Dismal Swamp Journey

Deep Creek Lock Following “Dividend” down the Dismal Swamp

I apologize for not writing last night.  We had a very long day. Fueling prior to departure took forever – 200 gal for $640 and that’s with a 10% discount! I thought about what else I could have done with that money in 7 hrs!

We shoved off at 9am to make the bridge opening prior to taking the Dismal Swamp route south. The history of the Dismal Swamp is interesting, especially for tree lovers.  In 1763, George Washington proposed draining the swamp, harvesting the cypress for shipbuilding and cedar for shingles. Then turn it into farm land. He supervised the digging of the ditch. In the 1950’s the last tree was cut down. (How very sad.)  I wonder how they created this ditch in the 18th century.

We and 8 other boats entered the Deep Creek lock at 11am.  We wondered how the large sailboats were going to handle the 6’ depth.  Then we were advised that out of all the boats in the lock, we were the one that had the greatest chance of problems in the canal as our props were exposed to partially submersed debris on the bottom. We should go as slow as possible and run on one engine in case we lost one prop, the other would work.

That turned out to be BAD advice.  We had to maintain 6-7 knots to get to Elizabeth City 40 miles away by dark.  The canal is so narrow, if we had ongoing traffic I don’t know how we would have handled it.  The canal is only about 30’ wide and you have to stay in the middle.We followed a 48’ trawler thinking we would be protected.  After a couple slight bumps JB tried using one engine and immediately we turned 90 degrees and headed for shore only 7’ away.  We both turned white and he quickly regained control of the boat.

The cruising guide advises in several areas about the danger of the passage to Elizabeth City so we weren’t certain if we would attempt it.  After passing through the South Mills Lock we decided to look at an anchorage 11 miles south.  We started using our new charts and consistently found the depths 5-10’ lower than the chart advised. The chart advised us that the anchorage was 6’ deep.  Simple math told us that wouldn’t work as it was probably actually 1’ deep. So we stayed on course for Elizabeth City.  The guide told us of the multitude of dangers along the Pasquotank River with floating debris. We found it to be “clean” compared to the Potomac in DC area.

We finally got into the last free slip at the city wharf at 6:15pm.  We had no electricity or other facilities which I thought would be ok.  But JB didn’t want to run our generator because of the noise for the surrounding boats.  It went down to 52 degrees in our boat.  All our covers couldn’t keep me warm.  What really got me was when I compared the temperatures in Callao (50) and Stuart, FL (44).  That just isn’t fair!