Day 233: Saturday, April 25 , 2013
Port to Port: Tuckahoe Point Anchorage to Alligator River Marina
Underway: 6:38 am Motor Off:6:53 pm Miles Traveled: 20 Stayed At: Marina
Mile 104 to Mile 94: We had a touch decision today. The weather forecast was sketchy – a front was coming in after noon with north winds and a little rain but we had planned to stop at a marina about 20 miles north to wait for perfect weather to cross our last nasty body of water Albermer Sound. Conditions looked good in the early morning light. It was actually warm and humid when we got up. The winds were light. And we were only going to go 20 miles. That should be a “breeze” compared to our long day yesterday. What could go wrong?
Well, nothing went wrong. But the last 30 minutes of our journey was the most challenging of our entire trip. The first 90 minutes were fine. Overcast skies but not threatening rain. A nice breeze allowing us to motorsail on a beam reach for a while. A light chop. Then the wind shifted fairly fast to where the sails were just flapping so we took the sails down. Then a slightly darker curl of clouds started coming towards us. It was actually kind of beautiful. But then, within minutes the wind picked up and was probably gusting over 20 mph. Still, the water was relatively flat. That didn’t last long though. As the wind kept blowing across many miles of fetch down the Alligator River, the waves built to where we were regularly getting sprayed breaking through the bigger sets. It was decision time again. Do we continue or bailout to a little river about a mile and a half to the west of us across the now nasty chop and rollers. Thankfully, we made a quick decision. We went for the anchorage.
Our adventure was not over yet though. The waves kept building and now were hitting us broadside. Aurora was doing pretty good but every once in a while, a large series would get us rocking pretty good. Boris kept chugging along. The hairiest part was yet to come, though. Our chosen anchorage is well protected but happens to be a challenge to snake your way into. There are no markers – just hundreds of dead trees and snags with a few crab pots thrown in just to make it interesting. And the waves and current were doing their best to keep us from threading our way in. We could only navigate by our chart plotter and hope the satellites were telling us the truth about where we were. Somehow or another we missed all the snags, underwater logs, shallow spots and crab pots and popped out into calm protected waters. Whew! I don’t want to try that again.
We were anchored by 9:30 am – the anchor held the first time – and were soon dried off and laying down reading and relaxing as the wind kept building and howling outside. Our only frustration is that we don’t have internet or phone. We have been out contact for a couple of days. It drives Cindy nuts.
We had expected to hunker down overnight and try again tomorrow but we decided to call the marina 10 miles north at about 4 pm to get a weather update for tomorrow and reserve a spot. They couldn’t tell us much but Greg and Susan on Allegria overheard our call and called us back on the radio. They happened to be passing by out on the river and told us that is was lumpy but the waves had died down some and that is probably would be okay now to head up to the marina. Well, that sounded a lot better than staying all alone back in the anchorage so we quickly got ready, raised the anchor and retraced our steps back out and headed up the bay to the marina. It was lumpy but we weren’t getting any salt spray anymore.
It took a while but we finally pulled into the marina at a little before 7 pm and found an almost full house of other boats that had pulled in today too. It was immediate social hour. We quickly got things put away and ordered hamburgers at the little restaurant/marina/gas station – they stop taking orders at 7 pm so we were just in time. We chatted with several boaters before we even got off the boat. We met another boater couple – Dan and Sue on Southern Cross – during dinner. They are on a 40’ Freedom which I really like so we invited ourselves over later to take a look inside. We first stopped by to visit Allegria and thank them for their help and advice. They shared some of their adventures and lots of local knowledge with us about the Chesapeake and waters north. We are getting excited to explore some more. We stopped by to take a quick tour of Southern Cross at 9 pm. Our quick tour took 2 hours we were having so much fun chatting and sharing stories. We didn’t get done with our socializing until 11:00 pm – way past Cindy’s bedtime – and we still wanted to squeeze in showers so we would be ready to go if the weather was good in the morning. We have one more big body of water to get across – Albemarle Sound – before we get to the Dismal Swamp. Lets hope the weather cooperates tomorrow.