On
Saturday, (10/24/15)
up at 7AM, engine on, anchor up, and we were on our way by 7:19. Dressed in all clean clothes!
Ran the entrance channel gauntlet out of Jackson Creek with no issues. Passed 3 boats who
decided to skip all that and anchored outside, in the outer harbor.
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| Leaving Jackson Creek in the morning |
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| Sailboats in the outer harbor |
Heading
south, wind 10 kts on the beam, finally! We sailed with the engine at 2400 rpms
and the full main, and were wishing we had that jib to add another couple of
kts to our speed of only around 6 kts. Sunny day, comfortable, cool but not
cold. Seas 1 ft, clear. Heard about Hurricane Patricia hitting Mexico with 200
kt winds! Stopped wishing for more wind.
We were traveling south, along with a tug, “Ivory Coast”,
pulling a barge. Chuck radioed him to find out his intentions. Chuck: “Ivory
Coast, this is the sailing vessel Summer Wind. Are you happy with your course?”
IC: “I’m never happy with my course!” Laughs. More discussion. Resolved to
continue doing what we were doing, coursewise.
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| "Ivory Coast" our traveling companion for the day |
While we were heating food for lunch in the microwave, our
knot meter (speedometer) suddenly stopped displaying. (Power overload?) Tried to turn it off
and back on, but no difference. Ok, at least it wasn’t the depth meter, which
we can’t live without. We don’t need to know how fast we are going, except as a
game to calculate when we’ll get to our destination. (Although if the
calculation doesn’t work in our favor, we sometimes add rpms to get there
before dark.) We still had speed displayed on our backup Garmin. Chuck decided
he would check fuses later.
On to Virginia. We got inside Portsmouth Harbor, an amazing
place! Huge commercial vessels (shipping containers, oil tankers) and enormous
military ships line all of the ports. Cruising sailboats and cruising
powerboats were going everywhere. Day sailors were floating around, oblivious
to their surroundings. One almost crossed in front of Ivory Coast, another
almost hit a passenger ferry right before Chuck yelled to him, and a third went right
in front of a HUGE warship that had been announcing his imminent departure over
the radio for more than 10 minutes. Ivory Coast stopped off in one of the huge
commercial anchorages.
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| At the entrance to Portsmouth Harbor, with Ivory Coast behind us |
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| A chaotic mixture of pleasure, commercial and military vessels in Portsmouth Harbor |
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| A careless sailboat was narrowly missed by Navy Warship |
We managed to stay out of everyone’s way and continued on, into the Elizabeth River, where we stopped for fuel. After the engine was
shut off and back on, the knot meter resumed working, hurray!
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| Railroad bridge, fortunately, in its "open" position |
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| One of many beautiful scenes of industrial activity in Portsmouth Harbor |
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| Gilmerton lift Bridge, beginning to raise, at our request |
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| Gilmerton lift bridge, fully raised for us |
We continued through
the Gilmerton Lift Bridge, under the huge I-64 highway bridge and into the
Dismal Swamp. We anchored at 6:30 PM right outside the lock, since no one can
pass through there until the first lock opening at 8:30 AM.
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| In the Dismal Swamp, finally! |
Sunday (10/25/15),
we woke up at 6:30, made breakfast and waited for the lock to open. I popped my
head outside to find a calm cool morning. Damp, but no rain, it smelled like
piney woods. Wonderful! (Reminded me of scout camp when I was about 10 years old.)
Two powerboats arrived to go through the first lock with us.
We lined up behind both of them, so they could be on their way. We planned to
tie up at Elizabeth’s Dock, just south of the lock. For unknown reasons the locking took a long time today. But
it was a lot of fun. We got to meet and talk to people in both of the other
boats, and Chuck got to play conch horns with Robert, the lock master.
We tied up at Elizabeth’s Dock and had a very active day.
After 11 days on the boat it felt great to get out and move! We walked to the
dollar store, about a ½ mile away, and picked up some canned goods. Walked back
to the boat, dropped off our purchases, as well as the coats, hats, and gloves that we had dragged along. We rode
our bikes to the CVS, about 2-3 miles away in the other direction, to get
medicine refills. We went to a nearby Mexican restaurant for lunch, which was
VERY genuine. We didn’t recognize many of the menu offerings but the food was
great.
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| Restaurant and Tienda (grocery store) |
We bought some sweets to take home at the adjacent “tienda”, and rode the bikes back to the boat. Once there, we again
dragged out the grocery cart and headed on foot to the Food Lion, next to the Dollar
Store, for fresh fruits and vegetables. (We could not have carried cans and
produce in one trip.) Each way on the last trip, we walked through a Church
Bazaar, which had great music, vendors and kids in Halloween costumes “Trunk or Treating” at the backs of decorated cars (with candy!) parked in a circle in the parking
lot. Chuck found some wonderful sweets for us from one of the vendors.
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