This week we have made our start at the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), which is the Americans’ opportunity to sail inside the Atlantic coastline from Norfolk in the Chesapeake Bay to Key West on the southern tip of Florida - a total of app. 1300 miles. From Norfolk, which is Mile Zero on the ICW, you can either sail through the Virginia Cut or through the beautiful Dismal Swamp Canal with the catchy slogan. “Do the Dismal”.

When do you read the instructions?

We chose to do the Dismal, but arrived 15 minutes late at the lock into the canal, because we on the way needed to go under a bridge that only opened once an hour. The bridge openings were clearly listed in our guidebooks, but we only read that page when we arrived at the closed bridge – which cost us two hours of waiting in front of the lock.

Apparently you can divide people into two categories: Those who read the instructions before using a newly bought item, and those who read the instructions after unsuccessfully having tried to get the newly bought item to work. I don’t know exactly what it tells you about a person, besides the last category of people probably spend more time getting things to work than the first, but I think that the reading of instructions can be passed on to the reading of guidebooks. Unfortunately, both Henrik and I are in the last category of people, which means that we usually only know, what would have been good to know, after the information has been useful.

Though we hadn’t taking the bridge openings into account, we had however provided for
grocery shopping. Even in larger cities, it is difficult to find fresh groceries, and the closest we have been to buying fresh meat on our trip from New York City to Washington D.C. is a pack of bacon in a Dollar General Store that the employer in a marina in Potomac River took us to by car. In Norfolk we therefore spent a whole day and 40 USD in taxi fares to drive out to a huge shopping area (where the closest supermarket was), and bought everything we thought we would need. After all the shopping we took a taxi back to the marina, carried all the groceries and a big gas bottle down to the dinghy that earlier that day had started loosing air. After pumping it again, we filled the dinghy with all out shopping, sailed half a mile in the dark across the Norfolk Channel to the anchorage, where we struggled to get the groceries on board. Because of this it was with mixed emotions that we the following day read that just in the beginning of the Dismal Swamp Canal, we could tie up to a free dock and walk to a supermarket...

The obvious question here is of course: And what can we learn from that? But apparently
nothing at all. Has anyone ever switched from one category to the other? I will however try to read guidebooks at least one day ahead!

Signe Storr Freelance Journalist and friend of Boatshed