We are BRAVE, not STUPID. | Shallow Water Sailing | Ablemarle Sound

The golden glow of the sun gently brushes against us as the world wakes up. The mist dances across the water to greet the brightness of the day. All we can think about is the friggin cold. Um, so I just went to stand on top of our dinghy to film, you know, there's ice, there's frost. Frost. Best thing about this windlass, I can drink my coffee and raise the anchor at the same time. Well, it's one of the best things. Tree branches. So it got down into the 30s last night. The 30s. We saw frost on our boat for the first time ever. It's ridiculous. But it should be warming up, hopefully. Because this Florida blood can't handle that. Oh, is it misting? What's happening in the air right now? I don't know. I can see your breath. It's so weird. So cold. It's actually already warmer than it was. If you guys ever want to see cold sailing, don't come to our channel. We'll probably never do this again. I say that, but anything's possible. It smells like swamp. I can just smell like fresh dirt. Yeah. This morning I woke up and- It's nice, actually. Nice fresh air. That should be a candle. Dirt. I think they do actually have them. Oh, do they? But it's like all these trees are just producing this fresh oxygen. Well, they were. Maybe not so much now because there's no leaves. It's so beautiful, though. I'm so happy that we came through here. I mean, unfortunately, haven't been able to sail much, if at all any. We will once we get to the sound. Sorry, guys. I tried to get some video of a eagle, but I couldn't because I had a helm because Bo's pooping. This is the largest part of the river that we've been in since we entered. How was your poop? It was good. Successful. Do you want to film whatever you wanted? No, it flew away back there. Oh, okay. That's fine. Oh, civilization. There seems to be a little bit of wind, so we're going to try raising the 150, see if we can't reduce our motor speed and increase our sailing speed. That way we're not burning up as much power. We're doing a low speed pass. That's what it's called when you're in the river and they need to pass you. I barely have the motor on in order for him to pass. I think he'll be fine. Luckily, we are doing it here. There's more room. Down the river, it's definitely undoable almost. Very friendly guy. Yeah, Edith B. I think that's the one that was in the little river cider. Just behind that tree line, there's another little anchorage. This is Goat Island, I guess. We could have anchored behind there if we got here sooner than yesterday. Looks like a great place to anchor behind here. It looks like it's 5 feet maybe, just under 6 feet. Obviously, if you're coming down this dismal swamp, you're not drawing anything more than 6. I probably would be very apprehensive even at 5'5". It's not just the landscape that's changing as we get closer to the end of the swamp. We're starting to hear a lot less nature and a lot more noise. Good morning. Danger! Watch yourself! Why are you saying that? It's a danger, booey. Danger! Just dropping the headsail because we are waiting for this railroad bridge to open up. And he said as soon as the traffic clears, we'll be able to go through. Got another boat right here with us. Go ahead through, hon. Give her some gas. Crank it! Yeah, you can speed her up. That scared the tinker out of me. The tinkle. Elizabeth Bridge, thank you for the opening. Have a great day. Switch out the little lady for the big boy. Negative, we're gonna shoot on through. You guys have a safe trip. Thanks, you too. Over. Safe trip home from your job. What was it? I don't know. Maybe he was the sailboat. He didn't. Did he say he was the bridge? Did he say it was the bridge? I think so. I don't know. Oh, maybe not. We're passing through Elizabeth City right now. It's a big spot that most people stop at. It's supposed to be one of the most welcoming welcome centers around, I guess. But we've got wind. And we all know what that means. When Bo and Brandi have wind, we go. So we have places to go, people to see. And unfortunately, Elizabeth City won't be one of them. Kind of wanted to stop, but... Yeah, we're running a little behind to get to Florida. What are you doing? So now we're pointing in the direction we got to go. And it turns out the wind is right on our nose. So we'll be pointing into it. We're going to raise the main. And keep the little lady up for now. We're supposed to have decent wind out there. If we feel like we're a little underpowered, we'll swap it out. The wind's on and off right now. And it's only going to die even more. So we're going to switch out the little lady for the big boy. So go from the 100 to the 150. Brandi's assisting with the motor right now. But it's been a little gusty. I just want to stand in the sun for a second. Can you even hear me? It's supposed to warm up tonight. Fingers crossed. I mean, in my brain, I hope it's going to warm up. It's supposed to warm up tomorrow. So what's the plan? You're going to take the night shift. And we're going to sail overnight. But it's going to be all you. And I'm going to sleep in the warm, comfy bed all night. See what I have to deal with? You guys think that bow's just the sweetest thing. Look at those eyebrows. Pure evil. Go do your job. I'm getting a gust. All right. Well, we've entered into the Admiral Sound, which from what we've heard other people speaking about, this is not a nice sound to sail through a lot of times, especially if the wind is pretty strong. The waves can get really choppy in here because it's only about 17 feet deep. But we've gotten really lucky. So we've decided with this amount of wind, it's been pretty pleasant. I mean, I'm heeling over a bit, but the waves are pretty, very small and very comfortable. So we're going to keep on going. We have a side stop of Roanoke if we get too tired, but we are going to go ahead and try to make it all the way to Orca Coke? Okra. Okra Coke. Never going to say that right. And have a stop over there, see our friends, and then we will be heading out into the ocean again. Because it looks like the winds are finally in our favor. A little strong, but not as strong. So hopefully they say well. Do you think we should reef? As long as you can handle the gusts. I mean, it's okay. I'm only going 6'3". Well, it's going to die tonight, so we should be fine. I mean, we can always reef. It's not that bad right now. Yeah, we can reef later. It's so cool. I'm not that bad, but I might put another layer on. With very little waves, Saoirse is just flying through the water. Even though we're making great time, we're a little uneasy because there is a semi-submerged boat somewhere around here. Well, that's where we're at. After cross-referencing coordinates, we figured out it's just north of us, so we are in the clear. So we're pretty much flying down the Sound right now. Almost actually through it. Sun setting. We are officially out of the Dismal Swamp, but it was a beautiful trip through. I'm happy to have the sails up and sailing again though. We still are looking at about two hours until we were to make it to Roanoke. We actually have to pass through that way because there is a bridge on the other side that we could go through, but it's about 44 feet high. And with our antenna, we're just not quite sure if we would squeeze through. So instead of stressing out about it in the middle of the night, we're going to go ahead and go around. Actually, not too cold with all the clothing I have on. I have a tank top, a t-shirt, a sweater, and a ski jacket. I have a pair of stretch pants on, or I have a pair of yoga pants on, a pair of jeans, and my HH pants. Windbreaker waterproof pants. Two face masks, a hat, a hoodie. Yeah, I'm warm. Look at that sunset though. You warm? The only thing that's cold is my tip of my nose. Tip of your nose, that's it? I thought your feet were cold too. They're a little cold. I think all the brud is just rushing to them and standing, so they should be fine soon. If I pass out, just come take the helmet. Well, don't do that. We might jibe. Beautiful sunset. We'll see you in the morning with a beautiful sunrise. There might be icicles on your nose tip. Yeah. I'm going to need caffeine. As the moonless night settled in, we were on the lookout for somewhere to drop the anchor sooner than later. The channel in this area of the Albemarle Sound was clearly marked, but still works a little on the nerves a bit when sailing in shallow waters at night. Yeah, swells pretty nice in here. All right, so we decided to actually drop the anchor just north of Roanoke? Roanoke? Roanoke Sound? Or no, Roanoke Island. And we're going to wait till we have daylight to traverse the very narrow passage and shallow passage to get to the Pamilko Sound. Yeah, it's late. So we're going to drop anchor and try to get some sleep. The winds aren't too high. The waves aren't very large, maybe like one foot waves, maybe less than. Nothing we can't handle. Night, night. We debated on going into Roanoke where we're going to go right now last night, but because it was pitch black and we don't know the area and it's really shallow entrance, we decided against it and we actually thought we were going to move on down and hit Ocracoke again. But our friends are going to drive up here from Hatteras and meet us in Roanoke. So we'll be able to explore Roanoke with them and then we'll be heading out very shortly after and hitting the ocean and getting south like Beau said. Right now he is raising the anchor. It's only about a three little nautical mile jaunt over. We're going to go ahead and raise the head sail and go downwind into the area. The channels are very tiny through here, very skinny, and the water around it is very shallow. This is one of the major reasons we did not try to do this last night. We're brave, but we're trying not to be stupid. I'm sure we could have done it. We had great wind, perfect actually the angle, but a lot of these markers aren't lit up at night, so you got to be careful on that and Beau would have had to stay up on the bow with a flashlight and I mean we used the flashlight a lot last night coming in just to make sure we weren't hitting any fishing buoys which I don't really see any out right now. Maybe it's not season. There's going to be any in the channel. Well not in the channel, but last night coming in there wasn't much of a channel because we were in the sound. We are sailing into the site of one of America's most unsolved mysteries. In 1587, 115 men, women, and children colonists attempted to build the first permanent English settlement in North America led by John White. Later that year, after facing food shortages and worsening conditions, John White returned to England for supplies, but was delayed due to the Anglo-Spanish war and by the time White returned to Roanoke three years later in 1590, the colony had mysteriously disappeared. The only clue left behind was the word Croatan carved into a post and crow carved into a tree. Despite extensive searches, no trace of the colonists have ever been found. The fate of the lost colony of Roanoke remains one of America's enduring mysteries with theories ranging from assimilation into Native American tribes to massacres or attempts to sail back to England. Despite the numerous investigations and archaeological digs, the ultimate fate of the settlers remain unresolved, making it one of the most intriguing chapters in American history. Okay, I mean it should be on the other side, but I'm going to actually go a little more starboard. Three amigos. He just pooped. Where's the other markers? There's a red. Yeah, looks like it. Monteo Municipal, Monteo Municipal, sailing vessel searcher. No answer. There's a free city dock here, but it only lets you stay for 24 hours. And we plan on sticking around for a few days. So we're just going to go ahead and anchor, drop the dinghy in, and zip over to the docks to meet our friends, Chris, Tanya, and Corbin. Oh, they also brought their bearded dragon, Lizzie. Once the dinghy was secure and our highs were set, I saw this dog out of the corner of my eye and my heart skipped a beat and my eyes teared up. He looked just like Una did in her younger years. We miss her so much as we know many of you guys do too. We've been sailing five years full-time by now. Making friends while constantly on the move, on the water, you can imagine can be a little bit of a challenge. They don't know your past, which can be a good thing, but they also don't know the full story of you. These guys do. It's nice to pick right back up like it was yesterday when we saw them. Well, it was just last month we got to see them in Ocracoke, but you know what I mean. We explored downtown Meneo, which is made up of just a few streets surrounding the historic courthouse, which Andy Griffith, in his fictional town of Mayberry, will tell you that's the way a community should be. Mayberry and its characters were mostly inspired by the life and people of Meneo. We're native Carolinian, Andy Griffith moved to after high school in 1947 to take a job as a soldier in the nation's longest running outdoor play, The Lost Colony. We finished the night off with a little outdoor concert and had to say goodbye to our dearest friends, for we were off yet again for another adventure.