In the ICW all the Bridges are 65’… Except the Ones that Aren’t!

Otherwise Known As Bridge Limbo

So all the bridges in the ICW are a minimum of 65′, except when the water is high as in a during a coastal flood or high tide or wind tide or when the Army Corp of Engineers doesn’t build the bridge to specs.

Now I’ve already told you I’ve been ducking at each and every bridge, I thought actually, I was getting better when I didn’t even flinch at the last Bascule bridge (okay, okay a Bascule bridge lifts in the middle so you can’t hit it – maybe that’s not particularly brave of me). Then I heard that there was a problem with some of the bridges in the ICW, not all of them actually have 65′ clearance.

Well that wasn’t what I needed to hear to make me feel more comfortable about clearing those annoying bridges. See our boat, near as we can tell, has an air draft of about 63 ft. That means that from the water to the top of our main mast we stand 63 ft. Then on top of the mast we have an antenna. Well if the bridge is really 65 ft high we should be fine with 18″ clearance. However some of the bridges are only 64 ft which reduces our actual clearance to less than a foot when you factor in the antenna.

Throw in a little coastal flooding, nominal tide or wind tide (don’t even get me started about this as there seems to be no predicting and no reporting of exactly what, where or when the wind tide might be) then suddenly that your remaining 6″ seems like an unreasonably small margin. Is it any wonder then that I cringe when we go under bridges?

I have to admit that these were not things that I considered when contemplating sailing away for a year. Now, well I think about it daily, sometimes several times a day depending how many bridges we have to go under on a given day.

The good news is that notwithstanding my personal inclination to duck we have slid under every bridge so far, even the 64′ bridge. Looking up at the underside of that bridge the kids pointed to the marks of other boats’ masts on the underside of the bridge. Probably that wasn’t the best thing for my confidence either. At least we didn’t hit.

We meant to leave early we started to leave early, we tried to leave early, we didn’t manage to get out of the marina early but what with the late night of laundry I didn’t wake up early. In the morning, before we could leave we had to settle up with the marina and we had to take on fuel and fill the water tanks and before you know it was 9:30 in the morning and we still hadn’t left the docks.

Over the past several weeks we had prided ourselves in getting into a routine and in knowing our limits. We were trying to leave early so that we could get to Coinjock, NC the first night. As we did the calculations it appeared that we’d be going about 50 miles to Coinjock and hard as we tried there didn’t seem to be anyplace closer to stop. It was 50 statute miles rather than 50 nautical miles and the conversion was in our favor.

This was new though, it was hard to judge, there were bridges (lots of them actually) and unlike NY some of them had to be asked to lift or swing, some of them had their own schedules, on the hour, on the half hour and there was a lock! But you have to start sometime and for us that was around 9:30 in the morning the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

I asked for any advice from the dock master at the marina we were at and he gave me a cheat sheet. The first two bridges, it seemed were easy. As we rode out of the marina I read to Boyd, N & P Beltline RR Bridge usually open. Okay, so that one only took us an hour and a half. When we came to it the bridge was most definitely not open. In fact not only was it down, but it had a train parked on it.

By the time the bridge opened there were 3 mono-hull sailboats and a cat behind us. If that didn’t make the area we were in crowded enough just before we got to go under the bridge three large tugs joined us. You’ll see the photos, every time we turned a bend in the ICW I’d look back and go quack, quack, quack… I felt like we were the leader of a band of ducks.

It was a bit of a nerve-wracking day as I ducked at each bridge. The rest of the boats seemed to be completely satisfied to let us take the first try at each of the next several bridges. Eventually as it became dark the boats behind us started to drop off. Finally we were the only boat still going. It became much more difficult to find our way after dark as many of the markers and about half of the lights were missing. We pulled into the booming town of Coinjock around 6pm. Our friends from Wind Dust were already there and we pulled into the dock by just pulling along the side of the canal. For a mere $1.75 per foot per night we were able to sidle over to the side of the canal for the night. Relived to be tied up for the night we had dinner, visited with our new friends and turned in for the night.

Okay so if you didn’t get the idea from the Atlantic City Post the kids were not impressed (other than with “It’s Candy”) there was not much for them there. In Norfolk however, after a quite day recovering from our 30 hour trek and enjoying our inventive Thanksgiving Day dinner we had a nice time.

I guess first I should disclose that in Norfolk we decided to get a slip. It was a tough decision since the cost was $1.85 per foot but unbelievably the only anchorage close is small with poor holding and the weather predicted that we would be getting 35 mph winds around midnight. That was all I had to hear. We got a hold of the only marina with someone manning the phones on Thanksgiving Day and tucked into a slip.

As a side note the wind did pick up around midnight Thanksgiving night and howl through the rigging. When we got up to check the lines around 2 am we watched one of the two sailboats in that same anchorage go floating down the channel anchor light bobbing in the otherwise black night. There was nothing we could do to help but pray for them. I did see their anchor light go out so I was pretty sure the had woken up. The next morning I did see that they had gotten re-anchored. At 2 am I was just glad it hadn’t been us having to reset the anchor in that wind and rain.

But on our Thanksgiving Day mid afternoon arrival in Norfolk it was a beautiful afternoon and everyone shed their jackets, sweatshirts and coats and jumped ship. As we walked back to Passages from the Marina office we struck up a conversation with the nicest folks from a boat called Wind Dust. They are retired and also headed to the Bahamas. We had a lovely time talking with them and found we had lots in common as their previously boat was a Vagabond almost like the one we have now. The next day we shared a bus ride on the shuttle and went shopping at the local Food Lion. It was fun to meet new folks and have so much in common with them.

Once we returned from the getting the groceries and stowed all of the supplies the kids and I decided to go exploring across the channel on the paddlewheel ferry. Just in case you have lost track of what day this is makes it this would be Black Friday and so of course we went to The Mall. I’m so grateful for small favors… at least we didn’t have to PARK. The kids had a totally great time. Nicole and I hit every shoe and accessory store while Paul ventured off on his own happy, likely, just to be free of us. WiFi and drinks with ice for all was the ringing cry.

In the end the kids and I decided to take in a movie and felt the more civilized for it. We have been on a TV and movie crash diet for the last 3-4 weeks and even though we all kind of agreed that the movie we saw, Planet 51, was pretty hokey we enjoyed the familiarity of the process. We toddled our way back to the boat around 9 pm and the kids took shower at the marina “club house” while I did laundry until around midnight. All in all enough packed into the day to make both kids happy, which keeps me happy, for a while.

Our next jump was from Atlantic City to Norfolk Va. This, is a short transit probably for many experienced sailing crews but for us it would be the first transit that required staying up overnight and working watches all through the night. It was a daunting task considering that the boat is new to us, it would be such a long transit and Boyd is the only truly experienced captain on board. At some point he would need to sleep and that would mean that Paul or I or Paul and I would be in charge of the boat and our safety.

We started out from Atlantic City in the early morning I actually woke up around 3 am and couldn’t get back to sleep as the waves in the anchorage had become increasingly confused. I lay in the bunk disliking the anchorage, the current, the area. I wished we could go but knew it was to early. Two hours of waiting and hoping I’d fall back asleep, and then just as I’d nearly succeeded Boyd’s alarm went off and we started our greatest trek thus far.

Pulling Paul out of his bunk and getting him to help pull anchor at 5:30 in the morning was no picnic but once it was done he’d been promised he could go back to sleep until his watch from noon to four. We were underway slightly after 6:30 and made good speed out into the open Atlantic where the waves were still churning from the last few days of wind. We made the best of it and started our rotation. Nicole and Paul and I did a lot of sleeping while Boyd took his watch pretty much on his own. Then we had some chips and salsa for lunch. We had beam seas so it was pretty rolly and no one really wanted much to eat. As Paul’s watch progressed the wind settled some and the waves flattened and it became less uncomfortable and by dinner (individual lasagnas popped in the oven for half an hour because my watch is 4pm to 8pm) everyone was feeling well enough to eat a real meal.

We took our dinner huddled under the dodger out on deck in the dark. Paul and Nicole had both been sleeping for several hours and there was already a real sense of disorientation about what time it really was. At 8pm I was happy to hand off the watch to Boyd and duck below to put Nicole to bed in a real bed. Unfortunately, since we were running the engine it was incredibly difficult to get to sleep at first and we spent the first hour cuddled together murmuring “are you asleep?” to each other until finally one of us didn’t answer.

I slept soundly until Boyd came down to get me at midnight. The plan was that he and I would switch places and I would go up on deck with Paul for his watch. It seemed brutally cold coming from cuddled inside a sleeping bag to out on deck but it did manage to keep me from going to sleep for a while. Somewhere around 2am I told Paul I was just going close my eyes for a few minutes and I dozed for the next two hours until my watch when Paul and I traded spots. He took over my pile of blankets and a pillow I had burrowed into and I took the watch.

By 4am the waves had calmed completely and we were just cutting across the water in the dark moonless night. I spent most of my time trying to figure out if the dots of light were boats or far off lights on the shore. In addition to it being a dark night it was also alternately foggy so judging distance wasn’t always easy. With all the equipment though, the radar and AIS and the chart plotter and autopilot it turned out to be easier than I had anticipated and I got us through the next four hours without hitting anything or getting hit by anything. I was prepared to let Boyd sleep until 9 but he ended up coming up on deck around 7:30 in the morning and as we were just about to enter into the shipping lanes in Norfolk I was happy enough to see him. I offered to make coffee if he’d take the wheel and that concluded or nearly concluded our outside run to Norfolk. We spent the next few hours until after noon transiting the Norfolk channel and pulled into the Tidewater Yacht Agency around 12:30 pm on Thanksgiving day, tired but all in one piece.

After the small and rather quaint town of Atlantic Highlands we traveled south and made the jump into the open Atlantic Ocean. Here I should confess that this has been a bit of a fear of mine. What will it be like out in the open water? I’ve tried to ignore it and down play it but here finally it was time for me to actually have to face my fear.

It’s been kind of like a fear of flying. How exactly can you take a trip to Hawaii if you won’t get on the airplane? So I’ve known in the back of my brain that you can’t get to Bahamas without going into open water. But frankly I’ve been ignoring it.

Turns out that wasn’t the bad part. The 3-mile trip from Atlantic Highlands to the point of Sandy Hook was rougher than that to Atlantic City. In fact when we got to Atlantic City I was still game to go to the next port since the ocean was so calm. However the weather prediction was for increasing wind and coordinating waves so we decided we should stick with the plan and go into Atlantic City.

We anchored out due to the high cost of dock space but got permission to take the dinghy into Trump Casino and Marina docks. It was everything Atlantic City should be glitzy, with a capitol “G”. But in the end, three days later I’m sad to say that there hasn’t been a port I’ve been happier to see in the rear view.

The only area to anchor is along side the bridge and on nice days there was an insane number of power boaters zooming by trying to catch fish. There were dozens of boats all willing to zip by us within feet and send us rocking all day long but worse than that was that the tide and the wind were both strong and opposing seemingly all the time. For the three days that we anchored in Atlantic City we seemed to be in constant and perpetual bob mode. It got so bad that Nicole couldn’t eat or drink without throwing up so we went in to Trump and got a room. In her defense it wasn’t just the waves, because of the wind and rain on the second and third days it was impossible to spend any time on deck so we were all more prone to being seasick.

Who knew that if you wanted to dock it was $2 foot (our boat being 47ft means it’s nearly $100 night) and then you still are staying on the boat but getting a room was only $50 a night. So we stayed the night in the Trump Tower and walked on the Boardwalk, which was fun for the kids. We went to a shop called “It’s Sugar” and the kids had fun picking out candy from an amazing variety of sweets.

Still Atlantic City is without a doubt my least favorite stay on the trip so far; there is no good way to get around unless you are gambling. There’s nothing really to do in the casinos unless you are gambling. The food was overpriced, hard to get to and not of very high quality. I was disappointed with nearly every meal and really couldn’t wait to leave, except of course that it meant we had to go back outside… and because Boyd said this would be “the big jump”.