Somewhere Over the Mason-Dixon Line

Prologue: I wrote this blog about two weeks ago, then went to publish it and found it had completely disappeared. It took me a while to get over myself and get back to it, hence the delay in posting. But here it is: about a month of our lives in blog form. Enjoy.

We left Washington DC and headed back down the Potomac in record time. I think we hit a super speedy eight knots! (That's nine miles per hour for you landlubbers.) Along the way. we marveled at the gorgeously expensive houses onshore.

Justin, get to work. I want that one.

We also ran across a giant ship carrying blades for windmills.

I'm a big fan of these windmill blades.

We found a free dock in the historic city of Portsmouth and moseyed over to the visitor center to check in.

Now, Justin and I are not completely antisocial people, but after living on a sailboat for two months, I think we're losing our ability to communicate. Our conversations have been reduced to a series of grunts that the other person somehow understands.

That's why we were super thrown off when we entered the visitor center, and we were hit by a wall of southern hospitality. A little old woman sat at the desk and welcomed us in with her cheery southern drawl. When we told her we were from so far away and had never been to Portsmouth before, she proceeded to bury us in hundreds of pamphlets advertising local activities and things to see. She was disturbingly nice, and we were completely overwhelmed and thrown off that someone we just met could possibly have so much to say to us.

It took us a while for us to get used to how friendly and outgoing southern people are. Crossing streets, buying things in grocery stores, or just walking by, everyone had something nice to say. Even when we were approached by a man begging for change outside of a McDonalds, we were weirded out by how friendly he was. Instead of cursing us out or flipping us off, he called to Justin "Make sure to tell yo' girl she's beautiful!"

We wandered around Portsmouth and checked out some really old buildings from the 1600s and 1700s. In Buffalo, we don't see many buildings older than the 1800s, so seeing things from some of the earliest settlers in the US was pretty cool.

This house is older than the mystery meat at the bottom of our freezer. Plus about 400 years.

The weather was much warmer than much of our trip so far had been, so we decided to hop on the ferry parked right outside our boat and check out Norfolk. 

This ferry honked it's horn way too early and often.

Norfolk, as a city on the water, is a very big Navy town. There are tons of military ships in varying states of repair all over the harbor. 

This boat is a little bit bigger than ours. 

We decided to take advantage of one of those pamphlets the little old lady at the welcome center gave us and check out the Battleship Wisconsin in Norfolk. The Wisconsin was used by several thousand people in World War II in order to...fight...bad guys? Honestly, I didn't retain a lot of the historical information. I was too flabbergasted by how big the ship was. (They had an ice cream machine on board, and an entire room dedicated to making doughnuts!)

I'm pretty sure each chain link for the anchor weighs more than me.

Our entire boat can fit in this life boat. 

Justin was drooling over how big the workshop was. 

I wonder if they had WiFi...

We did not get thrown in the brig on the Wisconsin and went to explore the rest of the museum, which was a lot bigger than we expected. I challenged Justin to a game of giant battleship, where we had to run around a board with pegs the size of soda bottles. Justin's navy was soundly defeated by my superior forces. 

After Justin's surrender, we went back to the boat in order to get an early start the next morning when we would officially enter the Intracoastal Waterway! For those of you who don't know (or are weirded out that it's "intracoastal" and not "intercoastal") this is a very calm and secure body of water that runs parallel to the ocean. Because it's surrounded by land, the water is very safe and maintained to allow a steady stream of boat traffic heading up and down the coast. 

The start of the Intracoastal Waterway is the Dismal Swamp. 

As far as I know, the swamp is not particularly dreary or dismal. (Not that I've met a swamp that I felt was very cheerful.) Apparently, at some point "dismal" meant "low lying land," which is what the swamp was really named for. A canal runs through the swamp that was just deep enough for us to navigate safely. Granted, the canal was dug by slaves, so I guess that's about as dismal as it gets. 

When we could see the water underneath a solid carpet of duckweed, it was a gross, brown color. Know-it-all Justin informed me that's because the water in the swamp is literally tea. The leaves in the water are very similar to those used to make ordinary tea, and they dye the water brown just like a tea bag does. 

I wanted to poke it. I didn't. 

I'm sure this tea water is not as good as Tim Horton's tea. 

There were two locks in the swamp canal. At this point, we're pretty confident with locks. We've gone through more than 30, and we have a decent routine down. We roll into the lock, grunt to the lock operator (since we no longer speak English) and do our thing. 

However, I don't think they get too many people in the Dismal Swamp who have gone through the entire Erie Canal. So we were very much thrown off when we were given overly complicated instructions to get into the lock. The locks only open four times a day, so there were quite a few other boats in there with us. Unfortunately, because we're young and unlucky, we were the ones who got lectured by the lock operator on the "5 Rules of Cruising."

No, it's not a badly written Buzzfeed article. The "5 Rules of Cruising" was the extremely pedantic ramblings of an old man who loved to listen to himself talk. Instead of doing his job and opening the lock so we could be on our way, the lock operator approached our boat and decided to tell us lots of things we already knew in a very condescending tone. One of Justin's biggest pet peeves is being talked down to by people, and I could tell he was picturing bludgeoning the guy with his boat hook. The lock operator completely ignored our protestations when we tried to point out that we had already been cruising for two months and had a pretty decent idea of what worked for us. By the end, we understood why they only open the locks four times a day. If that operator decided to recite his monologue every time he opened the lock, it's a wonder each opening doesn't take all day. 

Eventually, we made it through and crossed over from Virginia to North Carolina.

North Carolina is the South one. 

That night, we decided to stop at the Visitor Center with all of the other boats that had gone through the locks with us. (Lucky for them, they had not been accosted by the annoying lock operator.)

Ours is the second mast from the left. 

The next day in the canal was pretty peaceful. We saw plenty of trees, herons, and I spotted a turtle!

A cold blooded creature, much like myself. 

Eventually we left the swamp and continued our way down the coast where we got to enjoy a free dock in Elizabeth City. We explored the historical museum there, grabbed some Chinese food, and discovered where we could buy some heroin. (While probably a sound investment, we didn't buy the heroin.)

This cannon from the museum was from a real pirate ship. They probably didn't pirate heroine.

We continued our way along the Intracoastal, which for the most part is calm, quiet, and picturesque. 

These are fishing boats. Except for our boat. Fishing is boring and fish are gross. 

While it wasn't as bad as we expected, there was some evidence of hurricane damage here and there. Some docks were broken, roofs had shingles missing, and there were a few boats that were much more on land than they expected. 

Go home boat, you're drunk. 

Fun fact about sailboats: they are less effective on a beach. 

With these cautionary tales in mind, we paid close attention to the weather as we made our way down the coast. Eventually, we noticed there was a big, angry red blob approaching on our various weather apps. We decided it would be best to avoid 30 knots of wind and driving rain. 

At this point, we were about a week and a half from Thanksgiving. We knew we were going to park the boat for the Thanksgiving holiday when we would go back up to Buffalo to host dinner. Since the bad weather was on its way and we needed a safe place anyway, we decided we might as well park the boat in a marina for two weeks and kill two birds with one stone. (No birds were actually hurt in the docking of our boat.) And so, we set sail for Wilmington, which was about 18 hours away, with the bad weather fast approaching. 

By this point, you've probably figured out that Justin and I hate waking up early. Justin's never been a morning person, and I just need more sleep than normal people. But the threat of another impending moistening has powers I had never before imagined. And so, we got up and moving at six. Justin tried to be nice and took the first shift to let me sleep. Unfortunately, that was when we entered one of the few open parts of the Intracoastal, where we encountered some unexpected waves. 

Sleeping in soon became impossible as I found myself rolling from one side of the bed to another like a hotdog in a gas station hot dog cooker. And of course, a wave came up and through our leaky hatch into the bed, making it even more difficult to sleep. Or cook hot dogs. I think the metaphor got away from me. So, I stumbled to the bathroom, peed sideways, and pulled as many clothes on as I could so I could get ready for my driving shift as I waited for the dramamine to kick in. 

The rest of the day went pretty well until we reached our chosen anchorage at about nine in the evening. As we approached, our depth finder beeped at us, announcing that we were in less than seven feet of water. We realized it was going to be too shallow for us to stay there once low tide came around. With the image of those sad, tilted boats fresh in our minds, we decided not to risk it and move on. And so, into the night we drove. And drove. And drove. Some time around eleven, we felt hope rise. We were almost at the next anchorage. It was just past one final bridge. A bridge that was closed and wouldn't open until seven the next morning. A bridge that was too low for us to go under. A bridge that would probably not fold to us ramming it at a furious seven miles per hour. 

It was dark, and we couldn't find a safe place to anchor. We were both exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. And then, looming out of the darkness, was a private dock. Justin and I looked at each other. 

(The following is translated from antisocial grunting into English.)

"You know, we could tie up to that dock," Justin suggested. 

"We can't do that! That would be like parking in someone's backyard!" I shot back. 

"They're not going to notice!" Justin replied. "The dock is a quarter mile long, the house is really far away. We're going to be fine!"

"We're in North Carolina. That's a red state. That means they have guns. That means they can come out and shoot us if they find us tied up to their dock without permission. Do you want to get murdered?"

"If we tie up here, we might get murdered. If you don't get a full night of sleep, I know I'll be murdered," Justin pointed out. 

And so we turned off all of the lights on the boat, and as sneakily as possible, tied up to a stranger's dock. 

This is where we stayed. (Illegally.)

The next morning, we woke up with our alarm (again) around six. And luckily, nobody had been shot or noticed we were there. We dragged ourselves out of bed and approached the bridge. 

As we got close, we saw, to our dismay, a dock. No, not another private dock. A free dock. A free dock for idiots like us who get to the bridge in the middle of the night and need to stay there until it opens in the morning without trespassing on anyone's property. 

This was where we should have stayed. Ugh. 

Finally, the bridge opened and we made it through. 

This is the bridge that caused all of our problems. Jerk. 

A few hours later, we pulled into a marina that was a fabulous find of Justin's. A part of Carolina Beach State Park, the marina was next to really nice walking paths, had all of the amenities we could want, and it cost less than either of our moorings in Washington DC or New York City!

Tiny approved of the marina. 

Since we had gone so far the night before, we had some time before the bad weather hit to explore the park. 

No, that white stuff on the ground isn't snow, it's sand!

Into the woods!

This swamp is not dismal. 

This would be a great place to write angsty poetry.

These plants drown flies and eat them. They are not named Audrey 2, despite their love of flesh. 

The next day when the bad weather had died down, we called a Lyft and went to pick up a rental car. When we got there, the super cheap tiny car we had reserved was not available. Instead, they upgraded us to a brand new mini van for free! And when I say brand new, I mean two miles on the odometer, new car smell, super shiny brand new! 

To celebrate, we took the van to the ocean and wandered around for a while.

This was before a crab refused to be my friend. The hope is still in my eyes. 

The next few days were a flurry of cleaning, organizing, and packing. In the two months that we had been living on the boat, everything had gotten damp, smelly, and kind of moldy. Our bedroom in particular had a large herd of mildew taking over the walls. With a combination of bleach, boat cleaner, and plenty of scrubbing we finally got it clean. 

I now know where the "ew" in mildew comes from.

Finally, the boat was clean and the van was mostly packed. The Friday before Thanksgiving we woke up on the early side (but not before seven, we're not crazy) and finished loading the van with our most precious cargo: all three cats. 

Thirteen hours later, we pulled in to a snowy Buffalo. After a couple of days relaxing and enjoying sleeping in a bed that doesn't move and showering with as much hot water as we could dream of, we put together another super fun Thanksgiving!

So much food. 

As much fun it was to see our Buffalo friends and family again, the 30 degree weather got old pretty quickly. And so, two days after Thanksgiving, we rolled out of Buffalo, all three cats safe in the van. Now, while the state park was definitely a great place to keep the boat, it did have one draw back: the gate to the park closed to cars at seven in the evening. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem since we can't fit a car on the boat (not even a mini cooper.) But we were coming back from Buffalo in a van. And so, not morning people Justin and Casey got up at 4:30 to beat the gate.

We set out only twenty minutes later than we planned, and we were feeling pretty impressed with ourselves until we forgot that we weren't the only ones travelling home two days after Thanksgiving. After an hour sitting in Washington DC traffic, we came to the conclusion that we were never going to make it in time for the gate. 

We finally arrived in to the park at 8:30 that night. Since the gate was closed, we were facing a mile and half walk to the boat carrying everything we needed to sleep for the night and all three cats. We steeled ourselves for the long walk and set off. 

But then, more magical than Santa's sleigh, more welcome than the tooth fairy, more amazing than...uh... you get the point, it was a really awesome thing. A car drove up, slowed down, and the nicest man I have ever met offered us a ride to the marina. Luckily, Sputnik had panic peed before we put his crate into the back of the guy's car. 

Finally, we climbed into the boat and released the cats. Within minutes, Justin and I were unconscious. The next day we set off for the south, but we made sure to sleep in first. 

tl;dr: We made it to North Carolina, rented a van and went to Buffalo for Thanksgiving, then went back to the boat.