Chris & Irina's Excellent Adventure: Ditch Digging aka a Day in the Intracoastal

What is it????

Today we started out a bit later because we had some timing considerations related to the several bridges and one lock that we planned to transit. One bridge, the Gilmerton highway lift bridge only opens after the morning traffic rush, so we did not want to get there too early.

Anyway, we left our anchorage at Old Point Comfort and headed south down “Warship Alley” – just row after row of aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers and auxiliary vessels.

Very impressive!!

After passing through Norfolk and the dock area, we officially entered the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) – also known as “the Ditch”. After the deep waters of the entry channel, we were soon in real skinny water!! Our boat draws about 6ft and soon we were in narrow channels and limited to 10-12 ft depths.

Just before noon we entered the Great Bridge lock along with several other, mostly larger, boats. Since it was slack tide the lock keeper did not have to do too much, just shut one gate and open the other end to let us out. Then we waited 10 minutes for the next bridge to open and we were off again at 5kt, except this time the faster boats decided to strut their stuff, flying along at 25-30kt!! Thankfully, everyone was courteous and polite, and we did not get waked significantly.

By 3:00pm we were approaching our intended anchorage, and getting ready for a cocktail (or two). Unfortunately, even up-to-date charts are somewhat unreliable. Despite the best laid plans etc, we found our selves trying to anchor a 6ft draft vessel in only 8ft of water with 3ft of tide still to drop!! So we kept going to the next (hopefully more reliable) anchorage. We cranked up the speed, hoping that our C-Map charts were reliable and were soon doing about 10mph (notice that the ICW is measured in statute miles rather than nautical miles) trying to cover another 25 miles before dark.

Well, we made it to an acceptable anchorage about ½ hour after dark and are presently sipping our drinks before dinner (tenderloin and leeks) in a comfortable 11ft of water just out of the channel at statute mile marker 60 in North Carolina.

That’s it for today, folks.