The farthest west we’ll be going on the Albemarle, the town of Plymouth lies 5 miles up the Roanoke River. We sailed over from Edenton – a 10 mile broad reach in 15+ knots of wind from the NW. Grace flew along. In a northwest wind, the mouth of the Roanoke is a lee shore, and we rolled a bit taking in sail and motoring toward “land”. “Land” with quotation marks because it’s cypress swamp and pocosin, which is not so much solid ground. We motored upriver against roughly half a knot of current and approached the Plymouth waterfront.
The free dock is great – sturdy, new, with power and water – but the slips are perpendicular to the current and that makes for challenging docking, especially if, like us, you want to back in. Many cruisers simply avoid this sort of situation, which is a shame for a town trying to generate tourism revenue. Like docking in Hampton, we used the empty space adjacent and spring lines to warp into the slip. Success called for lunch and a beer.
Then we went exploring.
Both the Roanoke River and Port O’Plymouth Museums were closed…
…as were many of the businesses in town – some just for the day and others boarded up.
The town’s economy is very depressed and, due to drug-related gang violence, it’s unsafe to venture more than a few blocks beyond the waterfront in any direction. We studiously stuck to the “safety zone” and enjoyed scootering and sight-seeing. Like Edenton, there’s some real history here and kind locals who paused to share their stories and hear our own. We stopped in at the Riverside Artisans Market, a blend of cafe and local art emporium – I bought a friendship bracelet as a memento while breathing in the wholesome smell of lunch and coffee. We visited the model CSS Albemarle…
…and historic buildings on a self-guided tour.
Along the way, we met Yokonan, a soft-spoken, out-spoken, well-spoken house-painter transplant from Newark, NJ – he was re-painting a large older home on Washington Street, working alone, armed only with a ladder, paintbrush, and tenacity. He shared a story of apprenticing as a stone carver in Manhattan, doing work on St. John the Divine. Another man stopped his car and waved us over to see if we needed anything, and then went on to tell us how flourishing Jefferson Street was in the 1970’s, and how hard it’s been to watch good neighbors move away and crime move in. Dobbs and I discuss socio-economic disparities like this alot, brain-storming possible solutions. Everyone wants to believe that they can live a good life, that they are valuable to others. We have to be able to show drug dealers, who make good money and can provide for their families, that there are similar options for them within society…but are there? Until we bridge that economic gap with real, contributing jobs, with genuine benefits or the means to aquire them, and treat all people as equally valuable, so that young people have elders to look up to, I believe we will continue to see depression and violence in even the smallest communities.
We returned to Grace intact, for dinner (fish, fried potato wedges, asparagus); for sleep.
Sailing Gracefully 
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