Aboard Eleanor

-Jon

            After breakfast and a quick trip to the town dock for a pump out we pointed Eleanor’s bow out through the Belhaven breakwater and back to the ICW, our destination for the day – Norfolk.

            The benign weather forecast was worsening by the hour with strong near-gale force winds now predicted for Thursday. We needed to get 150 miles north to Norfolk by Tuesday so we had Wednesday to run up the Chesapeake. If we got delayed the window was going to shut, leaving us stuck 150 miles from home for at least three days. 

            We had several challenges ahead as we cruised up the Pongo River towards the 22-mile-long Alligator-Pungo Canal. The first challenge was going to be the swing bridge on the Alligator River. Fully exposed to the weather at the junction of the river with the broad Albemarle Sound meant that this was one of the only bridges that wouldn’t open in strong winds. As we rounded the corner at the south end of the Alligator and started heading straight into the wind and waves I could tell we’d be okay but not by much. Gusts were hitting the mid-twenties but the limit is 34 knots. We motored on up and the bridge tender kindly opened for us.

            Once through the swing bridge, the base populated by a huge flock of pelicans who decided it was too windy to fly, we made our way into Albemarle Sound. This is possibly the most weather restricted stretch of the Intracoastal. Combining distant low shorelines unable to block the wind with a very shallow depth, any storm stirred up a steep wave pattern that made it unpleasant, even dangerous, to cross. We worked our way across, taking solid waves over the bow. Eleanor has a comfortable motion in a seaway, sashaying her way through the swells, not fighting the waves with an abrupt pounding like many powerboats. It was still the roughest section of the trip. 

Back in the ditch of the ICW we now had to calculate time and distance to get through a series of draw bridges and a lock to our destination for the day at the north end of Norfolk harbor. The densely populated area south of Norfolk and Virginia Beach has a number of bridges that cross the ICW. For the last three decades, all new ones are built to a fixed height of 65 feet, which meant they would be no factor for us, or the commuters driving across. Unfortunately, there are still draw bridges and to facilitate road traffic, they limit openings to either once an hour or every 30 minutes depending on their posted rules. It became imperative that we hit the first bridge with an opening on the hour at exactly 2:00 pm. That gave us 30 minutes to go five miles to the next bridge opening at 2:30, followed by a 3.5 mile run to the Great Bridge lock at 3:00 pm. If we made the first bridge on time, we could make it to the Norfolk Yacht & Country Club by 4:00, before the Dockmaster left for the day. If we missed the first bridge opening by even five minutes, we would be set back an entire hour. We cruised slowly through the world-famous town of Coinjock and kicked Eleanor back up on plane to get to our bridge opening.

            Everything went as planned and we made it through all the drawbridges and into the Great Bridge Lock at 3:00. The lock is unusual in that unlike most locks, it isn’t to move vessels up or down in water level. The purpose is to keep the salt water from the Atlantic Ocean, Chesapeake Bay, and the Elizabeth River from Norfolk from contaminating the fresh water Currituck Sound of North Carolina. Plants and animals prefer either fresh or salt water environments so this “guard lock” is needed to impede water flow through the man-made canal connecting the two different ecological systems.

 Locking through took 20 minutes,  then with speed zones through the southern reaches of Norfolk Harbor slowing the pace, we finally arrived at our destination at 4:45. The dockmaster had left for the day, but as it turned out, it didn’t matter. This early in the season we were the sole transient, so we had our pick of berths for the night. After a little exercise in the fitness center, we had a pleasant dinner in the yacht club overlooking the container ship terminal in the harbor.

From Jon. Monday. March 28th, 2022

Monday morning before dawn we were sitting at the dock in Wrightsville Beach, just south of the drawbridge drinking coffee when I glanced at an email on my phone from the Chesapeake Yacht Club. The temps in Maryland tonight were dropping down into the 20’s so they were turning off the water to our dock, but hoped to have it back up by Thursday, depending on the gale force winds heading their way.

Gale force winds? Where did this come from. For the past week the forecast for the duration of our cruise had been for a large high pressure to park itself over the East Coast, giving us light winds, no waves, and comfortable temps in the 50s and 60s. Now we were looking at a closing weather window. Our old forecast was still reasonably valid through Wednesday evening, but Thursday was going to be a mess. Friday no better. We needed to get heading north, and quickly.

I pulled open my Waterway Guide to the page with bridges to see what the story was with the drawbridge 200 yards to the north. Bridges down here in the Carolinas come in three varieties. Fixed bridges with 65 foot clearance, and hence no factor. Draw or Swing bridges that open whenever requested, so only minimal delay to us cruisers. The third variety were draw or swing bridges in densely populated areas that only open at restricted times so they don’t create annoying traffic congestion for the cars trying to cross that particular bridge. I checked the guide and the Wrightsville Beach bridge only opens on the hour from 7 am to 7 pm. I looked at my watch. 6:50 am. Yikes!

“Hey everybody, bridge opens in ten minutes and then will stay closed for an hour. We are getting underway. Kurt, can you disconnect shore power. Terese, and Michelle start pulling fenders and lines, leaving bow, stern and the red spring line.”

I climbed up to the flybridge and started the engines to get them warmed up. Back down in the main saloon I started the generator and helped Kurt shift from shore to ship’s power. Terese got everybody headsetted up so we could all communicate and in less than five minutes we were ready for underway, with just the minimal dock lines holding us in position on the pier. It is a joy having a great crew who knew their jobs and jumped to them quickly and efficiently.

Looking south down the ICW we saw other boats pull off the dock, getting ready for the opening. We waited patiently and as the bridge opened and two sailboats headed past us we spun off the dock and got in line, heading north.

With the first obstacle out of the way we came up with a new plan for getting home. 150 miles up the ICW was the quaint little village of Belhaven. That was our goal for Today. Tuesday we would run another 150 miles up to Norfolk, which would just leave the Chesapeake Bay for Wednesday. The forecast for the Bay was 12, gusting to the low 20’s but from the south. The proverbial fair winds and following seas. It would be a gentle sleigh ride up the bay…if the forecast held. Thursday was forecast to hit forty knot winds, with the accompanying waves.

After going through the bridge, we did a slow pass of the two sailboats, kicked Eleanor up on plane, and started eating up the miles of the ICW at our customary 20 knots.

-Terese

Point B always surprises me. It sneaks up. I’m all in my rhythm of driving or staring at the paper chart, trying to make sense of all the lines and numbers and Jon says, “We’re almost there.”  And I look at the chart again and I look at my watch and somehow a whole eight hours have passed, and we are indeed now searching for a specific dot on the map that the kind dockmaster had, after three repetitions over the phone, finally conveyed into my Yankee brain, would be Eleanor’s resting spot for the night. 

“You wouh puup right t the guyass douk.”

“I’m sorry…?”

“Just spin’ bow t sou then we kin guyasserup.”

I’m trying to interpret.  I look at Jon. 

“Ma’am.” Speaking very slowly now because he knows I don’t understand but he can’t figure out if it’s because I am a northerner or if it’s because I am a woman.

“Jess pool.the. boat. right. up. to. the. guyass dock.”

“Will do!”

I turn to Jon, victorious.

“They’re putting us at the gas dock.”

Jon gauges the wind and the current and slides Eleanor perfectly into place at the Wrightsville, North Carolina Dockside Marina and restaurant. We’ve made such good time that there’s plenty left over for a scrub. Not me, Eleanor. She’d not had a bath all winter. 

I filled a bucket with soap and water, found a brush and went to town. It was somehow cathartic, symbolic of shaking off winter, stripping a layer so she could more deeply absorb the sun. I refused offers of help from both Michelle and Jon, happily sliding the suds around Eleanor’s decks, gently dabbing at my precious coats of varnish and coaxing the latest layer of salt back into the sea. We were united again: my elbow grease and her easy sway, both of us brightening at the thought of another summer of scraping, shellacking, chasing sail races and cocktails, her, holding happy guests from bow to stern, me, slinging drinks and snacks. It was good to be headed north.  

Like the prettiest belle at the ball, Eleanor cuts through the water with confidence, grace and a certain style that causes eyes to turn and then linger. Eleanor moves forward, sure of where she is going. The onlookers wonder where that is and wish they were going too, because it is sure to be a good place. She is only about good places, and the good place she is right now is cutting through beautiful rivers and canals in the Eastern Carolinas.

People everywhere are hospitable, but hospitality in the Eastern Carolinas is in their bones. Which is why Eleanor feels right at home here, as she is all about hospitality. Michelle and I were blessed to join Jon and Terese, the incredibly hospitable current caretakers of Eleanor (does anyone ever really “own” a yacht? True yachts are creatures that are spawned in the mind of an artist, brought to life by skilled craftsmen, and then wander the earth’s waters as they wish) as they journeyed north back from Eleanor’s winter holiday in Charleston.

Passages are a treasured time. Bringing Eleanor’s dear soul back from her relatively brief time swooning in Charleston’s rich atmosphere is an opportunity to disconnect from all those things that occupy and nag the mind most days, while one sets about with a singular purpose of getting from point A to point B. During a passage, the experiences in point A are imprints of fond memories that help build the anticipation of new memories to come at Point B. Being asked to help make the passage is a gift, and Michelle and I jumped at the chance given to us by Jon and Terese, although we knew we would not fully be able to shed the nagging everyday work routine completely.

Leaving Charleston within 5 minutes of our arrival jumpstarted our focus, however, on the importance of getting to Point B. Our first goal was “somewhere around 60 miles north of Charleston on the ICW”, which as it turned out, was Georgetown. Many states, of course, have a Georgetown – the obvious namesake being the “father of our country”, and given the history of this Georgetown, in the hospitable coast of North Carolina, that was no doubt an influence, as Mr. Washington did actually sleep there, as memorialized on at least one plaque. However, there is so much more going on in this Georgetown than history. Once Eleanor was properly tended to, and fed with fuel and water and ice, our explorations lead us to a wonderful local craft gallery with many clever creations, several of which we took possession of after a pleasant exchange of conversation and cash.

From there we ventured further into town, and found really good restaurants. Not just one or two, but several. And several places where one could just get a beer or something harder, in a very comfortable setting. Choosing where to make our “point B” memories that night was challenging, which gave us time to reflect together on what we truly enjoyed. One thing we all truly enjoyed was the cat cafe, which sadly, was closed for the day, but which still brought joy as we watched several obviously content cats lounging in the still sun-lit window, while one of their cat colleagues furiously exercised the large hamster wheel lined inside with cheetah spotted fabric. Clearly an over-achiever, that cat must have put in 5 miles of jogging while we waited for our dinner reservation across the street.

Dinner was memorable – excellent food with great friends enjoying conversation and some good laughs, at ourselves, our stories and our luck with the forecasted weather. Wind on the nose, followed by record cold, followed by wind on the nose, followed by a fierce gale. We plotted our courses back to Annapolis accordingly. We ended the evening on Eleanor playing a hand of cribbage – a storied card game that Michelle and I enjoy, which we felt obliged to inflict upon our hospitable hosts. Then a 9 pm bedtime to prepare for the 7 am shove-off to a new point B, with new memories and moments. Eleanor, bearing witness, gave us shelter and comfort as we anticipated the point Bs to come on our passage. We were not bringing Eleanor “home” as much as she was bringing us “home” to the things that mattered – good friends, sharing their journeys, with many kind-hearted souls along the way.

Kurt Karsten 3-29-22

When you become obsessed with a project, not even knowing the goal, having no real vision of the tunnel or if there will be a light at the end, you know you’ve set upon a passion–a this will BE, sort of ongoing devotion. That’s how it’s been with Eleanor. Despite her moldy draperies, her failed wooden depressions and scabs, her dusty, rusty electronics, on that chilly October afternoon in Matthews, Virginia, it was love at first sight. We’ve poured ourselves into her. I have a few scars to prove it…. Eleanor and I both have. Where I have cracked skin around my thumb nail, she has a small gash in her wood where I slipped with the scraper. Where I have scars from chemical burns on the tops of my fingers, she has a few frozen varnish drips, forever hanging from her teak trim. Where the lines around my eyes have been over-soaked in sun, she’s peeling her paint on her weathered foredeck.

Eleanor is situated here in Charleston on the so-called “Mega-dock.” The dock itself is 1,530 feet long, counting only the water-facing pier and can accommodate boats as long as 455 feet.

She is nestled between a 60+ foot sage-colored sport fishing yacht whose captain sits in mahogany seats, above thick, luxuriously appointed, spotless fiberglass, and a triple-decked Azimut 50 fly. Across from us is Bonne Vie, a Nordhaven 62, and in front of her is Scorpio, 90 foot Hargrave. All of these vessels are worth two, three, maybe four million. Jon often jokes that we paid less for Eleanor than the taxes on our neighboring floating mansions.

Among them, though, rather then be dwarfed, Eleanor seems to stretch back her shoulders and stiffen her chest. Her lines rise proudly from the sea, having safely and surely transported her new family to port. She is a tough, badass broad, outshone only by her refurbished beauty, having seen some watery road and come back to outlive and out love them all. Like her namesake, she is sturdy and outspoken and long-serving.

Tonight we fly home to the Shady Side. We miss our girls and our home but there will be a certain vacancy there. What will we do not having to carve out several hours each day to toil aboard E? I suspect that time will be filled with things pushed into it so we can go visit her often in Charleston. Meantime, Eleanor will fill her space and keep herself steady, ready for the next sea-splitting adventure.

(From Jon’s perspective)

            In 1997 I went down the Intracoastal Waterway with my father, Russell, and brother, Andrew in another project boat. That journey at the dawn of the Internet era started out as daily email updates to friends, and ultimately became a book. Adventures in the Ditch earned modest success with an Eric Hoffer award as a ‘notable memoir’ and has sold over 1,100 copies in the years it has been available on Amazon.com. One of the readers of this blog, my well-known author friend Susan Moger, posed the question, “What’s changed since Adventures?” The simple answer is almost everything.

            But let’s start with what hadn’t changed much. The boat we used, for both adventures, was a ‘project boat.’ Both good boats that had seen better days in their past and needed some attention to bring them back into cruising shape. Griffin was a 1985 Fairline Corniche 31. A fiberglass flybridge with twin diesels. Eleanor is a 1981 Cheoy Lee Midnight Lace 52, also a fiberglass flybridge with twin diesels. Both are fairly simple in boat terms in that they don’t have many complicated systems. No autopilot. No water maker. One small generator to power the air-conditioning systems and provide multiple charging points for our personal electronics. And both took a year to get everything working up to the level required to make a thousand-mile trip. Terese took on the job of esthetics onboard Eleanor, reupholstering the salon furniture and putting ten coats of varnish on our extensive exterior teak. So, I will say we look better this time compared to the utilitarian Griffin. We lost count of how many people we saw taking pictures of Eleanor from their boats or the shoreline, which was fun validation of the work we put in, and of course Eleanor’s beautiful and unique lines.

            Griffin had her original 1985 vintage Volvo diesels when we made the trip back in 1997. Back then engines smoked and smelled. Every day we had to wash the transom to get the soot off after a day running on the ICW. Eleanor was repowered in 2002 with the then current state of the art in Yanmar diesels. No soot. No smell. I’ve heard that diesel engines have come even further in the two decades since our Yanmars came out, but we are content with what we have.

            Another thing that hasn’t changed are the shifting sandbars on the ICW. The Intracoastal is basically a series of rivers, sounds, bays, and creeks, connected with the occasional canal dug out of the mud or rocks to connect the natural waterways. Built back in the 1930s as a way for tugs and barges to move up and down the coast without regard to North Atlantic weather, the ongoing and perpetual challenge is keeping these various waterways dredged to at least six feet. Where inlets from the Atlantic intersect the ICW, silt starts piling up and can block the waterway. Dredging equipment moves up and down the ICW attacking the sandbar of the day.

            But here is the positive change. Thanks to the advancement in electronics, and rapid dissemination of information through the internet, it is easy to have near-real-time situational awareness of the locations of these shifting shoals. In the narrow channels of the ICW, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers run a survey boat with a side-scanning sonar taking a detailed picture of the bottom. Then using color coding to show different water depths, from green through yellow to orange and ultimately red, it is easy to understand where the danger lies. Broadcast to the internet, and then downloaded to an iPad connected to a small GPS receiver, we can see exactly where Eleanor is in relation to the shoals. With such situational awareness we don’t even need to slow from our 21-mph cruising speed to slalom through most areas. Running aground used to be fairly common on the ICW, but now you have to be very unlucky, or inattentive, to touch the bottom. Southbound we did not touch this time, while Griffin hit the bottom at least once both south and northbound.

            When I started writing Adventures in the Ditch in 1997 there was only one book in print that covered the Intracoastal Waterway in memoir format. The competition, Honey, Let’s Get a Boat was actually the first of the Great Loop books that started with a northbound trip up the ICW, but then kept going up the Hudson to the Great Lakes, over to Chicago, down the Mississippi to the Gulf and around Florida back to the starting point. Clearly a more adventurous journey than just the ICW, but for those who wanted to know what to expect on the ICW portion of the trip, Honey… and Adventures… were the only two choices for several years.

            Flash forward to today, there are countless blogs, Facebook groups, YouTube videos, and channels devoted to sharing the daily adventures on the ICW. Pick your type of boat, from derelict sailboat to million-dollar motor yacht and there is a blog or video channel where you can follow someone living your dream. There are Facebook sites devoted specifically to ICW navigation. Others devoted to the trawler cruising lifestyle. Still others that are focused on advice on repairs, improvements, and product recommendations. Even young families that have sold everything and moved aboard to explore the world, starting with the Atlantic coast of America. And then there is Bobby, who has an ever-changing crew of young lovelies who frolic for his selfie video camera on his YouTube channel, “Sailing Doodles.” You name it, you can find it on the internet, continuously updated.

            The final thing that seemed different is the quantity and quality of boats on the water. We are amazed at the size and grandeur of the yachts we’ve encountered this time around. There were always large yachts, but it seems the average boat we encounter is bigger and newer now, than what we remember from twenty-four years ago. This is kind of interesting since in the intervening years we’ve had the Dotcom bust, the Great Recession, and the recent Pandemic. Still, the country seems richer than it was a quarter century ago.   

            So, Susan, no Adventure in the Ditch, Volume II. This little blog is it. As they say, “no market for it.”

Thanks to the crew who helped with the preparation for the journey as well as the onboard crew for the voyage. Jenn was our human autopilot, taking frequent extended turns at the helm. Craig was our CHENG – Chief Engineer — handling pre-underway engine checks every morning and coordinating the shift from shore power to ships power, and back again every day, plus numerous jobs during the year-long renovation of Eleanor. Terese managed all aspects of the voyage, from taking her turns at the helm, including driving Eleanor out into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, to selecting marinas and restaurants and keeping us all fed and happy. More than a First Mate, she was active as Co-Captain and Cruise Director.

Overall, it was a fun and successful mini adventure!

Eleanor carried us safely to her new temporary home at the “mega dock” in Charleston, SC. We arrived around 2:30 pm on Thanksgiving day, thankful for the amazing journey. She will now stand out in her unique way among the boring mega yachts 🙂

After Jon expertly parallel parked her and we made sure she was moored appropriately,, we went for a walk along the Battery to stretch our sea legs. We had an amazing dinner at High Cotton. It wasn’t exactly like a family Thanksgiving, but it involved turkey, Brussels sprouts, and shrimp & grits. We also enjoyed live music and celebrated how lucky we are to live this life! Cheers to all!