Dismal Swamp Canal (2013-11-14)

N36° 30.408', W76° 21.362'

Tonight we are tied up at the dock at the Dismal Swamp Welcome Center.  Our march down the AICW has begun.


We ended up spending a couple days holed up at the Portsmouth free dock due to a gale that was blowing out on the Chesapeake Bay.  The winds made the river quite rough, and we decided to wait for the winds to subside before we continued our journey.

It has also been quite cold for the last few days.  In that sense our pursuit of the sun and escape from winter's icy grip has been somewhat of a fail. :-)  The cold conditions are affecting cruisers far to the south of us though (as related in many other blogs), so perhaps I'll defer the admittance of defeat on this front for now.

For someone with a love of military hardware, which I happily admit to, Norfolk was a wonderful place to visit.  There are many naval warships docked at the naval base, as well as at the many shipyards.

We left the Portsmouth free dock this morning, and after a stop for fuel we headed up the river with the thought of maybe making the 1100 opening of the northern lock on the Dismal Swamp canal.  Well, that thought was forgotten a few minutes later when we rounded a corner and found one of the train bridges down.  We jockeyed around holding position, as did many other boats for more than 45 minutes waiting for a train that ended up not showing up.

Finally the bridge started to raise, and all the boats started off.  There was a little bit of "who's going to pass who" going on but all that came to a stop when just 15 minutes further up the river we all got stopped waiting on another train bridge.  At least in this case there was a train, in fact two.  Once they passed the bridge opened and we were all off again.  Luckily the biggest yahoos in the bunch ended up turning left when we turned right.  Just south of Norfolk the ICW splits into two routes; the Dismal Swamp canal to the right, and the Virginia Cut to the left.  Most boats headed towards the Virginia Cut, and only one other power boat and a few sailboats headed towards the Dismal Swamp.  We arrived at the Deep Creek lock at about 1230, so had to wait for about 45 minutes for the next lock opening, scheduled for 1330.  While we waited we were directed to tie up to one of the "dolphins" if we desired.  After getting a clarification on what that was, we found out it was a cluster of pilings that were tied together.  We secured ourselves to the one in front of the lock and waited.

There have been many destinations on this journey that I had read about in cruising guides, or other peoples blogs, that I was really looking forward to seeing and experiencing for myself.  The Dismal Swamp canal was one of these places.

Travelling along the canal after locking through I was struck with the similarity of this canal with many locations on the Rideau system.  Peaceful and idyllic scenery made travelling along this admittedly very straight cut canal quite relaxing.  A road runs along the eastern shore, and many houses are located along the road. 

Our destination for the night was the Dismal Swamp Visitor Center, located just south of the Virginia/North Carolina border.

As is the convention here, once the dock is full the next boats in raft off of the boats tied to the dock.  For tonight we will have a 44 foot power catamaran rafted off of us.

Tomorrow morning we'll head out with the hope of making the 0830 opening of the South Mills lock, the southern terminus of the Dismal Swamp canal.  After that we will head in to Elizabeth City, where we will spend a couple days.