Our trip is over and we’re back at Regent Point Marina in Topping VA. Our week will be filled with getting the boat cleaned up and ready for sale.
Rita has been an awesome boat and we will both be missing her. We had three great sailing years and she never let us down.
Today was bittersweet – our last sailing with Rita. We left Hampton at 5:30 am and had another easy day of motor sailing. Since the auto pilot was not functioning properly Jeff and I took 2 hour shifts at the helm.
We reached regent Point about 2:00.
Our trip this morning was fairly short to Hampton Virginia (about 10 miles) as we moved closer to the Chesapeake entrance. The plan is to sail most of tomorrow to the Rappahanack.
Saw several large boats including this three masted schooner.
Our lunch today was at the local marina and we probably will not be returning there any time soon. Mostly a lazy day getting ready for our final sailing day with Rita. So sad!
Our Lockmaster Tammy was super nice as we navigated through the South Mill lock for the first time. She is also the bridge tender, painter, gardener, mechanic – basically takes care of everything!
Tammy also opened the South Mill bridge for us and notified the Lockmaster on the North end that we would be coming through.
We saw exactly one other boat the entire time in the Great Dismal Swamp canal.
The Lockmaster on the northern end was super nice too. Welcomed us to his lock and let us know it was shallow once we went through. He was right! We hit about 2.5 feet and dragged some mud with us for a bit.
We then married up with our normal ICW route and came through the railroad bridge and the sliding bridge
We anchored in Norfolk for the evening and enjoyed watching some small sailboats nearby.
I definitely wanted to go through the Great Dismal Swamp on the way home and it was a good thing I did. The way we normally go was having mechanical issues with the bridge
Speaking of bridges – we went through several bridges today
We motored past Elizabeth City but it does look very welcoming … we may have to stop here next time.
We went through a very narrow cut to get to the lock.
We left our anchorage fairly early and said good bye to our buddy boaters who were headed for Oriental. We bypassed Oriental since we would get there at 9:00 am.
It was an easy motoring day – but not enough wind for sailing.
The Pungo River / Alligator River canal is long and narrow. We did have a large barge that passed us going South.
That was the most excitement of the day. Other than that, just marshes, birds and a pretty mundane channel.
We had another early start and went out the inlet heading north
Our buddy boaters, Jenna Bird, motored with us all the way to Adam’s Creek
They also snapped a nice photo of Rita as we sailed by.
A long day but we covered a lot of ground!
We set off super early and snapped a morning sunrise photo
It was an easy sailing / motoring today. The ICW was quite busy as the weather was nice and it was a Sunday.
After we anchored we went out to dinner with Alicia and Harry from Jenna Bird. We had great burgers and took a walk to the beach afterwards.
Tomorrow we are headed outside from Wrightsville Beach to Beaufort NC.
We got to Prince Creek early in the evening last night and enjoyed the scenery. Some boating buddies showed up (JennaBird) and came over and spent part of the evening with us.
The next morning was lovely with the haze on the water and tweeting of birds. As we slowly motored through we did see three alligators – two jumped in and splashed and one was just swimming along
After motoring most of the day we anchored in Callabash Creek. Our anchorage spot was right next to the ICW and an inlet so it was quite busy until night time. Our boating friends on JennaBird are in the same anchorage tonight.
We left this morning with super cold weather – jackets and gloves were needed. We motored passed Charleston on our way to our next anchorage spot. We stopped about 1/2 way between Charleston and Myrtle Beach.
