Days 46-50 - Waiting Out the Weather

Current Position: 37° 5' 49" N 76° 17' 31" W

So much happened in a short time!!

The anchorage we stayed at Tuesday night was so awesome in the evening.  If you've never watched "Rupert and the Frog Song", please do.  That will give you an idea of the symphony we listened to from our deck.  It was so calm that night that the boat hardly moved.  We never would have guessed the next night would be just the opposite!

I called the bridge in the morning.  They weren't sure if they would open or not and to call back in an hour.  Good news - it was a go! Our boat and every other boat in the vicinity headed north.  We weren't the first to go through but first in our group. With a 3 ft clearance you can see why they have problems with high water!  If you didn't read my last post - go back and read it for the prelude to this segment.

The boats quickly stacked up behind us...

This was a swing bridge, but instead of one long"arm" that swung out, it was comprised of two pieces that swung separately.  Here is the sailboat behind us going through, the left side is starting to swing closed but the right side is still open.

As one of the slower boats on the water, two of the boats behind us soon passed us up. Only the sailboat stayed behind us.  The 3rd bridge we went through was the Great Bridge Bridge (in the town of Great Bridge). It was really stacked up - we were #5 and they kept coming behind us.  Just past the bridge was our first lock.  

The dock hand grabbed our lines with a boat hook and looped them over a cleat. I wrapped my line over the "mid-cleat" (it's in the middle of the boat :) ) and Bob took the stern line.  You only loop it around the cleat once to give some leverage but the line must be able to play out as the water lowers in the lock. Because my hands were full during this time there are no pictures after we got into the lock.

More boats came behind us so the lock was nearly full.  Everything went very smoothly and we feel like pros already.  The nice part was this is supposedly one of the nicer locks, so a good one to learn on.

Shortly after we cleared the lock we entered Norfolk.  We were warned that the commercial traffic through this portion of the ICW could be very busy, but we were pleasantly surprised to find it not the case today.

First we saw the commercial side of the city - recycling center...

Not sure what was under the tarp but can you see the people climbing on top?

Next is the Naval Shipyard.  These are floating barracks that Bob thinks houses the sailors when their home (their ship) is being worked on.

 Another bridge followed by a lift railroad bridge.  The railroad bridge is up and only closes when a train comes through.  You can see the heavy counter weights on each side.

We saw ship after ship - of all kinds:

 USS Harry Truman

Mama Yacht and baby yacht

A multi-purpose ship - amphibious/air craft carrier

Three aircraft carriers in a row - they take up a LOT of room!

Container Ship

Beautiful three masted sailboat

 Research vessel?

Then there were the cranes:

 Papa crane and baby crane?

These cranes lift railroad engines.  Can you see some on the left?  The whole side of the warehouse was lined with these engines.

This crane looks like it belongs in Lego Land

And the buildings...

Not a lot of skyscrapers but this one really stood out.

 Even condos are on stilts over the water

Is this the BFG??

Portsmouth Naval Hospital

 Not sure what this is but I liked it.

Leaving Norfolk we crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.  It's half bridge, then drops down under the bay to complete the crossing.

At this point the winds and waves picked up to create an exciting crossing. It wasn't bad at first, but after 2 hours we were ready for it to be over. When I went down to the cabin I found half our belongings on the floor!  Books, coats, pillows.  Nothing damaged - just a mess.  My poor pantry was a jumble of cans and jars.

 The spray at this point was just reaching the deck.  Later we were plowing through 3-4 foot waves that splashed all the way up to the fly bridge.  Our poor boat was quite salt encrusted by the time we arrived (ever so gratefully) at our anchorage.

This is the largest "blind" we've seen.  Who owns these? This was in the river where we anchored.

  
Our night at anchor was a rocky one and neither of us got a lot of sleep.  Our anchor held well but we bounced around quite a bit.  Thursday we tried to get to our next stop at Deltaville, VA but as soon as we got out in the bay the waves were hitting us broadside and we turned around immediately to go back to anchor.  It was a very choppy day on the water and I got seasick!  AT ANCHOR!!  Crazy.  Friday we found a marina close by and agreed that being tied up to a dock would be much easier to sleep. We went to the marina in pouring down rain and were soaked to the skin by the time we got our lines tied up.  

This was our view from the cabin

It's a small marina, but inexpensive with wonderful people and nice private bathrooms (read - SHOWERS)  We originally planned to stay two nights but the weather is not cooperating yet so we may stay until Monday.  Meanwhile we got a lot of projects done - laundry (6 loads - mind you, my washer/dryer is small), defrosted refrigerator/freezer, washed the bbq grill, cleaned all the dirt off the bridge from my garden being tossed around during our heavy weather, planned the next several legs of our journey, and went shopping via Lyft.  It's the first time we've used Lyft (an Uber-like taxi).  It worked great.

A few more pictures along the cut:

Another deadhead (stump) being towed out of the way

A beautiful re-purposing of an old bucket dredger

Anchored in Back River then docked at Belle Isle Marina