MAY 12: LEAVING NORTH CAROLINA & INTO VIRGINA

May 12:  Onto Portsmouth-Norfolk, Virgina:  By consensus at the social hour last night, all the boaters agreed to leave at 8:00 a.m. to allow the convoy to arrive at the second and final bridge and lock of the Dismal Swamp.  We lead the group at slow no wake speed.  The only excitement of the day was when we felt a loud bump and immediately dialed back to idle speed.  We did not see any logs or large objects and could only hope that something had hit the boat's hull and not the propeller!  Given that we can only travel at very low speed, we will not know if we have incurred any damage until we can increase our speed.

View of the Dismal Swamp from our the bridge of our boat. The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge is the largest intact remnant of a vast habitat that once covered more than one million acres of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. Formal protection of this resource began in 1973, when the Union Camp Corporation (a local forest products company) donated 49,097acres to The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy conveyed the donated land to the federal government, which, combined with additionally purchased land, was used to establish the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in 1974.

 Entering the State of Virginia

This was is definitely not on the retirement list!