Stuck in Coinjock

Day #571; Loop Miles to Date = 6,351

So...here we sit. The good news is that we have a spot to sit.

Yesterday, we traversed the Albemarle Sound in less than ideal conditions, but it was manageable. We had about 20 miles of open water to cross, and the wind was stronger than we would have preferred, but it was out of the south, and thus on our stern. It was scheduled to clock around to the WSW later in the day, so we left at 6:30am to get across before the wind switched. This all worked as planned, and we safely docked at Coinjock well before a big front was scheduled to blow through. All this is the good news...

The bad news is that all of the rain that the area north of here received over the last week finally drained into our future path, and there are 2 swing bridges north of here (30 and 35 miles from where we sit) that are now closed due to high water. These are bridges for car traffic that sit very close to the water, and all boats need to have them open in order to proceed north.The mechanisms for the bridges are currently under water. So, they need to let the water recede before they can fix whatever needs to be fixed before the bridges can be open for vessel traffic. And, there is absolutely nothing in the way of facilities between there and where we are now. So, we will simply have to wait it out here in Coinjock....along with a whole slew of other boats in the same predicament.

Coinjock Marina is a 1200' long face dock along the waterway, where everyone basically parallel parks their boat. As of this writing (Tuesday at about noon) the dock is full, and unfortunately there are many boats south of here that are in transit who have not yet figured out that there is a traffic jam here that is impassable. So, for those that make it this far, they have begun to raft up...meaning that they will start double parking the boats, and folks on the outside will have to walk across boats on the inside to get to the dock. It is about to get really interesting. It'll be even more interesting once the bridges are open, because everyone will be hightailing it out of here all at once!

Thankfully, there is a restaurant here and a very spartan convenience store in the marina office. There is absolutely nothing else around, so we will be entertaining ourselves. Time to sit back, relax, and do nothing. We can only hope that this snag resolves itself quickly, as there is another weather front looming that we are keeping an eye on. We would rather move on from here as soon as the bridges are fixed, but weather will dictate in any case.

Stay tuned...more fun to follow...