TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

5-20-08

We left Tidewater Marina around 9:00 a.m. Monday after seeing off our friends John and Doris in Allegro.  They were going to try to get all the way to Deltaville.  Also exiting before us was the smaller sailboat “Semper Fi” and we delayed our departure a little longer as we saw “Puff IV” pull cautiously out – we wanted him to be well out of our way.  We had little problems exiting the marina and were soon headed up the Norfolk channel.  Gosh, the place is huge with all manner of container ships, barges, tugs, and navy and coast guard vessels.  We had checked the weather before leaving on Weather Underground, and the winds were supposedly out of the west at 9-12 mph.  Also, John told us that it would be a great day to sail in the Chesapeake.  Before setting out, we changed our previous plans to stop for a day in Hampton, VA, and instead try and make it to Yorktown.  We secured a slip reservation and were on our way.  Upon entering the ship channel, we were met with some serious wind and wave action, nothing like predicted.  We began adding layers of jackets, and Bill then asked for his slicker as the spray was coming over the sides, and sometimes over the dodger.  I nestled in behind the dodger and stayed relatively dry except when I would stand up to look forward.  The wind was steady at 20 knots with gusts over 30 knots.  First we saw “Semper Fi” headed back toward us; then “Allegro” came in sight also, headed back toward Tidewater.  Bill called John on the radio, and he said it was brutal “out there.”  They were going to hang out for awhile to see whether the wind would die down.  Bill acknowledged that he couldn’t keep this up for 40 miles in the wind and 5 foot waves, so I called a marina in Hampton, VA to secure a slip for the night.  We have this thing about turning back, and since we were only really uncomfortable and not in any danger, we kept heading toward Hampton Roads. 

A huge naval aircraft carrier, accompanied by tugs, a coast guard cutter, and helicopters pulled out and headed out to sea.  Bill gave him a wide berth, especially after the Coast Guard announced on Channel 16 that all vessels should stay 500 yards away from Warship 71, and any vessel not heeding this would be stopped by force, “including deadly force.”  I think it was the “deadly force” thing that really made an impression on us.  I did manage to struggle down to the salon and secure the camera to take a couple of pictures without injuring myself.  Cool Breeze had become a bucking bronco, but she handled herself well.  At one point I started laughing and laughing, saying, “Here we are a happy couple enjoying retirement by getting our brains scrambled with the pounding up and down in the waves, being threatened with deadly force from the Coast Guard-yes, ‘Life is Good!’”  After the longest two hours we’ve experienced, we made it into the Hampton River, and with the help of Ian, the dockmaster from Australia, we tucked into a slip.  We are at the Bluewater Yachting Center and it is a great marina, probably the nicest we’ve stayed in.  There are about 170 slips berthing mostly power boats.  The docks and bathrooms are immaculate.  There is a swimming pool (not that it’s warm enough to go swimming) and an on-site restaurant.  Bill gave Cool Breeze a good scrubbing to remove the encrusted salt and then we had a quick lunch at the restaurant and took the free water taxi to downtown Hampton. 

Hampton is a neat town with the Virginia Air and Space Museum, the Jacques Cousteau Museum, an old Carousel, and many shops and art galleries.  Unfortunately the Cousteau Museum and most of the shops were closed on Monday.  The old Carousel is being restored and was completely hidden from view.  We did stop in at St. John’s Episcopal Church, the oldest Protestant church in America, established 1610.  It is surrounded by grave sites dating to the 1700’s and some unreadable markers.  The interior is beautiful with lovely stained glass windows.  We saw some of the friends we’d seen in Oriental at the downtown docks, Norske and Summertime.  They’ll be off to Deltaville in a day or two.  After a couple of hours of touring, Ian picked us up in the water taxi and we were dropped off right at our dock.

We opted to eat dinner on the boat – soup and salad and headed to bed early to read our books and have a good night’s sleep.

The rain came this morning as predicted with pretty constant showers until around 11:00.  We decided to make a run to the grocery store and walked the mile or so to the store, shopped and called a taxi to take us back to the marina.  The taxi cab driver barely spoke English, and Bill had to give him instructions about how to get back to the marina.  This afternoon, I did several loads of laundry and Bill rode his bike to the ABC store to replenish his supply for our Chesapeake cruising.  I just made it back from the Laundromat before the bottom fell out – a really bad storm.  We learned later on the news that there were damaging winds just south of here in Suffolk, VA, but we were safe here. 

We are docked across from a beautiful blue hulled boat called “Darling.”  It is a sailboat whose owner sails about two weeks every month.  The boat was built in England, has been to the U.S., then to Australia, and to the Mediterranean, and then back to Florida.  They will head to Canada after cruising in the Chesapeake.  The crew of four is very energetic and work all the time making the boat gleam.  It will head south to the Caribbean for the winter after Canada, unless someone purchases it before then.  It is for sale for $6 million – anyone interested?  Oh, by the way, the boat is 82 feet long and weighs 65 tons with a 105 foot mast.

We’ll eat dinner on board again tonight and head out in the morning for Yorktown to anchor in Sarah Creek.  The weather reports look good for the next 4 or 5 days, so we’re hoping they are right this time. 

I cannot get to the images that I’ve uploaded, so go to the album to view the pictures.  I can’t understand why I can’t select the latest images, but you can see them in the album.