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We’ve made it all the way to the most southern point in North Carolina, Southport. It’s been quite the journey through the “ditch” with swing and bascule bridges, dolphins or porpoises and of course the dreaded sandbars. After leaving Elizabeth City, we traveled along the Intercoastal waterway to Beaufort. We had the most amazing thunderstorms that day but we weathered it fine. It took us a day and a half to travel from Beaufort to Southport again using the ditch, all south and south west wind these days.

Today we had lots of fun, running aground as the tide was going out. Not great. Thank goodness we bought Sea Tow service (it’s like CAA for boats). We contacted them and within 20 minutes we were moving again. 

We are staying at South Harbor Village Marina today and tomorrow and we’ll be leaving here on Wed. If all goes well and weather is good, we should cross into Florida in 10 days.

Hope everyone is having a good summer. Here are Some more pics to enjoy. 

We arrived at Elizabeth City by noon today after traversing the Dismal Swamp Canal. We left the Visitor centre with enough time to make it to the South Mills lock for the 8:30am lock through. Unfortunately, 3 northbound vessels beat us to the lock and we had to wait about 30 minutes for them to be locked through and the lift bridge to go up. One not so cool thing about the Dismal Swamp canal is the colour of the water – it looks like Pepsi (not the nicest colour for your toilet water😊.)

Elizabeth City is a lovely town with exceptional friendly residents . When we arrived at the local town dock (really a very nice wall), we needed to refill one of our water tanks. Mark met a man who lives next to the dock and he helped us get water from his garden hose. He also gave us some great restaurant and shopping advice. 

Our plan is to stay the night here in town and then continue our travels down the ditch for a few more days. We should be back on the ocean when we reach Beaufort, NC (weather permitting). We can continue in the ditch all the way to Florida but it’s much nicer to sail.

Here are some of the earlier photos I haven’t been able to post.

We left Hampton around 9am today and headed to the Intercoastal Waterway, better known  as the ditch. We saws lots of warships and other naval vessels and many military helicopters (at last count I think 8 flew over us). We decided to take the less traveled course through the Great Dismal Swamp Canal (c. 1805). The swamp might deserve the name but the canal is  nice (except for the nasty biting flies). We are tied up overnight at the Dismal Swamp visitor centre because the second of 2 locks had its last lock through at 3:30pm. We’ll be visiting Elizabeth City, NC tomorrow.

I have lots of photos but one will have to do for now. It’s going to rain any minute now and I’m being bitten by these nasty flies.

By Mark

We are in Hampton, Virginia, just by Norfolk, home of a large naval base and NCIS for you TV crime show fans. We got here with more days of exceptional sailing. In an area where the prevailing wind is from the south, and our destination is south, we were blessed with east, west and north winds that gave us three days of gorgeous ocean sailing. Our new mainsail proved its worth, and we even had a half day spinnacker run. We also did an overnight sail into Hampton, which was a pleasure and a challenge. After days of motoring in the Erie Canal (which I have renamed the ‘Root Canal’ not because the canal was bad, but because I dealt with so many mechanical issues) it was so nice to turn off the engine and let Crimson Kathryn be the excellent SAILING yacht she is. Hour after hour of quiet rolling in the Atlantic, watching pelicans and dolphins, sunsets, a sandy coastline, letting that warm wind pull us effortlessly along, in just a perfect balance. It was an unbeatable way for Marybeth and I to celebrate our anniversary. Words fail.

So if words fail, where are the pictures, you justifiably ask? It’s rather windy here in Hampton, and our AM foray into town for groceries and bubbly resulted in a rather wet dinghy ride back, so the second visit to town during which we planned to upload pics has been replaced with chillaxing on board, rum in glass, and Great Big Sea on the stereo. 

We are headed ‘inside’ for the next few days, meaning we are using the Intracoastal waterway to avoid Cape Hatteras, and hope to ‘Wifi’ in Elizabeth City before returning to the Atlantic at Beauford, NC. 

We enjoy your comments; keep them coming.



By Mark

Just checking in with everyone who is following the blog. As we move from anchorage to anchorage our wifi is spotty, so we use a cell phone to connect instead, and that uses lots of expensive data, so no pics with this post.

It’s always an event going through New Youk Harbour. My family arrived in North America via New York, and though I doubt they passed through the famous Ellis Island, it is still the symbolic landing point for millions of immigrants looking for a better life. Of course it’s neighbour the Statue of Liberty is also an important landmark. 

After fuelling and resting nearby at Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey we did our first open ocean coastal passage to Barnegat Inlet. Mary had a touch of seasickness but in compensation, saw a dolphin. Today we sailed for the first time. It was so nice to give the motor a rest. It was my turn to be seasick, but I go to see the dolphin today so I guess that’s how that works. We are anchored at Ocean City NJ for the night. It’s about 10 miles south of Atlantic City, the casino town that we saw on our way by. Tomorrow we should be in Delaware. Rather than go up Delaware Bay and down Chessapeak bay we will continue on the ‘outside’ which will cut some miles. We will likely give you a full update with pictures when we get to Hampton Roads, which is just north of Norfolk, Virgina.

Until then.

After a few days of getting the boat sea worthy again, we are ready to head down the Hudson River to the Big Apple. Yesterday we reprovisioned and did laundry. The day was topped off with the purchase of 1.5 litre bottle of our favourite Greek retsina called Kourtaki. It might be several days before we have wifi again but I will try to send updates whenever possible.

My photos won’t load, so I’ll do them later.

Lots of fun today as both our masts were stepped. Mark often says that our boat has at least 2 of everything, including 2 masts, booms, sails etc, well we sure know it now. A long day, starting at about 11 am and ending just before 7 pm, but very productive. Before we started our day, a poor sailboat was towed in after running a ground and breaking it’s keel. I’ll take our minor breakdowns over this any day.

We managed to see a little bit of the steamboat festival in Waterford before we left. These lovely wood burning boats came from all around the area to show off their stuff. Pretty nice little boats.

We made it to Hop-O-Nose Marina at 3pm today. We spent the night in Waterford because this whole area had severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado warnings. We were all nicely tied up on the wall in Waterford when a big down pour of rain rolled in. 

Our masts will be stepped tomorrow (Sunday) and we’ll spend a bit of time making a few needed repairs. Hoping to head down the Hudson River starting on July 5. Here are a bunch of photos I’ve taken over the past week.

It’s been a long few days on the Erie Canal with lots of mechanical issues (including running out of diesel in the starboard tank). We have now cleared 23 locks and have 7 more on the Erie Canal and one federal lock on the Hudson River. We should be at Hop’onose Marina in Catskills by end of day Friday, July 1.