Further South on the ICW - A Short One (For a Change)

[Kyle]After Elizabeth City, our next day was a very long trip down the Pasquotank, across Albemarle Sound and up the Alligator River.

An early start means another great sunrise view
(although to be fair, sunrise is getting later and later)

This part of the world has little in the way of scenery apart from a thin line of marsh at the edges of the water. There was no wind to speak of, so the day was basically a series of three-hour legs separated by ten-degree turns.

Another ICW Bridge, and the crowd catches ups with us eventually..

The only real drama came when the Alligator River Bridge tender yelled at us to hurry up so he could get us and a boat ahead through in one go. After we got through, seven more boats went through on the next opening. Since we were single engine and therefore slower than all of the other boats by a knot or so, the whole day was spent watching them get bigger very slowly, and then smaller again. We made up for our lack of speed by taking shortcuts across the shallows that the keelboats couldn’t manage, so we all ended up anchoring within a couple of miles of each other within fifteen minutes of each other.

We were so far into the boonies that we couldn’t get a phone signal of any kind, so Maryanne fired up the ham radio and sent our position update out that way.

So calm it is hard to tell sky from water - definitely not a sailing day.

Since the anchorage is surrounded by marshland, it is bug heaven. This time it was good that it was getting kind of cold because we didn’t mind hiding inside the protected cabin for the night.