The ICW Intercoastal Waterway is a route that can be taken instead of running outside  down the coast of the North Atlantic Ocean. It’s a much more sheltered route but is full of time consuming bridges, and unknown depths due to tidal movement of the sand and mud, called shoaling.
Today we had a choice do we travel down the Virginia Cut or take the Dismal Swamp. Both are routes that re part if the ICW. 
I was keen for the dismal swamp it sounds so interesting and all the research I had done said there was a lot of wildlife to be spotted along the way BUT we have a problem our hull is a bit too deep for the Dismal Swamp route, well it might be or we might be ok, its a bit of an unknown.  The swamp route does get dredged, so it could be deep enough but we decided to be safe and take the Virginia Cut, This way is also full of shoaling and many people run aground. So just to be safe we joined Tow Boat US,  a tow out service that will rescue  us if we run aground and it works all the way to the Bahamas so worth the expense.

As it turns out it didn't matter that we did not do the dismal swamp as the Virginia Cut was quite dismal with swamp on either side.  I don't think  the scenery would have been that much different.

It was steamy and dismal

There are so many obstructions sunken logs etc

We started our journey keeping a close watch on the chart plotter and staying in the centre of the channel as much as possible.

All went ok and we were running ahead of schedule so we kept going rather than stopping at our original selected anchorage, we passed a place called Cornjack Marina where there was a restaurant that was hooching, all the faster motor boats that had whizzed past us during the day were tied up there and it looked like everyone was eating and drinking at the restaurant.  I had FOMO and wanted to stop there, but all the docks looked full so we had to keep going.  It was starting to get dark,  Sunset is at 5.30pm  so fricken early !!   We had to navigate our way through the marked channels in the dark. the channels are marked with light reflecting markers on poles, either Green or Red but so very confusing it was hard to see where the next marker was.  I have no idea how Craig managed it but he managed to get us safely off to the side of the channel without running Adriana aground,  but I will say when we turned off our navigation system it showed that we had 0.00 water under the hull.

  

It was so pretty as it the sun was setting

Another stunning sunset only this time we had to find somewhere to stop in the dark

Craig said at the time "I never ever thought I would be anchoring in with zero water beneath us".  Luckily the next morning there was ample water to get out and we just followed the track that we had recorded on Navionics and escaped without incident it was nerve wracking to say the least.

Beautiful autumnal colours 

Inspirational Graffiti

Our journey down the ICW was pleasant and interesting but quite stressful and tiring for Craig, we have to follow in between the red and green markers that show where the dredged channel is, then we have a path on Navionics that shows where the dredged channel is  - and they are not always the same. There can be what's called shoaling where the sand, mud moves and gathers on corners or on either side of the channel this is not always shown on the charts.  I had a short go at driving the boat but Craig freaked out and has done all the steering since. 

Lots of communities along the way

We travelled a couple of days down the ICW we caught up with Daniel and Andrew from Blanc Sablon, they dropped the dingy and rowed over to say hello one night it was really nice to have company for a couple of hours.

Daniel had just retired and Andrew has joined him for part of his trip, his partner will join him later

Its a long thin canal but the scenery does change 

We passed through many small towns built right on the water

You will notice we dont walk to the front of the boat while we are moving we tend to stay in the cockpit hence lots of BBQ photos

As we have been travelling we have binged watched a series called Black Sails.  Matt and Julia kindly gave us all the series on a hard drive.  It has been excellent and we are very exctied to be approaching the area that the pirates frequented including the legendary pirate Blackbeard.  In the series the pirates are located in Nasssau in the Bahamas and travel to Beaufort and Charleston they talk about Boston and Hampton and New York.  The outside coast including Hatteras and Ocracoke  down to Cape Fear are on the outerbanks that protect the waters inland at Pamilco Sound and are famous for sinking ships and the pirates used the reefs to their advantage. Maybe if we were sailing past in Summer we might have gone out to the Outer Banks it looks spectacular.
So we are looking forward to having a look around Beaufort North Carolina.
But more bout Pirates in the next instalment.