Elizabeth City NC to Great Dismal Swamp State Park

We left Elizabeth City this morning about 8am.   Today was a slow roll up the Pasquotank River and up to the Dismal Swamp Canal.   

First we traveled on a comfortably wide channel that wound through the swampy areas with an occasional house.  

It was beautiful.  

And sometimes remote...

But first...  I should tell you what we did in Elizabeth City.   We went to dinner (last blog), the Albemarle Museum (very interesting to learn about the history here from early settlements on).   

We waited out lots of wind (and some flooding)...   No tide.  Just wind pushing water upstream in the river.   

Here's our dock when it started coming up over..  

And here's a pic before bed when the wind was really howling....

Here's a pic of the radar.   We were glad we weren't back in Ocracoke...

I've never seen purple on the charts before and we boated right through Pamlico Sound just two days ago where this purple is....

Once the flooding subsided we decided fire would be a good idea.   

Well, not really .. but we got it anyway.   Katie came out of the shower saying 'Is there any reason the water is only lukewarm in the shower?'.   I checked and the water heater switch was off.   I figured maybe I had flicked it when I was turning extra circuits off for sleeping....  That was the thought until the girls said 'something smells funny'.   I came down into the cabin and I immediately thought 'electrical!   Something is letting the smoke out of wires'.   I went over to my extra noisy AC unit and could smell the smell coming out of there so I shut it down.   Then I shut off the generator just in case.   

But the smell didn't dissipate.  It got worse.  So I dove into the bilge pulling up the floor panels to get access to the engine room.   Filled with smoke.  

First though was 'generator' because it has been running a ton with us at anchor and tied to walls with no AC power.    Nope.   Then I looked over to the water heater.   Can't even see it hardly.   Smoke billowing out of the front where the sensors are and AC heating element is.    I grabbed a drill and took off the cover and all of the flame retardant paper that insulates between the wires and the box were glowing embers.    Fire in a boat isn't good.    Power was already cut so I asked for water and repeatedly drowned the area in question until the glow was gone.   

This was the relay on my water heater.  Time for a new water heater.   It's on order and we wait until Monday or Tuesday to get to a marina where a new one is being delivered....

Joy.  It's always a joy to spend $600 when you didn't plan on it.   

Perhaps we will have hot water again Tuesday.  Until then the circuit stays off...

We had someone lend us their truck here to go get groceries and bike parts. With these new parts my e-bike drives again!   This is good. We made good use of it today.  

So back to the Dismal Swamp.   

The dismal swamp was dug in the early 1800s mostly by slave labor and free African American labor.   A hurricane in the early 1800s closed in the Ocracoke inlet and made it difficult to transit goods from this area to the north.   Someone got the idea to dig a trench through the swamps and put in locks to raise the water and be able to transit goods via barge pulled by mules.   

It was also used in the civil war as a path in the underground railroad to get slaves to freedom... 

Multiple versions of the locks have been built and the new version is 6 ft deep through the whole canal which allows a boat our size to go through.  

It is very strange to drive a boat in a channel that is barely wider than the boat is long.  We can turn around but there's not a lot of room on the front and rear when we do.  

Eventually we arrived at the first lock.   The lock tender is also the bridge tender so she opened the lock for us raised the water then opened the lock exit and drove down to the bridge to let us through the bridge.  

On our way out of lock she pointed out the water moccasin sunning itself on the side of the lock....  

We LOVE snakes (no, not really...).  

Once we got near the visitors center they opened the walking bridge for us...

And we slid into a beautiful spot on the wall very near the rest area and visitors center.   

This will do nicely for the night.  

Once tied up we cooked some burgers on the grill and went exploring the state park.  

There is a nice boardwalk trail through a bit of the swamp to give an idea of what it would be like to be shoveling a 6ft deep trench 75 feet wide through the middle...

Yuck.   

We also went for a hike up a trail, where I protested (sore feet) and hiked back. 

Jeff and I then returned with the ebikes and it was a very enjoyable ride in the woods.  Fat tires are awesome on dirt trails..... 

. 

Finally we rode a paved trail on the other side of the canal for a while before loading the bikes back into the boat.   

27 very slow miles today on the boat.  (All basically at idle because 6ft depths with logs on the bottom mean the props can pick up the logs if there's too much thrust....)

Tomorrow we finish our trip through the locks and make it to Mile 0 on the Intracoastal Waterway in Norfolk VA, home to the largest Naval base in the world...

(For those that are of the praying type... It appears as if we have sold our Sea Ray.  Pray that survey goes well and no major issues are found.   We put almost $50k into the boat to make it 'better than new' last year and certainly aren't getting that money back.   We certainly hope it will close without finding anything else wrong as we believe it to be in excellent shape in all ways...  We could realise the money given how expensive this trip has been..  Please pray it closes quickly and without issue...)

Now off to best my wife and brother and sister in law at Hearts....