OtherGoose: Wednesday Nov 12

Wednesday, Nov12

Gawd, are we ever going to get out of here??? Not that it’s not a pretty interesting town but we gotta go!

We woke up to pea soup fog and waited until 9:30 when we could see past the docks and the break wall. Rick called ahead and booked a slip on the other side of the Chesapeake [30 miles away], and w headed out. We got out into the channel and the fog dropped again. We did circles trying to find our way back into the dock without hitting marks, obstructions and the cement barges, and the other boats at the dock.

We sat for an hour discussing next moves with the sailboat behind us, Lunara. They are from Maryland and are trying t get o Norfolk as well. They tried at around 10:45 and were back 10 minutes later. The fog had lifted in shore but not out there. Eventually it will lift, and there will be 3 foot seas and 15-25 knot winds for later this afternoon but as long as it’s following, we are good t go.

The problem is that about 2 miles out from this harbour is a parking lot for offshore ships awaiting clearance, and one never knows when they will up anchor and take off.

The other issue is all the chatter on the radio between “warships”. That’s what they call themselves here, not “USS Whatever”. It’s “this is Warship 118 calling Warship 123”, and they are constantly moving in and out of the harbour with “securite’s to warn all other vessels to remain 3 miles off. It’s hard enough to judge three miles in good visibility, never mind fog, and we don’t want to get shot out of the water after getting this far.

Rick is scrubbing the dirt from the Hudson and upper waters off the hull. I will start working on the top decks. The salt water pretty much scrubbed the dinghy clean. So we wait...

We got away at 12:30 and slowly inched our way into the fog bank. It cleared as we went and by the time we were about an hour out it was a bright sunny day and dead calm. So it took 8 hours to get over to Norfolk against tide and current.

Of course, that means that we managed to once again come to port in the dark. You want exciting? Try navigating through a monster naval shipyard in the dark, with naval ships and cargo ships. We entered Hampton Roads at 5 pm as the sun set and followed to cargo ships in. We were buzzed a few times by helicopters with spotlights!

We finally found the marina, but there are two huge ships parked right in front of the entrance in the middle of the river. They are in dry dock. Across the river is another one being dismantled. This pale wasn’t nearly this busy last time w came through here!. So I’ll post some of those pics tomorrow when we can take them in the morning in daylight.

Til tomorrow...