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.