On the offical ICW

Tuesday we started on the official ICW (Intra-Coastal Waterway) with mile marker zero in Norfolk/Portsmouth. It was a bit foggy in the morning, but luckily most of the fog was behind us out on the Chesapeake and not on the canals we were travelling on. We soon met up with other boats heading south as we all had to wait for numerous bridges to open. Some of the bridges would open when you arrived (on request), however, one of the bridges (Steel Bridge) only opens once an hour. We just missed an opening, so we waited with three other boats drifting back and forth for an hour.

We ended the day at Pungo Ferry Marina, which is a little store and and a dock on the side of the canal - the store clerk was very friendly and talked up a storm. We had a great sunset to accompany our wine bought at the store that evening.

Wednesday was an uneventful travel day which took us to Coinjock. We spent a few days there. Coinjock is a town which has two marinas with long docks along the ICW. The marinas are one of the last stops for a while to provision. The marina we stayed at didn't have much in the way of groceries, so we dropped by the marina office to ask about getting to a grocery store. The owner asked us to wait a minute while he cleaned out his truck. When he came back he told us the truck was out back and the keys were in it... so after checking that he was actually lending us his truck (rather than just giving us a drive), off we headed to the grocery store with another cruiser. What a luxury it was to have a vehicle to do groceries - we did a BIG shop that should keep us going for a while! We put our groceries into the back of the truck, where they shared space with a number of duck decoys - there is a lot of duck hunting in the area. We saw several small motorboats painted in camouflage colours for hunting.

In company down the ICW


We saw many jets as we passed a naval airbase


Pungo Ferry Sunset


Coinjock Sunset