Distance traveled: 43 nautical miles
Travel time: 7 hours, 55 minutes
We had a break in the weather before more bad weather set in so we made a run to Coinjock, NC in order to get to Belhaven, NC the next day. We’d rather be stuck in Belhaven for a few days than Coinjock.
Sabrina, C’est La Vie and Esmarelde traveled down from Portsmouth to Coinjock together. Well, us and 5-6 other boats. Some power and some sail.
The first lock Sabrina took us through was the Great Bridge Lock in Chesapeake, VA. The boat itself has probably gone through hundreds of locks in her life. Just with previous owners. It was easier than anticipated and went really smoothly. There are bumpers built into the side of the dock, so no need for fenders. You just tie a line to a cleat on your boat, loop it around the huge cleats on shore and either hold on to them and adjust them as the water drops (or rises depending on your direction) or since this drop was only a foot or so with little to no wind we could just tie them loosely and standby. I think there were 5-6 boats in the lock. If they need to add more boats, they may ask boats to raft up to a boat already tied up. But, it wasn’t so busy we had to do that.
Coinjock, as lovely as it is, is just a dock and a restaurant in the middle of a canal. Belhaven has shops and restaurants. The restaurant is known for its prime rib. And, holy cow, is it large! We didn’t order it, but we had dinner with Bruce Beard from Esmarelde and he ordered it. It’s a 32 oz steak. They also had a 48 oz cowboy steak. He brought most of it home and the next day Dorsey made a beef soup out of it. I bet it was yummy.
We had our “Captain’s Meeting” with C’est La Vie and determined we needed to get an early start to get out in front of the winds. Soooo, we planned to leave at 6:00am. in.the.morning.
However, the next morning it was still raining so we bumped that up to 6:30am. It was still misting (and darkish) when we pulled out, but we made it.
– Kitty
MV Sabrina goes ... 