arrived back at the ICW, who did we see but Maggie Joe and Adagio coming our way. We pulled out into the ICW directly in front of them.

Our anchorage last night was very close to the canal entrance.

We saw little traffic as we transited the canal. What we did see was lots of stumps along the canal edge.

At the far end of the canal, we met up with a barge. It turned out to be Island Pilot, the same one we saw the day before. This time he had dumped his load and was returning empty.

At 1:30 we arrived at the Alligator River bridge and had a short wait while the bridge opened. Around 2:30, as we made our trek across the Albemarle Sound. Never have we seen it so flat – not a ripple on the water! We saw a lot less traps on the sound than usual. The traps we did see stood out clearly.

As we traveled today, we listened to NPR which has entertaining dialog like “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” and “Fill in the Blank”.  After crossing the sound, we found the “missing” traps.

A number of bucket trucks sat at the ready to be deployed.

Eventually, we passed Coinjock Marina.

Three small boats tied up next to the Coinjock Restaurant must have placed take-out orders as we saw the food being delivered right to the boats at dock.

Being a Saturday, we did see some folks enjoying the water.

 At 6:00 we still had over an hour to go to get to the spot Clark planned for us to anchor tonight. I bemoaned the fact that I would miss seeing the news for yet another night. We have not seen the CBS Nightly News for days. Clark said, “I can fix that!”

He went down and used his new cables he had made in New Bern to bring the sound up to the upper helm. Unfortunately, when he tried to bring the picture up as well, it failed. Sound was better than nothing – at least we got to hear the news.

Finally, just after 7:00, we arrived at the spot just off the ICW where Clark planned to drop anchor. We checked out the depth, and it looked good. After spending some time scoping it out, and even attempting to anchor, we decided that we could not stay here as the spot was too narrow. Even without all the line out we needed to hold for the night, the stern of Sunset Delight was brushing up against the marshes.

Clark said he knew another spot down the ICW as short distance near a bridge that he thought we might be able to use. We traveled there, and on first look, it seemed like a possibility. Clark did his crisscrossing of the area to check out depth. Fail!!! Very rapidly, it went from a couple of feet to zero on the depth sounder. Clark backed off. Now what??

As we played around in the second anchorage option, a 30-something foot boat came along. Clearly they had planned to anchor right where we sat. They watched as Clark backed out of the anchorage. When we drove away, they pulled in to drop anchor. I hope they had better success than we did. Of course, they were a lot shorter and probably required less depth.

So, this morning, and up to a few minutes ago, we thought we would be in North Carolina one more night. As we pulled away from the second anchorage, Clark said, “Well, we can travel through the night and dock at the free dock near Great Bridge as long as there is room there.” “Sounds good to me,” I replied, and we prepared to travel for a couple more hours.

I had taken time during the afternoon to put food together to make a relatively quick dinner. However, dinner would not be for a couple of hours yet. I gave Clark the choice – eat on the way or have a snack and eat dinner later. He decided we should have cheese and crackers now and eat whenever we got settled for the night.

We ate our snack as we continued on the ICW.  After the sun set, the sky turned a lovely shade of pink.

As long as it was twilight, we had reasonable visibility. Reflections of the trees on the water made it difficult to see the edge of the Albemarle Chesapeake canal we transited. The darker it got, the harder it became to see. When we came to the North Landing Swing Bridge, we had trouble figuring out where we were positioned in relation to the bridge. Our depth perception was severely compromised. The last thing we needed was the swing bridge whacking us as the bridge opened. We managed to pass unscathed.

Looking back at the North Landing Bridge

 The Centerville Bridge that was under construction when we went south in October had been repaired and was in operation, so we needed a bridge opening here also.  Fortunately, the next bridge in line was Great Bridge. Since we hoped to dock at the free dock before the bridge, we expected not to need an opening here until the morning.

Fortunately, the free dock was empty except for one sailboat. We had lots of dock space to choose from. Clark decided that we should tie up at the far end to allow as much space as possible for anyone else who might come along. After getting the lines on, I left him to set up fender boards for the night and went to take care of things inside the boat to get us settled for the night.

Since it was 9:45 by the time we docked, I know longer felt like cooking the meal I had planned along the way. I decided to heat up leftovers for Clark and make a chef salad for myself. The thought of a heavy dinner at 10:00 at night was more than I could handle. I left the dishes as tomorrow morning’s entertainment figuring they would be easy to take care of while underway.