12/06/2024
Changing Seascapes, Buddy Boats, a Quirky Town, and a Holiday Afloat, 2023
One of the things I love about traveling by water is the ever-changing landscape...or rather seascape, that one encounters along the way. Of course anyone traveling any distance by car can experience continuous changes in landscape, but certainly at a different pace. In each case changing topography reveals itself outside the windows of our chosen mode of transportation. But the experiences of those changing scenes are vastly different when comparing being in a car traveling 40-70 miles per hour versus traveling by boat at a leisurely 7 knots (8 miles per hour). I personally prefer the slower pace of the waterborne vessel. Paradoxically I find that the slower I go by boat the less afflicted I am with “get there-itis” than I am when I’m zipping along the road at 60 miles per hour. In my boat I know I will eventually get there. It may not be today...or this week...or even this month, but I’ll get there. And in the meantime the slow pace affords me the opportunity to really absorb and appreciate the scenes that are slowly unfolding around me.
Even my home waters of Lake Champlain, at roughly 94 feet above sea level, offer an intriguing variety of landscapes along its 120 mile length. The lands bordering the northern third of the lake, comprising portions of Vermont, Quebec, and New York can best be described as gentle. To the north lie the flat, fertile plains of southern Quebec. To the east are the softly undulating hills of the Champlain Islands. And to the west, the northern foothills of the Adirondacks. The lake is relatively narrow here and one traveling by boat is never more than a mile or so from any shore.
The middle third of the lake provides a totally different perspective. Here, the broad lake is roughly 9 miles wide so that a boater in the middle will be over 4 miles from shore. And looking north and south the lake stretches out over the horizon in both directions, providing a glimpse of the scope of North America’s most historic lake. A little further south and we come to stunning palisades towering 100 or more feet above the waves on the west shore. To a southbound vessel, the palisades mark the beginning of a gradual narrowing giving way to a 30 mile serpentine portion, terminating in Whitehall, NY.
And on it goes from there. Through the locks of the Champlain Canal which, over a span of 60 miles, gradually lowers us to sea level into the Hudson River at Troy, NY. Traveling 150 miles on the Hudson River takes us past hard-edged industrial zones, pastoral hillsides, unyielding granite walls, the bustling metropolis of Manhattan and finally to the Verrazano Narrows and the North Atlantic. And all along this first 250 miles of a southbound voyage, terra firm stakes its claim well above the high water mark. Yes, we do pass the occasional marsh or drowned forest, but nothing that I would refer to as “lowlands”.
That starts to change along the almost 200 mile length of Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake, which is the largest tidal estuary in the US, has over 11,600 miles of shoreline...much more shoreline than the entire west coast of the US. It is this region that gave me my first exposure to areas of true lowlands, particularly all along its fractal east shore, where bays lead to rivers, rivers lead to forks, and forks lead to creeks. Towns in this area, such as Oxford, St. Michaels, and Rock Hall, perched at water’s edge, are listed in the atlas as being 7-10 feet above sea level. But even this did not prepare me for the vast lowlands along the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) in eastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina.
This area, with place names like Coinjock, Alligator River, and Hobucken, are sparsely populated. Some sections of the waterway feel like wilderness, but we do see the waterfront homes along the way. Homes whose owners can’t help but be paying attention to the threat of sea level rise. Some homes are elevated on wood pilings, eight feet off the ground. But most of the houses we see are planted on the ground, awaiting the next storm surge.
I got to experience life in the lowlands first-hand when I landed in Belhaven, North Carolina on Thanksgiving (2023) and spent a few days there. Belhaven is on Pantego Creek, off the Pungo River on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (AICW or ICW). In fact it is considered to be the final link in the ICW when, in 1928, the Pungo River-Alligator River canal was completed. By water, Belhaven is about 120 nautical miles southeast of Norfolk, Virginia.
If one has time on their hands, I’ve found that Belhaven is a nice place to chill out for a few days. (Prior to this 2023 Thanksgiving layover I had visited Belhaven for the first time a year earlier when I was cruising with Richard and Kay on Circe, their 46’ Grand Banks trawler. It was the latest of many ICW transits for this seasoned cruising couple, but it was my inaugural ICW voyage. As a rookie I was grateful to be experiencing it with friends who had run it many times before. I had joined them in the fall of 2022 in Oxford, Maryland, which is about halfway up the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. By the time we reached Belhaven in 2022 I had already been aboard Circe for a little over a week and the plan was to drop me off in Beaufort, NC from where I would make my way back home to Burlington, VT.)
One of the things I find most interesting about Belhaven is that it is located at zero feet above sea level. That hardly seems possible, let alone practical, but there it is. The lowlands of eastern North Carolina are vast and access is severely limited. But with the proximity to fresh brackish and saltwater, the region is rich with marketable sealife and tall pines (well-suited to boatbuilding). So generations of inhabitants have been carving out little niches of civilization at the water’s edge. I suppose that over the centuries, the promise of scraping a meager living out of the pine forests and tidal waters outweighed the inconveniences of storm surges and frequent flooding.
Thanksgiving of 2023 marked the very first Thanksgiving that my wife and I had not shared since 1981, the year we were married. I’m never quite sure what to make of such time markers. It usually takes the passage of time to figure out what, if any, meaning dwells within such observations. But in that moment in 2023, Becky and I, though separated by nearly 1000 miles, each took some comfort in the fact that the other was spending the Thanksgiving holiday among friends.
In my case, it was with Richard,Kay, and their golden retriever, Otis, who were migrating south again on Circe. I had been buddy boating with Circe since we rendezvoused on October 26, 2023 in Manhasset Bay off Long Island Sound. Some of my non-boating friends are intrigued about this term “buddy boating” so I’ll fill in the blanks here. Buddy Boating is just what it sounds like: traveling by water with another boat, or sometimes a flotilla of other boats. The three main goals of buddy boating, as I see it, are safety, companionship, and convenience. Prior to departure from any given port, we compare notes on route planning, anchorages, weather, bail-out options, etc. As we travel we may sometimes be separated by miles, but we are usually in visual and radio contact with each other. If the lead vessel encounters a hazard to navigation they can radio a warning to the following boat. If one vessel gets into trouble, their buddy boat is available to offer assistance. Buddy boaters share resources including food, books, booze, board games, tools, ice, etc. And at the end of the day the buddies can visit each other, share co-op meals, and generally socialize before retiring to the privacy of their respective vessels. (I could probably write an entire essay just on the nuances and joys of buddy boating!)
Thanksgiving Day, (11/23/2023) found Loon and Circe tied-up, end-to-end at the town docks in Belhaven North Carolina. I had arrived in Belhaven at 10:50 AM after a 30 nautical mile, 5-hour run. That left plenty of time for a few boat chores, a leisurely walk through the little town, and a shared Thanksgiving dinner. I put Loon’s little oven to the test by roasting a 5 pound chicken and whipping up a fresh apple crisp. Richard and Kay provided appetizers, side dishes, and the spacious dining venue aboard Circe. And though it was a small gathering of just three humans and a human-like golden retriever, it was a very enjoyable and peaceful “friends-giving.”
The day after Thanksgiving we had coffee aboard Circe before Richard and Kay cast off to continue their progress south. They had about another week of cruising before they reached their destination of Charleston, South Carolina. From this point on I would be running solo and without a buddy boat and I was slow-rolling it. Belhaven is only about 76 Nautical miles from Beaufort NC, my final destination for this migration and where I would spend the winter living aboard Loon. That is only a two-day trip on Loon at her usual, comfortable cruising speed of 7 knots. My slip at the Town Docks in Beaufort would not be available before December 1, the official end of hurricane season. Considering it was only November 24, I had some extra time on my hands.
One of my favorite things about the cruising life is the opportunity it affords one to visit and learn about a wide variety of interesting places. Of course from a practical perspective, ducking into small towns along the route allows us the opportunity to take care of some of the basic tasks of life afloat such as provisioning, taking on water and fuel, and pumping out holding tanks. And in scoping out the practical things like the most convenient food markets and hardware stores, those explorations inevitably reveal little gems that are unique to each place we visit. We find historic buildings and learn their stories. We find amazing little restaurants (https://www.ourstate.com/over-the-moon-in-belhaven/), coffee shops and sometimes quirky attractions.
One such attraction in Belhaven is the “Toy Trains of Belhaven” exhibit. Staged seasonally each year in an old downtown storefront, a cooperative of toy train enthusiasts pool their collections and spend several weeks prior to the holidays setting up one of the most charming and animated displays that you will find anywhere. (https://www.facebook.com/BelhavenToyTrains/) This is not a corporate, sponsored event. The folks that have been putting on this display simply do it for the pure joy that it brings them and their visitors.
As much as I enjoy spending time in little towns like Belhaven, the (modest) dockage fees were nibbling away at my cruising budget and I was getting antsy to move on. So at 0750 on Sunday,
November 26, 2023, I bade farewell to this quirky little town, cast off, and pointed Loon toward my next destination and new scenes along the way.
Onward!
Tom Peterson, November. 2024
