Portsmouth to Belhaven

We were weighing anchor by 5 o'clock Saturday morning ready to take on mucho restricted bridges and a lock. Half way through the weighing anchor process our chain brought up a 5 foot long pipe off the bottom of the Elizabeth River. A couple of days worth of reversing currents had wrapped our chain around the pipe, tying a pretty good knot around it. Of course that section of chain and the pipe were caked with yucky mucky gross mud--and I had been feeling all nice and clean and ready to go. Ten minutes later I wasn't feeling so clean anymore and neither was the front deck of the boat. But we were on our way.

We had left early in hopes of beating the crowd to the lock, but got held up a long time waiting for a train. That gave everyone a chance to catch up, so we basically got up early for nothing, but the weather was perfect.


Bow Babe on duty at the lock.

We wear our life jackets at the lock so that we don't get yelled at in case we have to get off the boat to secure it.


These boats are tied up at the town of Great Bridge, which is just after passing through the lock. There is good provisioning here, but we have yet to stop. We are usually stocked up at this point and it tends to get very crowded here.


Later in the day we sensed that something had passed us. We couldn't see this man and his dog, so we know you can't either. We thought we were all alone, but then we noticed a wake.

Last year we had 25 to 30 knot winds while on the Alligator River--quite nasty.  This year it was dead calm--wonderful.

Near the end of our second day we passed under the Wilkenson Bridge on the Alligator/Pungo River Canal. The clearance from water to the bottom of the bridge was only 63.5 feet. Our mast with wind instruments and antennas is about 58 feet above the water so no problem for us.

High Priority, a 40 foot Catalina, drew 64 feet in the air.


So he stuck his wife out on the end of the boom to tilt the boat over. You might want to blow this picture up.

OK... Maybe your brother, or a couple of water jugs, maybe the dinghy with water in it--but your wife?? Bad move dude.

He said there were only a couple of scrapes on the bottom of the bridge--could of used a fatter wife (he didn't say the last part).