The Great Dismal Swamp

We left Elizabeth City, NC, early on Monday morning (14 May) to make it through a bridge at 6:00 a.m. so that we could make the lock opening at South Mills Lock, about 20 miles away, at 8:30 a.m. It was a little foggy again, but clear enough to travel safely. There were five boats traveling together down the Dismal Swamp, with Irish Ayes in the lead.

The Dismal Swamp is narrow, about 50 feet wide, and warrants paying close attention to stay in the channel. Trees, logs, and other debris are commonly found in these waters, so it pays to go slow and pay attention to what is in front of you. That is hard to do though, because the tannin from vegetation makes the water look an awful lot like black coffee. You might be wondering why we would go this way, since the other route to Norfolk, the Virginia Cut, is wider, deeper, and more easily traveled. Well, it’s because the Great Dismal Swamp is just something we have heard so much about, and we just had to see and experience it for ourselves.

Four of the boats traveling together stopped at the Visitor’s Center free dock in North Carolina for the night. Four other boats joined us later and rafted off to other boats. The dock is long enough for only four boats, so rafting is the only way to fit everyone on the free dock. Interestingly, the Dismal Swamp Visitor’s Center is also a car and truck rest area for those traveling south on US Highway 17.

We arrived at the Visitor’s Center at about 9:30 a.m., and decided to spend the day and night tied to the free dock. Free is always good in the boating world, since there is so little of it.
We spent the day hiking the trails, visiting with other boaters, and just enjoying a spectacularly beautiful day.

The next morning, May 15, 2007, our little flotilla of about seven boats made our way north through the remainder (about 20 miles) of the Great Dismal Swamp. We were headed to Chesapeake, VA, and had at least two locks to traverse, as well as three bridge openings. Going through one of the locks was high adventure for one of the boats. Before I go into that, you have to understand that locks are not all the same, and the procedure for securing one’s boat to the lock wall as the water is pumped either in or out, depending on whether you are going up or down in the lock, is different in many locks. In this particular lock, the procedure is that the captain brings the boat to the wall, and the lockmaster takes your bow and stern line, wraps it around a stationary bollard on top of the lock, and hands you both ends of the line (that’s a rope). Then, as the boat rises or falls in the lock, you adjust your lines accordingly. When you get to the top or bottom of the lock, you can then just pull your lines back into the boat and motor out of the lock when the lockmaster opens the door.

The boat that had a bad day was about a 40 foot trawler, and was the last into the lock headed for a port-side tie up when he seemed to lose control of his boat. He turned sideways in the lock and his stern was headed for another boat, which I can tell you is never a good thing. He managed to get his boat straightened out just before he hit the wall, and got aligned with the lock wall. He was then told to go forward in the lock and tie up on his starboard side. As he got near the forward end of the lock, he seemed to lose control again and got sideways again, nearly hitting two boats, missing them by only inches. The lockmaster finally got him tied up properly (or so we thought), and the lock doors closed. As the water was being pumped out of the lock and the boats were falling with the water level, I looked over at the boat having all the trouble, and I was shocked to see that his boat was not falling. He had tied his lines tightly to his boat instead of feeding the lines out as the water. The result was that his boat didn’t descend in the lock with the water, which meant that his boat started going port-side down in the water. The lockmaster, seeing that he was about to have a disaster in his lock, ran over and either cut the lines, or found a way to quickly release them. The boat then fell back into the water and then banged very hard into the concrete wall of the lock. From our vantage point I couldn’t see how much damage was done to the boat, but I’m sure it wasn’t pretty.

The remainder of our trip to the Atlantic Yacht Basin was mostly uneventful. Our starboard engine began to get hotter than I like, so when we get to the marina I’ll check it out. As an anonymous wise man once said, cruising is the act of repairing your boat in new places. He or she was right. Stay tuned.