The Great Dismal Swamp

There are so many wondrous places in this world. Big destinations that end up on bucket lists. Then, there are the little wonders. The places that you happen upon when you're not looking for them.

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We spent a week or so in Beaufort, NC after arriving from the Bahamas on June 15, 2019. It was kind of like coming home to this familiar territory, as we'd spent a couple of months in Beaufort last year preparing Wakataitea for cruising. Using the courtesy car from the marina, we visited our favourite restaurants and did some re-provisioning.

Father's Day

Beaufort, NC

Given that Hurricane Florence ravaged Beaufort last year, we decided to head further north to the Chesapeake Bay for hurricane season to reduce the odds of getting smacked around by a storm.

John received the replacement water pump for the engine, and when he went to install it, he found that it wasn't broken, just a loose pulley. Despite this fact, we were glad that we'd not used the engine for our trip north from the Bahamas, in case we had problems with the prop shaft. Now that we were in protected waters, we considered whether we could risk using the engine for some long days travelling on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW).  After inspection of his repair job on the prop shaft from 2 months ago, John confirmed that all looked good. So, we decided to stay inside and not go back out into the ocean to get further north.

Fishing boats north of Beaufort on ICW

Heading north

Shrimping boats headed up the ICW beside us

To get into the Chesapeake Bay via the ICW, there are two ways to go. After crossing the Albemarle Sound, you can take a right and go up the North River into Currituck Sound, or you can head up the Pasquotank River to Elizabeth City which takes you to a 22 mile canal that takes you through the Dismal Swamp, a historic and ecologically diverse region of North Carolina and Virginia.

North Carolina and Virginia coast

When we were trying to decide our route, I was unsure about the whole swamp thing. All I could think of were mosquitoes, slimy green water, and stinky shoreline. Yuck. And yet, I was intrigued. Dismal Swamp is a cool name. So, we took the left in the fork and headed to Elizabeth City, NC, a quaint little town that was once a thriving 1800's port.

Elizabeth City is a welcoming place for pleasure boaters. They have free docks and if you arrive at the right time, locals will bring you wine and cheese. We stuck around here for a couple of days to explore their museum, eat at their restaurants, and browse their wonderful little bookstore. We chatted with locals who came up to see Wakataitea, an unusual sight hanging off their town docks.

Town Dock in Elizabeth City

Elizabeth City

Elizabeth City

Sunset in Elizabeth City

The weather was calm and the skies were blue as we continued motoring up the Pasquotank River that becomes the Dismal Swamp Canal.

Leaving Elizabeth City just after dawn

About two hours along the river, the shoreline became peppered with duckweed. Swirls of weeds sculpted green, paisley patterns, and contrasted the dark, tannin-rich water. Little leaves sailed along beside us like fairy boats.We kept a sharp lookout for sticks and logs in the water; remnants of a storm a week or two earlier.

Duckweed along shoreline

Art

Lookouts

It didn't take long before, the tiny weeds surrounded us and turned the water a blanket of green. The trees' shadows were eerie shapes from the shoreline. Dragonflies rested on the water as we passed them by. Wakataitea's hulls and prop carved paths into the duckweed like tire tracks in snow. Larger weeds and twigs tagged along and had to be removed with a boat hook when the mass threatened to slow us down.

A sea of green

Can it get any greener?

Hitchhikers

Our tracks

In many places, the canal narrowed so that we just fit through. We often swerved to keep our mast from hitting overhead branches that extended high above. A few times, we had to stop the prop to avoid hitting some rather large logs.

Hours of motoring

Keeping a close lookout

Squeezing through

Contemplation in hours of motoring

By early afternoon, we arrived to the Dismal Swamp Canal Welcome Center where we tied up to a free dock. The Center is located where the highway connects briefly with the canal. Visitors coming from land or water can learn about the region and cross the canal to the Dismal Swamp State Park, where the interpretation center is full of facts about the history and nature.

Motoring by the State Park

Wakataitea resting on dock beside Visitor's Center

More green space to run and get our yayas out

We spent the afternoon hiking around the trails and looking at the exhibits at the State Park. We learned that the Dismal Swamp is a wetland forest that spans the states of North Carolina and Virginia. Together, the State Park and the Wildlife Refuge make up about 125,000 acres, and is home to many animals including black bears, deer, herons, osprey and lots of horse flies (as we found out.)  There were still some gum, cypress and cedar trees, but hardwoods now dominate. We caught sight of a baby bear running along the shoreline and watched many waterbirds soaring above.

Our visit to the State Park gave us a good overview of the history of this intriguing place. Before European settlers set foot in the swamp, it is estimated it covered 1.28 million acres. 

In the 1760's, George Washington proposed draining the swamp and digging a north-south canal to connect the Chesapeake Bay with the Albemarle Sound. He and others started the Dismal Swamp Land Company. Their goal was to drain the swamp, cut down the trees, and use the land for farming. Slaves (known as "Swampers") were ordered to dig the canal in the difficult swamp conditions. Many slaves escaped and fled north through the swamp (in addition to other slaves who made their way on foot) via the network of the Underground Railroad.

The canal failed to drain the swamp as hoped, but served as a useful way to transport timber out of the swamp. Steam powered logging helped to clear out the forests more quickly, and by the 1930's, 100,000 acres of trees were gone. In 1972, The Nature Conservancy purchased land from timber companies and created park land.

The Dismal Swamp Canal is 22 miles long and is the oldest operating man-made waterway in the US. This canal is full of history, legends, and folklore. Hundreds of passenger ships, schooners, and shingle flatboats used this transportation route. Today, it is used by pleasure boats transiting the ICW.

Wakataitea outside the Visitor Center on June 28, 2019

Our trip through the canal ended at the Deep Creek Lock where we met an entertaining lock keeper who played a conch horn and wished us well as we moved further towards the Chesapeake Bay. 

Deep Creek Lock

I loved our magical trip through the Dismal Swamp. There was a humming, swirling energy in the swamp that frankly, made me feel a little giddy. It's one of those places that gets under your skin.

I never knew I'd be a swamp girl.