And we're docked....

River Forest Marina from the air.

To say River Forest Marina is challenging to approach and dock is an understatement.    For those that don’t know, the  Atlantic ICW is actually a series of canals, rivers, and other bodies of water that make a passage along the East Coast of the United States.  The passage provides protection from the open water of the Atlantic Ocean so boats aren’t as susceptible to the weather and such of the open water.  Obviously, that’s very attractive to boaters like us on a 30-foot sailing yacht.

Of course, sailing on the open water saves time (if the weather is good) so we will be going offshore as early as Thursday because the weather situation continues to improve, and our guests, the twenty-somethings, want to sail on open water before they have to return to work on Monday.  But I digress…

We pushed hard on Monday, leaving Elizabeth City early with the hope as getting as far as possible before the weather turned bad as thunderstorms and gusty winds were in the forecast.  We were able to do a little sailing and experienced a heavy downpour but much of the trip was uneventful until reaching our chosen marina.

It’s never advisable to enter an unfamiliar marina in the dark, but the last few days, we are traveling under the threat of being held up at marinas for a day or two because of the prediction of bad weather.  Of course, this prediction really hasn’t come true to date.  We have been fortunate enough to have good weather and have been able to progress steadily.  However, we have pushed forward doing things like entering an unfamiliar marina in the dark because we have two electronic navigational gps charts and paper charts.

That being said, the River Forest Marina in North Carolina was one of the oddest, tucked-away marinas I’ve ever seen. 

It was nearly 11pm when we approached the marina.  The navigational markers placed on pylons aren’t lighted in this part of the waterway so you must use a spot light to identify the markers to confirm you’re on the route you’re following using the two gps receivers I mentioned earlier.  Because there was no visible moon and the marina wasn’t using the lights on the dark, it appeared as though we were going to just motor up on the beach for much of the approach.  To complicate matters, our gps instruments and paper charts weren’t in agreement as to weather a breaking wall or a rock wall existed to protect the marina.  As it turned out, both a breaker wall and a rock wall surrounded the marina and there was a narrow channel to enter the few slips that the marina provided.

As we motored toward the darkened marina, a boat could be faintly seen at what turned out to be the end of the single finger dock to give us a little confidence that a marina was in fact in front of us.   There was a narrow channel and two turns to enter the marina (these had pylon markers but weren’t lighted).  And the channel was narrow.  Very narrow.  And we ran aground twice within a few feet of the docks.  Since we were at slow speed, the crew simply had to go to one side of the boat while Captain Karen gave full power and turned the wheel to easily free us from the soft bottom.

We were incredibly lucky to have two crew from a motor yacht also at the marina who saw us coming in and yelled instructions to us as we approached the docks.  The other crew directed us in a slip, helped us tie off, and remarked how the marina was “different.”

The next morning, the marina dock master asked if we’d ever been to the marina, and when the response was no, he then asked how we could have made it in.   That’s a testament to how challenging the approach and dockage was.

My words don’t provide enough definition or emphasis to adequately detail the harrowing experience.  Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t in grave danger, but boaters, especially overtired sailors, hate that feeling of uncomfortability when there is no light and features bizarre hazards to reach a safe dockage.