We continued on from Norfolk at 1 PM, through the navy yards and then the locks at Great Bridge, and stopped at a local public dock for the night as local fisherman tried to drift lines underneath our boat to catch, what, stripers?  We stayed until Monday morning.

At 7:15 AM on , we pulled over to Atlantic Yacht Basin, a marine center, to have our wind instruments taken off the top of our mast in anticipation of the notoriously low  NC and SC 65’ fixed bridges.  This left only our flexible 30” VHF antenna atop our 63.5 ft mast.   We are armed with spreadsheets listing each bridge on the ICW, their type, height, height boards, if any, and rules of thumb based on the number of visible wood fender slats protecting the base of the bridges, indicating water level. Here we go!

For the next 180 miles, the bridges are either swing or draw bridges, or 65 ft fixed bridges whose height above water should only be affected by a few inches of “wind tide” driving waters from Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds.  At about 100 miles south, Fairfield Bridge, our VHF bent double under the bridge.  12 miles later, we arrive at the Wilkerson Bridge, which has been officially marked down to 64 feet by the Army Corps of Engineers.  The bridge height board in fact says 64 feet above water.  We inched up to the bridge, expecting  6 inches of clearance, and likelihood that I would have to go up the mast to rotate our antenna 180 degrees.  Too close to call.  Finally, we called TowboatUS in Belhaven, 12 miles away.  They arrived in their launch an hour later.  First attempt, we all agree, the front of our mast touched the bridge.  They hung two 100 gallon water barrels to our boom swung to port to deflect the mast sideways.  Eventually, we slid under, while warning power boats to stay away.  No time for a 1 foot wake!

We continued on, touching our vhf on each bridge.    We arrived in Beaufort NC, taking a side creek to avoid the bridges in Morehead NC.  We intended to go offshore the next morning late, but in the morning, found weather and sea conditions marginal for the trip, so we decided finally to continue down the ICW.  Rounding Radio Island and past Morehead, we came up to 65 ‘ fixed Atlantic Beach bridge at 10 AM  – at mid tide – and the height board reads 63.5 feet, with 3 hours to wait to pick up 2 feet at low tide! We turned around, found a dock, pulled the dinghy, and went out the Beaufort Inlet to the Atlantic Ocean.