ICW Day 5 – 48nm, statue mile 104.2, 275 total nm.

Skipped the planned trip to Albemarle Plantation to cross the sound before a front that is coming through tomorrow.  Beautiful day, through the Alligator River bridge, to the entrance of the Alligator-Pungo Canal.  Had Steve Holcamp over for dinner from Second Wind.  Steve is single handing the trip on a Seaward 27 with an outboard engine.  He baked us a cake in a plastic baggie in a pot of boiling water.  It was wonderful.

Great time to talk about all the great people on the trip.  20 boats with folks from Canada, the northeast, midwest, and east coast.  

ICW Day 3/4 Wednesday October 19, 34nm, 227 total miles.

Made under another bridge and moved into Albemarle Sound.   Went back up the river to Elizabeth City and stayed for 2 nights.  Our friends Don and Signe Ferguson are on the trip with us and looked forward to getting out on the town.

Day 2, 34nm, statue mile 49.2, 193 total miles.

Hurricane Mathew has really disrupted the trip due to flooding.  We had to completely skip the Dismal Swamp Canal to go through the Virginia Cut by Atlantic Yacht Basin.  Flooding also, lowered the bridge clearances for the first few bridges.   A long story, but our mast is taller than we thought.  I went up the mast for the first time and removed the wind instruments, thinking that would be enough.  We actually touched the bridge just south of AYB and came back and removed everything!  Just wires hanging down.  Still not enough!  Ken Reynolds from Mauna Kea (another boat on the trip) suggested that he and Don hang out on the boom to lean the mast over and made it through the first bridge.  The second bridge, Pungo Ferry had even less clearance and we touched the bridge again and turned around.  Ken recruited some kids on a skiff to come over and hang on the boom and we just snuck under.  Amazing!

Great time to talk about all the great people on the trip.  20 boats with folks from Canada, the northeast, midwest, and east coast.  Would not have made it past the second day without Laurie and Ken from Mauna Kea.  

Ended up at Midway Marina in Coinjock.  

There are two sites with some information on the trip that are maintained by Wally Moran, our leader.  The first is his blog.  The link below describes our bridge antics.  You can also search for the Sail to the Sun public facebook page, and join that group.

https://bloggingtheicw.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2016-10-27T22:42:00-04:00

https://www.facebook.com/groups/WaterwayGuideSailtotheSun/

The Sail to the Sun Rally started on Monday October 17th from Bluewater Marina in Hampton.  A beautiful morning for the run down to Great Bridge.  We were supposed to go through the Dismal Swamp canal, but the flooding completely overwhelmed the locks and bridges, closing the canal indefinitely.  Our friends Don and Signe Ferguson joined us for the first week.  Happy to have them along!

So we had to alter our plans to go through the Virginia Cut past Atlantic Yacht Basin, where Jack Stumborg, the owner, found a way to fit 18 boats along the free docks and in his yacht basin.  The ICW pictures here show the entire ICW and the Virginia portion.  The official ICW starts at mile zero in Norfolk and ends at mile 1198 in Miami.  Note that the ICW is measured in statue miles while we measure our track in nautical miles.   We will keep track of the entire trip and each day as we go.  We passed mile zero on the way to AYB.  

We also figured out that we needed to take off our wind instruments, so up the mast I went!  Good weather.  159 total nm, 22nm for the day, mile 12 on the ICW.  20 gal diesel at AYB.

After attending the Sail to the Sun Rally on Monday October 10 we boarded the boat and prepared for the trip south.   We finally got underway on Thursday October 13th.  All the buzz was about hurricane Mathew and the damage to the ICW.  More later on that…

We are keeping track of the total miles on the trip and the daily log.  This post covers Days 1, 2, and 3.  Day 1 Solomons Island at Zahnheizers Marina, Day 2 in Jackson Creek off of the Piankatank River, and Day 3 the rest of the way to Hampton.  137 nautical miles.  The weather was cool and sunny.

After some work to bring our web site up to speed, we are finally ready to blog our trip down the ICW and beyond.  Thanks for everyone’s patience during the process.