Tuesday finally arrived and we pulled up anchor at 9:30 am and timed our passage to arrive at the #7 Railroad Bridge for the 11:00 am opening. We got a good jump on most of the boats with only 8 boats ahead of us.
The long line of boats behind us waiting for the Bridge opening. We had to pass through or under 13 bridges and 1 lock today. The draw bridges and lock only open on the hour so the boats were all crowding ahead to get through quickly.
The Great Bridge Lock can only move a limited number of boats at a time and it takes approximately 45 minutes to Lock through each set of boats. We were lucky to get through with the second set of boats, only having to wait about an hour. It would be a very long day for the boats at the end of the line. We eventually arrived at the Pungo Ferry Bridge and found the safety netting had been moved over to the next span allowing just enough clearance for us to pass through. It was beginning to get dark and we still needed to cross Currituck Sound. I had called the Coinjock marina earlier to try and reserve a slip but they said they were full so we would need to find an anchorage. The dredged channel through the Sound is very narrow and we knew there was a cruise ship coming up behind us and a tug towing a large barge heading towards us. The three of us meeting together in the dark along a narrow channel was something I wanted to avoid if possible. Still in the Sound, I finally found a small pocket in the shallow waters just off the channel, a place called Bell point anchorage. There wasn’t protection from any direction but the water was calm and the forecast was good with only very light winds. We dropped anchor, fixed dinner and avoided the large commercial vessels coming.