Hampton Roads to Coinjock, NC

If you ask anyone about the first leg of the ICW southbound, prime rib is bound to come up. Coinjock, NC is the first stop for most headed south, and it is famous for the marina restaurant's prime rib dinner. We looked forward to it as we made our way through the first of the bridges south of Portsmouth. I white-knuckled it through the first part of the trip. There are a couple things about our boat that make this passage trickier. We aren't 100% sure of our mast height but know it's somewhere between 63-65', and some of the bridges that are supposed to be 65' are notorious for actually being somewhat lower. I had visions of knocking off our wind instruments and anchor light, or even worse, hitting the mast itself on a bridge and dismasting the boat. So not only did we have to time the opening bridges perfectly but we were very nervous going under the 65' bridges. We had waited for wind from the north to push the water out of this narrow part of the ICW in hopes that it would help with the mast height issue.

One our way to Coinjock we stopped over on a free dock for a night, and the first thing I did after getting tied up was ascend the mast in hopes of removing some of the taller instruments. I wanted to use a Topclimber that came with our boat, basically it's a harness with two clutches that is supposed to allow you to climb to the mast using a fixed line without assistance. I would also wear my rock climbing harness attached to a halyard as my safety line, with Ian manning that line. Unfortunately, the Topclimber didn't work for me. Maybe I'm too short for it or my arms are too weak (very possible that both are true!) but even ascending 10 feet with it was utterly exhausting. With no one to man a second safety line, I inspected and carefully knotted the main halyard around my climbing harness and just had Ian lift me up with the electric winch. It was pretty fruitless anyway since I was only able to get the wind indicator down and not the higher antenna, windex or masthead light. If we knocked those off at least they wouldn't be too expensive to replace.

Turns out it was a non-issue - we made it under the bridges to Coinjock without so much as scraping our antenna! Coinjock Marina is pretty unique - they don't have slips, only a long (and I mean LONG) tie-up wall, and they fit boats in like sardines. We got there in the afternoon, and by evening many boats were rafted up two deep. The prime rib was good as promised - ours was a tad overdone but still very tasty. The next morning we slept in a bit since it was pouring rain, and when we poked our heads out around 9:30AM we discovered that we were the only boat left in the marina! Everyone else was heading north on the ICW and left at dawn to try to make it to Portsmouth in one day.