Dismal Swamp!

We left Tidewater Marina at 7:15 this morning. We just entered the channel and noticed that our RPM gage was not working. We run our engine at 2800 RPMs which gives us about 5 knots of speed. Larry removed the front panel and it immediately started to register, which indicated a possible loose wire. Well it's working now so let's do this later. We had to be at the bridge opening at 9AM, so he put things back together. It worked for the rest of the day. 

It's always something when you own a boat. 

We made our bridge opening with plenty of time to spare. 

We then entered the creek leading to the Dismal Swamp. Here again we had to wait for the scheduled opening of the first lock. We decided to drop our anchor as we had an hour wait. The day was proving to be a warm one but we had a great breeze. 

There were two of us going through the lock but as you can see by the picture they were faster than us. 

Sometimes the Dismal Swamp has logs submerged and today was one of them. We hit about three logs while in transit. Later talking to the couple on the trawler they had hit the same amount. 

We had several dragonflies visiting us throughout the day. We also had horseflies, them we didn't like. 

Our plan was to anchor at Goat Island but Mother Nature took care of that plan. She gave us a thunderstorm instead. We made it to the Dismal Swamp Visitors Center and decided to call it quits. We have waited out other storms here in the past. This time there are three of us tied to the docks other times there have been a dozen or more rafted up. 

We plan to head out early tomorrow morning to catch the next lock opening and will anchor in Alligator River if Mother Nature allows us to get that far.