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.
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