Buck Island South Anchorage to Hospital Point Anchorage, Norfolk. Distance: 52 nm/Time: 10 Hours
So, as we left off, I was going to prep my boat for going into Coinjock Marina on Monday because of the low pressure system off the Carolina’s which was supposed to build and possibly become a tropical depression (which meant getting all my dock lines and fenders positioned, lowering my solar panels, etc.). So I did. And of course, as soon as I went to all that trouble, the forecast changed! The low was now forecast to not be as strong and just peter out as it went ashore. So the wind was forecast to remain about what I had already been experiencing; there would just be a lot more rain. I didn’t see the need to spend $300 now at Coinjock for two nights, so decided to just stay put. The forecast still called for Wednesday to be the break in the strong NE winds.
It turns out the next two days were very cloudy and rainy, so I just left the solar panels in the down position because: 1) They would need to be down when I transitioned through the Great Bridge Lock on Wednesday; and 2) They weren’t doing me any good anyway because of the thick cloud cover.
At this point, I was glad that I had my new generator! When it’s a normal, mostly-sunny, summer day, I use up a net of about 15% of my batteries per 24-hour period (i.e., I use perhaps 25% of the batteries during that period, but the 740 watts of solar panels put in about 10% during the day). However, when it is totally cloudy, they do almost nothing. By Tuesday night, therefore, my batteries were down to 38%. So, I broke out the generator for a few hours and got them up to about 70%. That was good enough as 10+ hours of motoring the next day (now that my battery charger was working again) would top them off by the time I got to the Norfolk anchorage.
So, Monday and Tuesday were spent just hanging out. There was only sporatic rain on Monday, so I was able to squeeze in a workout and yoga, but it rained constantly on Tuesday. Really the only excitement I had on Monday was almost getting a sea gull to eat out of my hand. Over the weekend I had thrown away some moldy bread, but noticed a sea gull hanging out near my boat. So, I tossed a morsel of the dicarded bread to it, and well, as expected, this became a thing over the following few days. I would lure “her” in (I named her Henrietta) closer and closer. It got to the point by Monday when I would hold the bread out in my hand, and she would have the courage to get within a few feet. but, she could never quite make that final leap to take it from my hand. If I’d have had one more day, I think it would have happened, but Tuesday was too nasty to even go outside the cabin.
My route planning called for an enroute time of 10 hours and 22 mins to get to the Norfolk anchorage at my normal cruise speed. That didn’t account for the time delays at the four draw bridges and the lock, so I added another two hours for those. That meant an enroute time of over 12 hours! There would be barely enough daylight, so I would have to leave right at sunup, or even better, just before dusk. I didn’t want to navigate the ICW in the dark, but it would take me 10 minutes or so to clear the large anchorage, and weighing anchor would take 15 minutes, and dusk was around 6:30 am, so I planned to get up at 5:30 am.
I prepped the boat as much as possible Tuesday night, the hit the sack early. I ended up waking at 5:00 am, which worked out well as I weighed anchor just as it was light enough to see my way out of the anchorage. However, before that happened, I had a wonderful treat. (Not!!!!)
So, you remember me mentioning the midges, right? And all the anchorage reviews about how horrible they were? Well, evidently, the strong winds had kept them away for the previous four days, but now, with Wednesday morning calm as forecast, as I approached the companionway hatch to exit the cabin (which was covered by a screen), a heard a loud….humming noise? At first, I didn’t understand what it was. The wind through the rigging? Something electronic I had left running? Then I realized to my horror as I turned on my headlamp, it was thousands of bugs! My only hope was that they were midges (which don’t bite) rather than mosquitos.
They were, but the shear number of them made it almost as bad! They were in my eyes, in my ears, trying to get in my mouth–everywhere. The ones that weren’t flying were coating every surface of the boat and rigging that I could see. I knew the only hope was to get underway as soon as possible and hope that the relative wind created by moving would blow them off the boat. (It didn’t.)
I just had to try to ignore them as much as possible while I went through the weighing-anchor procedure. This was complicated by keeping the screen over the companionway hatch as much as possible–as I frequently went in and out of the cabin for things–to keep them from getting inside the boat. Other than the midges, getting underway was straight-forward (lots of mud on the chain, but my salt-water wash system for spraying the chain and anchor worked great again).
As I took the wheel and steered out of the anchorage, the midges were still flying around and getting on my legs, my hair, etc. I even discovered later that their blotches were all over my shirt. Nasty little critters!
The boat was a complete mess! It soon became obvious that my 6-knot motoring speed in calm wind was not going to be enough to lose them. I would try to shoo them away, they’d fly in a big cloud, then land right back on the boat (and me). I quickly gave up trying to do that. They seemed content to just sit in place if not disturbed, so I surrendered for the time being to having to share my boat with them.
The morning (also as forecast) turned out to be very foggy. I was glad my radar was working, not only because it could pick up boats coming at me (which turned out to be more than I had experienced in weeks because other boats had evidently also been waiting for the weather to break), but it also showed the channel markers to confirm where the GPS said I was. Understanding that I was no longer in Florida (where fog had been a rarity in the 30+ years I had lived there), the night before I had boned up on my fog sound signals and had my air horn handy in the cockpit.
And then the second bad thing happened: My autopilot started doing its crazy thing again. It had done this coming out of Elizabeth City on the Friday prior, but resetting it twice had solved the problem. Not today. At least not for about five hours! I don’t know if it had gotten wet from all the rain, but it just wouldn’t work. It seemed to have the suicidal tendency to immediately head out of the channel as soon as I engaged it. Or, it would fool me by working fine for a minute or two and then make a 45 degree turn for the shallow water!
It is very challenging to be single-handed without a working autopilot. Unless there is a wide, deep area, it is almost impossible to go forward on the boat to tend to lines, fenders, etc., or go below to get food, water, pee, etc. Without an autopilot, in a channel one can simply not leave the wheel for more than about 30 seconds before the boat inevitably starts to turn and head toward shallow water.
By about hour three and many attempts at resetting it, I had resigned myself to the fact that my autopilot was gone for good, and that was very depressing. It was such an old unit that I had doubts that I would be able to find any parts, yet new autopilots cost about $6k. However, out of desperation I didn’t give up and it slowly began getting less and less erratic until finally, after about five or six hours, it was back to its normal, sloppy (but manageable) self.
I don’t know what is causing this. I’m hoping it was just because of the almost 24 hours of rain we had experienced the day before. But, on the other hand, there had been no rain for days when coming out of Elizabeth City….I guess we’ll find out next time I get underway whether it’s just finally going bad, or just takes a few hours to warm up?!
The fog was a bit challenging, with visibility down to 1/4 mile at times. I was glad that when it was the worst, I was going through an area I had been through twice before (south of Coinjock). Luckily, all the boats that I passed going the other way were going nice and slow, so we all had time to avoid each other. (Nobody used sound signals because I think the visibility was at least enough to not make them necessary.) After the fog cleared, the weather the rest of the day was gloomy with occasional light rain and light winds, just as forecast.
The good thing was that I was making excellent time, and would through the entire day. The current was with me the whole time, so I averaged about 6.5 knots rather than my typical 5.5 knots. Also, the timing on the bridges and the lock worked out very well; I waited a total of only 20 minutes for all of them (but had budgeted 2 hours). And although I passed a number of sailboats, cabin cruisers, huge yachts, and tugs and barges all going south, I seemed to be the only one going north.
And most relieving experience of the entire day was going through the lock. This had been causing me various levels of stress since I started planning this leg way back in Oriental. I had been through the locks in the Okeechobee Canal with Nicholay when ferrying his boat back to Tampa in December. (See blog entry “Cruising Prequel–Part 4: (Moving Mexicana From Oriental, NC To Tampa, FL).) These locks required one person tending a bow line and another tending the stern line to adjust them constantly as the water level in the lock changed; it was a two-person operation. And, we were off-season then, so were always the only ones in the locks while going through.
But I was going to have to go single-handed, and all the photos I saw of this lock during my research showed it always full of boats. The reviews also stated that there was rarely anyone to help with lines. So, I was worried about having to enter the lock with five or 10 other boats and trying to get tied up against the side by myself. (These types of things can, unfortunately, stress me out for weeks. Actually in this case, months!)
I had early-on prepped my boat for all possible eventualities going through the lock (like you never knew whether you’d be port side to or starboard side to until you contacted the lock master on the radio). So, I had Serendipity’s bow and stern lines in place on both sides, fenders and boat hooks available on both sides, etc. But, as I passed through the Great Bridge Bridge drawbridge (no, not a typo) and saw the Great Bridge Lock immediately on the other side of it, I realized that I would be the only boat in the lock. Boats could only load in from one side each evolution, and there had been no one behind me for miles, so I would be the only one! Awesome! At least I didn’t have to worry about colliding with a yacht or something! Then, another comforting item; when I contacted the lock master, he told me that he would meet me to help with my lines! Perfect! It turned out to be a complete non-event, basically parallel parking to a cushioned dock with no wind. And, because it was an ebb tide?, the water didn’t rise or fall at all during the process.1 It was all very easy and simple.
Fifteen minutes after entering the lock, I was on my way again on the other side with just one bridge to go. This one was closed everyday between 3:30 pm and 5:30 pm, but once again I had the current on my side and got there by 3:10 pm, and so was through in a flash. That put me way ahead of schedule! I had only a couple more miles to my anchorage at that point.
But boy, what a sudden change of scenery after going through that bridge! Everything became very industrial very quickly: boat yards, ship yards, loading docks of every size and shape.
There were railroad draw bridges everywhere (which luckily remain up unless a train is coming through), and then the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (founded in 1800) came into view, where I saw my first aircraft carrier here.
It was all rather ugly but fascinating at the same time. The entire area was incredible, really, just how many shipbuilding facilities there were!
I took photos when I could in between the light rain showers and then saw the Norfolk Waterside area come into view off the starboard bow and knew my anchorage was near. Although pretty large, the anchorage turned out to be a bit smaller than I had been led to believe from the reviews, but there was luckily only one small (unattended) sailboat anchored there. Unfortunately, there were a bunch of crab pots. This has been one of the most exacerbating things, how crab pots can make anchorages virtually unusable. Not much to be done about it since most anchorages are just ad hoc places boaters find convenient to drop the hook. But happened to be a federally designated anchorage (marked on the nautical charts, and delineated by buoys and everything), yet some boneheads had scattered crab pots all over it! Why is this allowed to happen? In fact, it was actually the crab pots which had made the anchorage seem smaller than I had imagined. I had to motor around it for about 20 minutes to find a spot with enough separation from the crab pots to let me put out the appropriate scope (another reason I don’t like to get to anchorages in the dark). I finally found what seemed like the only spot that had enough space (barely) and dropped my hook around 4:30 pm. It had been a very long day, but about two hours shorter than I had planned on, so that was great! And what interesting scenery and sounds!
Throughout the day, there had been a couple short periods of wind gusts when I had run around the boat with a fly swatter trying to shoo the midges off, hoping they’d get blown free of the boat (and not be able to get back on). I was fairly successful, getting rid of probably half of them. The remaining half had started dying (as they are wont to do), so had become very lethargic and wouldn’t budge even if I tried prying them off the boat. What a mess this was going to be to clean up! By the time I was anchored, there were thankfully very few still flying around, so I was able to get in and out of the cabin with only a handful making it inside (which I quickly dispatched with the fly swatter). I’m hoping that by the end of tomorrow, all of them will be dead.
After getting the boat secured and the anchor alarm set, I poured myself a lovely dark and stormy, grabbed a cockpit chair, and went up on deck to enjoy the view of downtown Norfolk and all the interesting boat traffic that continually went by. It was going to be an interesting place to explore for a few days!
My plan over the next 5-7 days is to take my paddle board to the marina next door to try to schedule a bottom cleaner and a slip to coincide. I was starting to feel a vibration at certain RPMs, which I hope only means a prop that needs to be cleaned, so I want to get that done before continuing. I also need to top off my freshwater, diesel, and gasoline, and now do a thorough exterior cleaning of the boat. 🙁 I also need somethings shipped to me (including a Starlink!), so may try to get all that done while here. I’m hoping to limit my marina stay to just one night to try to save money.
While waiting for all of that to come together, there are supposed to be a bunch of cool things to see both on the Portsmouth and the Norfolk sides. Conveniently, there is a $2 ferry that goes between the two all day, making getting over to Waterside easy; the ferry terminal on this side is a short walk from the marina.
After departing here, I plan to continue north to the Chesapeake. Technically, I’m not in the Chesapeake until I exit the Elizabeth River, but I can almost see it from here!
- Unlike most locks, the purpose of the Great Bridge Lock isn’t to control the water level, but to keep salt water separated from fresh water. ↩︎