We finally left Deltaville for the season on Friday, December 20. We were still waiting on the delivery of our life raft but we decided that we couldn’t wait in Deltaville any longer. We had a good weather window, despite the cold and we decided to take it. Our plan was to try to get south as quickly as we could, taking the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) about 200 miles to Beaufort, North Carolina and then hopefully going offshore from there.
It was a lumpy but uneventful 50-mile trip down the Chesapeake from Deltaville to Hampton, Virginia. We spent the night at Safe Harbor: Bluewater, one of the few cruising boats there. Turns out this would be the trend for our entire first section of the trip.
We officially entered the ICW the next day as we passed through Norfolk Harbor. Again, we only saw a few boats the entire day. We stopped for the night at one of our favorite free docks – The Great Bridge Free Dock in Chesapeake, VA. Due to low water levels and gusty winds, we struggled during docking and we slightly bent our stainless steel bow pulpit on one side. I was pretty bummed but Lucas said it can be fixed with some rope and force. Oh well, she’s a cruising boat not a showboat.
The next day started out very cold. How cold you ask? As we motored down the canal, I noticed the water looked weird. Upon further inspection, I realized we were motoring through a very thin layer of ice on top of the smooth water. That was a first for us and I hope we never see ice like that again. It was thin enough that the only damage was to our morale. We gotta keep heading south!
All day we debated where we would stop for the night. There were only two options – 1. Anchor out in fine but not great anchorage or 2. Spend some money by stopping at the Coinjock Marina and ordering one of their famous prime rib dinners. After much discussion, we decided to treat ourselves to some prime rib. For the uninitiated, Coinjock Marina and Restaurant is famous amongst ICW boaters. It is the only marina in a 50-mile radius and happens to have a restaurant that specializes in prime rib attached to it. We had passed by twice without stopping. Not this time! We tied up to the wall and practically ran towards the restaurant (and to get out of the cold). We were not disappointed, it was a fantastic prime rib dinner!
The next day we got up early, it was time to cross the Albemarle Sound. We learned through our trip last year to be wary of the Albemarle, waves can build up quickly in the wide-open area. The wind was still blowing pretty good out of the north but we had a fairly smooth crossing. A few hours later, we left the Albemarle and motored into the Alligator River. We were very glad to have the Albemarle in our rearview mirror. We anchored for the night, again all by ourselves, at the bottom of Alligator River. This was the first real test of our new Starlink internet. Last time we were in this anchorage, we had zero cell phone reception. It was so bad that we had to send a phone up the mast to get enough signal to let our families know we made it to our anchorage. This year, we had high-speed internet and I streamed a TV show. Living the high life!
The next day was Christmas Eve. We celebrated in the very traditional way, by motoring down the ICW. It was still very cold but we were making great progress and didn’t see any ice! Lucas made breakfast potatoes down below as I danced to Christmas Pop on Spotify at the helm. By early afternoon it had started to rain but we didn’t let that dampen our Christmas spirits. We stayed at another of our favorite places, the RE Mayo Shrimp Dock and docked right next to the same abandoned pirate ship as last year. Not another soul was in sight. We ended the day with hot showers, hot cocoa and some homemade pizza.
We woke up early on Christmas morning and were greeted with the best gift – a forecast of 50 degrees, sunshine and fair winds! We got our sails up for the first time in a few days and continued our way south, passing through the Pamlico Sound, the last of the big sounds of North Carolina. Midway through our beautiful sail, we had an issue with our headsail furler. We couldn’t get our sail to roll back in – a big problem. Luckily, we had plenty of sea room to work with and the water was pretty calm. Lucas went to the bow and worked on the mess of rope at the furler. He got it unstuck and we rolled in the sail. That ended our sailing for the day but Pierre kept us moving in the right direction. We pulled into Safe Harbor: Jarrett Bay around 3 p.m. We had achieved our goal of being in Beaufort by Christmas!
As soon as we plugged into shore power at the dock, I got to work on our Christmas dinner. Before we left Deltaville, I found a cute 3-pound turkey breast at Aldi. It had been sitting in our freezer ever since and I was really excited to try cooking it in my toaster oven. A few hours later, we sat down to a full Christmas dinner – turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and broccoli cauliflower casserole. It was so delicious! It always makes me so happy to pull off big meals in our tiny boat kitchen.
The rest of Christmas was spent relaxing in the boat, video chatting with family and playing Mario Party on our Switch. It was an unorthodox but wonderful Christmas.
Just like that, the first leg of our journey south was officially completed!
