TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

We slept in a little today – I woke with a start at 6am, woke Gerry, and we immediatley left the restaurant dock. Winds were from behind, and the current as well, so we were A OK. At about 7 we were moving along happily in the channel (as per the chart), and a depth of around 10ft, when I suddently noticed the depth dropping down drastically – I put the engine in neutral immedialtey, but next thing we hit a sand bank (or mud pile?), and santana ducked her nose and stopped short. We were moving art around 7 knots, so no damage was done. I tried to get off but we were stuck solid. Luckiuly we were on asn incomiung tide, so we sat idle for about 1/2 hour, and I tried again, and got us off, so on we went!

Winds were strong from the SW today, so with the headsail up we were doing up to 8.2 knots over the ground. By afternoon we were getting some gusts up to 25 knots, so we listened into the weather channel, and heard there were storm warnings out for NC, warning people to take cover. A small 30ft sailboat was catching up to us, so I slowed down and asked him what was up – he was a local headed out to a nice anchorage in a lagoon up the ICW, and told us he thought the storms were all north of us, so we followed him for about 2 hours, and tonight are anchored in a nice sheltered area just past Chadwick Bay. I am still worried about strong winds maybe dragging our anchor tonight, so we’ll have to keep a watchful eye.

We covered about 65 miles today, and are now at Mile 245 – i.e. 245 miles to the start of the ICW at the top end in Virginia. At this stage I’m thinking I’ll leave the boat in Portsmouth for a week or two, get a few good sailors together for the last stretch through Chesapeake bay and up the Jersey Shore – any volunteers?