July 4, 2006 -- Last Days on the ICW

We are writing from Solomons Island, Maryland, where we "landed" on the Fourth of July, just in time to meet up with the Rob Bowering family to watch the big fireworks show. However, as we were having dinner in a restaurant, we noticed the sky getting black and the wind rising. Cliff rushed back in the dinghy to Skylark, managing to get the windows closed and the awning down before the storm hit. Between cloudbursts the rest of us ferried back to the boat, where we sat watching God's fireworks as the rain poured down and the sky lit up with lightning flashes. Needless to say, the fireworks show was cancelled. Who wants to be on a barge with a load of explosives in the middle of a lightning storm? We saw the lightning strike a house near us on shore. Since that night, neither our TV nor our radar have been receiving images, and we wonder if the lightning strike had anything to do with it. Funnily enough, when we were here in Solomons, heading south in 1999, we saw their Fourth of July fireworks on October 31, after they had been postponed twice!

Our last days on the ICW were lovely -- an easy trip with fine weather, through the very pretty, unfortunately-named, Great Dismal Swamp. The route is a long, straight, narrow canal, lined on either side by tall oaks, mimosas, wild roses, and dense vines, officially part of the Underground Railway, the route used by slaves escaping to the north before the Civil War. It is impossible to imagine how anyone could make their way through the swamp, with its boggy marshes, poisonous snakes and nasty biting insects, but travelling through by boat is serene and picturesque. (Mind you, we did have to keep the screens down or be bitten mercilessly by yellow flies and horse flies!) It required close attention to stay in the middle of the shallow channel in order to keep the keel off the mud, and the mast spreaders out of the overhanging trees.

We stayed overnight at the South Carolina Welcome Centre, which welcomes car travelers on High(way 17, and boat travelers on the canal, providing a free dock with nice facilities and very friendly greeters. At the dock we barbecued ribs and enjoyed an evening of Mexican Train dominoes with Marcia and Alan on Free Spirit.


Transiting the canal involves going through two locks, up eight feet at one end, and down eight feet at the other. At the north end, we lowered into the Elizabeth River, and motored our way through the big port city of Nofolk, Virginia. Across the big sound, Hampton Roads, we bow and stern-anchored at Hampton with the help of ex-Venezuelan cruiser friends Bill and Sharon on Makai, who invited us to join them and two other couples for a steak BBQ on Canadian boat Rhapsody (the boat we told you about which was tornado-struck in Charlotte.) We had a delicious dinner and met new friends Kin and Lily, who have a daughter in Vancouver. We hope they will visit us when we get home. We are going to miss this part of cruising -- meeting new and interesting people every day.

We were tempted to stay in Hampton for a few days, but decided to keep pressing on, motoring all day up into Chesapeake Bay,finally entering through a narrow channel into the mouth of the Little Wicomico River, where we anchored in "summer at the lake" surroundings -- lovely cottages and homes on huge lawns sweeping down to the water, with many cottagers enjoying the holiday weekend water-skiing, tubing, sea-dooing, etc. Cliff had hoped to dive the bottom of the boat, but quickly realized that the murky water was full of sea nettles, large jellyfish with a nasty sting. We have been surprised to discover that there is no swimming in the entire Chesapeake because of these critters! At dusk on this night (July 3), many of the cottages set off very respectable fireworks displays, which we enjoyed from every direction.

Finally on July 4, we crossed the mouth of the Potomac, and made our way up to Solomons.