Wilmington, NC

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We sailed in the ocean after we left Beaufort last night. The Captain made the announcement, but no reason was given. We left at 9:30pm as originally scheduled. We arrived here in Wilmington a bit over an hour and a half behind schedule. At last night’s overview and in the Ship to Shore, we were told a complimentary trolley bus would be provided.all afternoon. We were told it would drop off and pick up.in downtown at the Tobacco Warehouse, no address. The dock address is 10 Harnett St. The problem is we had never heard of a Tobacco Warehouse here and neither had Google. We wondered if they meant the Cotton Exchange. But it covers a full city block, so you’d still need an address to find it on time. ACL had one tour that left on said trolley just after arrival.

Anne did her morning table touch at breakfast to make sure everyone is set for the day, provide last minute info and answer questions. We’d kept quiet last night, but this morning with just our table, we tried to pin Anne down. She got pretty upset,  but bottom line was she didn’t know. Clay pointed out to her that it wasn’t an unreasonable.expectation to be given a street address or at least an intersection corner as a place to meet. She disagreed and said if we rode the trolley to town, we’d see where it dropped. I pointed out that we planned to walk in this am and ride back in the pm. She finally understood but she all but said if we were on the tour it wouldn’t be a problem, or not her problem. Then she raised the other discrepancy from last night. She said it was 2 or 3 miles from our deck to downtown and Harold said it was about 3 long blocks. Google said it was 14 minute walk from dock to Cotton Exchange but we couldn’t get confirmation that was the pickup point. Finally with other passenger support, she agreed to get an address. When we got off the ship, on a table by the bulletin board was a stack of laser printed maps showing the dock and giving 121 N. Font St. as the address. That wasn’t so hard.

We walked along the River Walk, so went out of our way and walked further. We shopped through the Cotton Exchange. We went to lunch at an old fashioned counter grill place called Pender’s. We had burgers. They served breakfast and lunch only. After seeing the huge servings of grits, I may have to try them on board one morning as they are always on the menu. We walked on to find Kilwin’s for dessert. Clay had ice cream and I had caramel covered marshmallows. We crossed to the median of the short side street to some benches and found ourselves at the start point of a horse drawn carriage tour. They pulled up and unloaded as we were finishing up. We could go next for $12 each for just us. It was about an hour and went through part of downtown and part of the historic district. It had finally started misting heavily enough to be cold, wet and miserable, so we were glad to be under the carriage cover and her wool blankets.  We walked back and caught the 3 pm trolley back to the ship. The last trolley is 5 pm, all aboard is 5:30 pm and we depart at 6 pm.

We are scheduled to arrive in Charleston, SC tomorrow at noon. I guess we’ll find out at tonight’s overview if we’ll sail in the ocean again or not. We’ll be in Charleston overnight. We’ve already been warned that we'll be docked way out of town at Megadock. We’ve signed up for complimentary shuttle rides on Friday and the free Magnolia Plantation tour Saturday morning and $35 each Ft. Sumter tours in the afternoon.

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Beaufort, NC

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We were out of the canal and in the sound when we woke up. We'd already anchored off Fort Macon State Park. The State Port at Morehead City was the view from our balcony. So much for the most beautiful anchorage you've ever seen promised by Harold as a fair trade for the half-hour tender ride each way to Beaufort. They carry a large open boat hanging off the back of Independence and it is our tender. They say it will carry 40-something. We watched it leave with 20-something at 8:45 am for the day's only excursion. I can't see them getting twice that number on there. I believe there were only excursion participants onboard. Annie had said if they could accommodate non-tour participants they would but I don't think that happened. The next tender to town was scheduled for 10 am departure. We saw it coming back and went down to the dining room hall to wait. A couple of the tender hands we'd talked to earlier asked us to come on through with them. We did not want to sit out there bobbing and waiting 10 minutes but were glad we did. No announcement was made. No one went back to the hallway to see if there were other passengers. A woman we had breakfast with had told us she was going on that tender but she either missed it or changed her mind. Good news is that we spotted 6 wild horses on Carrot Island on the ride in to town!

We started at the National Park Visitor Center almost across the street from the public dinghy dock where we landed. We got a map and the ranger showed us her photos of Florence flooding. Several of the Front St. businesses have not yet reopened. We walked in and through most of the open shops on Front St. though. We had lunch at Clawson's. Clay got fried oysters and I had an exceptionally good grilled cheese sandwich with ranch dip. The highlight of Beaufort for us was the Maritime Museum. It has displayed artifact recovered from the shipwreck of Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge. We had heard about it but it was closed last time we were here so it was our 1st priority. We walked back to the dinghy dock on the other side of the street. We went in those shops. We stopped for ice cream. We made sure we were early for the 3pm return. There was only 1 other passenger. There were 4 dinghies tied up and no room for our big open boat. They waved and pointed down the street. Clay followed them. I waited with the woman until we saw the boat disembark its 4 passengers. We went a block or so down to meet the tender. The last tender back leaves town at 4:30pm. We are set to depart our anchorage at 9:30pm.

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Coinjack, NC

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November 6, 2018

This is a day late because we were without Internet and cell signal almost all day and night. When it came back this morning, we found my Surface keyboard is broken. I'm trying to type this with the touchscreen but Parkinson's makes that really hard. All to say from here on out for this trip it may be mostly Clay's photos instead of my comments. Sorry!

So, Coinjock had a load of yachts! The marina shop had an extensive selection of t-shirts. But, you wouldn't want to spend all day there! We didn't because we'd signed up for the excursion to Kitty Hawk and the Wright Brother's National Memorial. It was $65 each for a narrated ride there and back, one hour or so each way, plus a ranger-guided tour. We learned on arrival that there was no ranger on duty today. No alternate plan was offered since people were already scattered to restrooms etc. When we left the bus, we were told to be back onboard by 11:30. Harold stopped my plan to buy a 1903 Wright Flyer replica kite and fly it in the 45 minutes we had remaining. He said if everybody'd go get on the bus now then we could leave early and go see something else. Of course, everyone couldn't be found and rounded up. So while the majority of us sat on the bus and waited, a minority arrived back at the appointed time happy and wondered why everyone else was so grumpy. It was badly done.

We were back onboard by 12:30 for lunch. We sailed as planned right after 1pm. We went up top to see some canal cruising. Very quickly we were in the very broad North River and there was nothing to see. The wind also drove us off the top deck. Later that night we'd enter the Alligator River and sail the Alligator-Pungo Canal. We went up again after dinner to find they were using the front spotlights and the sky was flashing with heat lightning with no thunder. Shortly, rain arrived.

These Intracoastal Waterway canals are the reason we booked this very expensive cruise and never did it occur to us that these hard to access areas would be cruised during meals and in the dark. We have high hopes there are other areas like this to come that we'll be able to see and enjoy. Harold however keeps bringing up hurricane damage may force us out into the ocean. We'll see. We're going where and when the ship is going, so it will be whatever comes.

There was a lecture this afternoon. We won't do that again. We skipped the future cruise sales talk after it. We skipped the Not-so-newlywed game. Since we didn't spend much time up top, we returned to the cabin for a long afternoon nap. It was smooth sailing and we had a great nap.

After part of cocktail hour and dinner, we attended the evening overview for tomorrow's schedule and ducked out of entertainment. I don't think I've described cocktail hour. It is heavy hors d'oeuvre and a big bar of most kinds of liquor for mixed drinks plus beer and wine. At the evening entertainment, right after dinner, they served popcorn, root beer floats and sundaes. You could eat and drink solidly from 5:30 pm to 9 pm.

I'm using a public terminal in deck 3's mid-ship lounge for this and it is a bit better. But I'm not too happy about the public logging in and neither is Clay, but it will have to do until we get home and figure out what to do about my Surface.

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Norfolk, VA

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Mercifully, we did arrive at Norfolk last night and spent the night rocking at the dock and not rolling and pitching at sail. It is raining again but we're told it should stop by midmorning. We have no plans except to join Harold on his complimentary walking tour. We are docked right beside Nauticus, so a great location especially if we decide to revisit that museum. We'll see if we find something else on the walking tour or not. The other options today were Naval Station & MacArthur Memorial from 8:45am to noon for $50 each and Old Cape Hetry Lighthouse & Botanical Gardens from 1:15pm to 4:45pm for $50 each and includes a boxed lunch from Independence. All aboard is printed on the Ship to Shore today. It is 4:30pm for a 5pm departure.

Tomorrow looks trickier. We are supposed to dock in Coinjock, NC at 11:30am and depart at 1pm. According to Harold Coinjock has a 6" salt lock at the end of the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, a gift shop and a steakhouse. Or else nothing. The only thing offered here is the Wright Brothers National Memorial from 8:45 am to ? for $65 each. We signed up for that as it sounded like the only way off Independence for the day and we've not been since its all new and reopened. It is a mystery how it will work though. We'll see.

We  had another big breakfast even though it is Monday today because the menu was just too appealing. At breakfast, I asked our tablemates if their cabin clock had the correct time. The answer was yes, that it was wrong on arrival but since it didn't change on Sunday morning now it is correct. I went to the office and requested our clock be reset. I was told it should have happened automatically, then she offered to reset it now. She did, thankfully. The Internet was down most of the morning, but after breakfast it is back. I couldn't look up Nauticus before but now I've learned it is closed on Mondays after Labor Day. We already informed the kitchen that we'd be off the ship for lunch assuming we'd spend the day in Nauticus. Oh well, now we'll spend it somewhere else or eat from the lounge snack bar if we find ourselves back here. I am sure if we showed up in the dining room for lunch now anyway, they'd accommodate us but we'd hate to do that. We'll see what we learn in Harold's 9:30am walk.

It started pouring rain sideways as we set off on Harold's walk. Clay snagged me a blue plastic poncho from Independence and thank goodness because everything that wasn't under that blue bag got soaked. Luckily it was warm today because Clay got wet to the skin from shoulders to heels. Harold turned us loose from his walk between 10:30 and 11am. It was at the Taiwan Friendship Pavilion. We sheltered under there and stripped off layers and tried to dry out a bit and Google our options as it seemed it might stop raining. We decided to head for the MacArthur Memorial as an easy walk. Bad news it is closed on Monday too. I don't know what happened to the ship's excursion people who paid to go there. We wound up at MacArthur Center across the street. It is a full block, 3 story shopping mall. It was dry! We used the restrooms and stripped off wet layers and sat for a while. I was ready to call it a day, eat lunch at Famous Uncle Al's Hot Dogs  that Clay had picked and return to Independence in defeat. It wasn't raining as hard when we went to eat. As we finished eating, I decided that we could just cross back to the mall and watch a movie and still have an hour to walk back to the ship. So we did. Bonus was finding 8 Below Ice Cream on the 3rd floor of the mall with Regal Cinema. You may recall our recent discovery of rolled ice cream in Richmond. We had Reeses Cup again, but these guys used 4 full size cups instead of the 1 we had at Narwhal. It was much denser and candier!

So we had a good day in the end and an all-American experience.

I am going to assume that anything else that happens after departure this afternoon will either not be noteworthy or that I'll come back and edit if it is. So, I'll post now before we start sailing.

Clay & I skipped cocktail hour and watched sailaway in the dark from our balcony. We headed south across to Portsmouth and south down the Elizabeth River. We passed lots and lots of big ships in dry dock. Tracking us with Clay's phone's GPS it says we're only 38 miles from Coinjock. Clay says that is land miles since it will be more than 12 hours before we arrive. Too bad it is at night as it looks like little rivers and canals and bays and lakes and it would be something to see all the time, if we could see. Oh well. Hopefully there will be some more sailing like this in the light!

We think we've figured out tomorrow's logisitical quandry. I think it is a typo. I think it is supposed to be 11:30pm tonight that we dock in Coinjock.The time line works that way and makes sense in a context of sloppiness. More later.

So, we were right about the typo. Another correction is that the 6" salt lock occurred during dinner at this end of the canal, not the other end as earlier described. It was at Great Bridge Lock. We are traveling, at night, in the Chesapeake & Albemarle Canal. We left dinner ASAP to go up top outside and see. We'd just gone through a drawbridge that had closed behind us and was full of cars while close on either side of the ship was forest and ahead a black shiny ribbon. They are not even using flood lights or spot lights as headlights. It is still really cloudy so no moon or stars either. It was eerie. I hope there will be a lot more cruising like this but in daytime!

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Yorktown, VA

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The time did change overnight, but the clocks in our cabins still have not changed time. It will be a miracle if this doesn't cause a problem. Today we docked in Yorktown, VA during breakfast after 7am. There was never any of the usual instructions about how to check on and off the ship. There was never any announcement, notice written or verbal about all aboard time. How would anyone know who was on or not? We still don't know but we haven't sailed yet. Clay asked the CD what time to be back aboard at breakfast and she didn't know. I think she finally came back and told him 6pm, but today's Ship to Shore says we are departing at 5:30pm. So, we'll see.

Today they offered 2 4-hour tours morning & afternoon to Colonial Williamsburg for $55 each or transportation only with the tour groups for $15 each. I couldn't see visiting again for such a short visit so we didn't do that. Complimentary were a guided walking tour by Harold or onboard lecturer and a trolley-type HOHO shuttle around Yorktown. We did that and had a full and interesting day. We'd never been to Yorktown. It was the final battle of the American Revolution. We took the first shuttle loop at 9am as it was narrated. Then we took the walking tour with Harold and a bigger crowd than what Annie had implied did not sign up for Williamsburg. It ended at the NPS Visitor Center for Yorktown Battlefield. Clay had his senior lifetime pass so we got in free. We didn't have much time before we had to back onboard for the single seating noon lunch.

Breakfast onboard is usually served open from 7:30 to I think 9:30. There is an early risers coffee, juice, fruit and pastry in the lounge. Today breakfast and lunch were a half hour early to accomodate tours. There is a buffet table at breakfast followed by ordering hot food at the table from a menu. It being Sunday, I had Eggs Benedict. At breakfast, you fill out your order form for lunch and dinner. That is why we had to be back onboard. We'd ordered. Grilled cheese and tomato soup. So far 2 days of lunch soup have been the texture and density of baby food!

After lunch we caught another of the 2 continuously circling trolleys for the American Revolution Museum. It cost $28.50 for both of us. It was so extensive that we had to skip sections and did not have time to visit the Watermens Museum as planned.With better planning, we'd have skipped lunch onboard and taken the segway tour they have here.

Anyway, it was brightly sunny, very windy and a high of about 60F today. Gossip is that for some reason the ship is planning to sail open ocean after Norfolk. No explanation, so we'll see. The title of the cruise is East Coast Inland Passage and the map they mailed reflect that route. Of course they can and will sail where they want so we'll keep our fingers crossed.

At 5:45pm Harold told us to make sure we were in the lounge, if not for cocktails for a couple of members of the Yorktown Fife & Drum Corp. We'll be there so I should go now. I'll post this after dinner. Well, disappointment. The Fife & Drum were canceled.

Sailing got rough during dinner. We both struggled to get up 2 levels of stairs. I gave up. Clay went for the 8pm port overview on Norfolk. According to the bulletin board Harold has added  a complimentary walk at 9:30am tomorrow. There is live music and snacks at 8:15pm. I am going to bed and pray conditions calm down. Good news is we are supposed to dock in Norfolk by 10pm. I hope!

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Boarding ACL's Independence

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We slept in til about 7am. Forget everything I said about that Fairfield Inn room. The bed was too hard, I heard loud sirens all night and there was a flashing green light on the smoke alarm on the wall above the bed that looked like a strobe in the dark room. We were tired but it wasn't a great sleep.

Complimentary breakfast was good with a wide variety from fruit, yogurt, breads, eggs, waffles, etc. We ate and were ready for a walk by 8:30am or so. Our documents said we could board Independence by the National Aquarium at 501 E. Pratt St. between 10:30 am and 12:30 pm but our stateroom wouldn't be ready before 11:30am. No rush then. We walked around and saw the Holocaust Memorial, the Shot Tower, and the Carroll Mansion. Yesterday and today we saw loads of brass sidewalk markers for a Heritage Walk but not knowing about it before hand, we didn't try to follow it.

We went back to the Fairfield and got our luggage and checked out. A cold front came through overnight with that rain. It was in the mid-70s F when we arrived in Baltimore and in the 40s and 50s today. The wind was stiff and the the sun was shining with nothing but blue skies. By 10 am or so, I think all last night's puddles had dried up. So we walked to the ship. We had seen it from our walk to the Holocaust Memorial. It was only about 4 blocks and all level so an easy walk with rolling bags.

We presented our boarding passes and were informed that we'd been upgraded to deck 3 and the owner's suite. This was a gross exaggeration since there is no owner's suite and all the deck 3 cabins are the same as deck except for HC cabins. Anyway, we had debated booking a balcony cabin and rejected the extra $2K for the balcony. On a ship this small you can always get to the view you want quickly anyway and it wasn't worth it. The other reason is that on any ship, I want to be low to avoid excessive motion. So, I kind of balked because we had reasons for picking deck 1. She asked us to try it and if we wanted our original cabin we could move because deck 1 was empty. It turns out that there are only 43 passengers onboard. Capacity is 100 passenger.

We are in cabin 309 on the port side. It is a nice cabin with a narrow balcony and a waist high window with a solid door. Unless you are out on the balcony, the view is probably no better than cabin 109's would have been. I forgot to bring my little stack of magnets to put each day's handouts on the metal walls. We'll be missing them! The other thing we should have brought was a power strip for the desk. The only outlet is behind the desk and we had to move it to get to it. There are plenty of drawers but the closet is a very small open cubby. There was an ice bucket on the top shelf. There is a self-service 24/7 ice machine in the lounge on deck 2 along with drinks and coffee machine (all included). There are 2 upholstered chairs and a desk chair. Two bed side tables and a TV table. There are 2 chairs out on the balcony with a small table between them. The bathroom holds a shower stall, toilet, 1 sink and 2 drawers. There is a full size hair dryer in a drawer. There is a 2 plug outlet there.
There is one trash can in the cabin and it is beside the TV outside the bathroom. There are no washers and dryers on this ship that I can find. If that changes, I'll make a note. Also, unlike Mississippi which was our past ACL experience, excursions are not included. Though according to the website, after this cruise we are entitled to free excursions as a repeat customer perk.We had to fill out and turn in our week 1 tour request after lunch.

Sailing had been scheduled for 1:30pm. We were told when we checked in between 10:30 and 11 am,, that she expected us to sail by 11:30am if we were all aboard. There went our waterfront plans. We took a quick walk around the 2 piers holding the National Aquarium and were back aboard before 11:30am. At noon they held the mandatory safety briefing in the lounge. We learned that we had delayed sailing until 2:45pm due to the strong winds. Lunch was served at 12:30pm. We filled in order cards for dinner at lunch. It looks like they took all the small tables out of the dining room because all the 8-tops that are there are separated by 4-6 feet of space. The Mississippi ship was much tighter and had no 2-tops but plenty of 4 and 6 top tables. This time it is 8 or nothing. A 2 + hour lunch ensued. I can't imagine we'll be able to have any meals onboard this ship/sailing in less than 2 hours. Since they are at less than half capacity, it appears that the service staff was halved as well. You may remember that ACL's service employment policy of 90 day terms was the reason we had not returned so you may imagine we are not pleased. It is only 2 weeks but still. Anyway. At 2pm there was a briefing with the CD, hotel managers and our onboard lecturer about our choices of excursions for the 1st week. Our order forms had to be turned in by 4:30pm.

5:30pm is cocktail hour. 6:30pm is dinner. Beer and wine are complimentary at lunch and dinner and cocktail hour. We've already seen one person be overserved. It should be an interesting trip. Since I gave up wine with dinner at home over 6 months ago, I've found my alcohol tolerance has become more limited. I had a glass at Angus Barn for Clays' birthday and last night. In both cases, I drank too much wine waiting for food and regretted it. So, I am planning to avoid cocktail hour.. We'll see.

There is an 8pm port preview introduction about tomorrow's event scheduled. I doubt dinner will be over! At 8:15pm they have entertainment and snacks so blink and you'll miss it anyway.

WiFi is included throughout the ship and seems adequate so far. Another change since Mississippi is that they say gratuities are included and onboard tipping is not allowed.

Back from dinner with some happy news. They reconfigured the dining room and all the 8-tops became 6 tops plus an added 2-top set up for 1 woman who dines alone. We sat at the same table as lunch time with one couple from lunch and one couple who had joined us at cocktail hour. We had a different server and we were out of dinner within 1 hour! If that happens every meal, we'll be thrilled. As to our 41 fellow passengers, it is a very white group and so far we have met a very intolerant few.

The time changes tonight. The ship has made no written notification or reminder of this. When asked tonight, the CD shrugged and said the bedside clocks should change automatically and your smartphones should too, why would we mention it. Uh... Anyway. An extra hour is good because we have an early start tomorrow morning in Yorktown. I'll write about that tomorrow!

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Knock Knock

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Who's there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you glad you took the train back north today? Yes, yes I am. Orange was the color of the day today. Unlike our trip up here 2 Fridays ago, today the leaves had turned orange. Not much red or yellow but loads of different shades of orange. Not photos for sure as the windows were dirty.

We had a good start for the trip. It was dry until we got off the train in Baltimore. It was warm. Today was first Friday. We shared a half dozen chocolate glazed Krispy Kremes this morning. Amtrak's Silver Star was on time leaving Raleigh but an hour late arriving in Baltimore. Silver Star is a much nicer train than last time's Carolinian. Clay thinks the train cars are bigger. Maybe. The seats are. They also have leg rests and foot rests unlike the Carolinian. According to Amtrak, Silver Star is the only overnight train without a dining car. It was probably more pleasant than flying. It was definitely cheaper. We paid $116 for both us in reserved coach seats. We checked one large bag each with no problems. We dropped them off in Raleigh with no wait and waited less than a few minutes to get them back again in Baltimore. Good news.

We had missteps with Uber both in Raleigh and Baltimore. Raleigh's driver tried repeatedly to follow his GPS directions to the now demolished old Amtrak station. Baltimore's drove for a half hour in end of work day Friday gridlocked traffic after we pointed out he'd just drive by the Fairfield Inn Inner Harbor at 101 S. President St. Bonus was we saw where we need to find the Independence tomorrow morning on the waterfront by the National Aquarium. The Fairfield Inn should be about 4-6 blocks away from the pier. Hard to say as we were circling in heavy traffic and rain. Tomorrow we'll see if we walk there or not depending on weather. We can board between 10:30am and 12:30pm for 1:30pm sailing. Our prepaid rate here is $146.69. We are in the back tower building so it is quiet. We are on the 5th and top floor. The room is adequate with a queen bed, a coffee maker and an ice bucket. No fridge. It is not a big room or bathroom. Single sink, shower over tub. It is clean and new looking. The location is the best feature probably. We are right on the edge of Baltimore's Little Italy. So, Italian food tonight. We looked through several menus of places in walking distance that we found on Google Maps. There were many more here on the ground. We chose Germano's. It was good. Clay's porchetta was not as described on the menu, no sausage. We stopped at Vaccaro's for dessert. Clay got Baci gelato and liked it. We bought 2 cookies at $1.80 each that were a huge disappointment. Bonus was finding ourselves outside the Star Spangled Banner House on our way! Who knew?

That's it for today. If Clay has any photos to share, he'll post a link here.

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