Monday, October 17th we left Cape May after a
great visit with family.
Our last overnight was so pleasant I was not dreading
this one. We were very fortunate to see
some very cool things on this part of the trip. In the afternoon we saw a whale
breaching in the distance. It spent quite a long time on the surface slapping
the water with its tail and flippers.
The evening was very clear so we had a wonderful view of a rocket
launch. The sky started glowing at the
horizon, then a bright orange fireball climbed into the sky.
In the morning when we were approaching Norfolk we saw our
first pelicans of the trip. They are my favorite birds. Going through Norfolk is impressive with all
of the Navy ships tied up, including the new Zumwalt.
The Gilmerton Bridge is restricted (will not open) from 3:30
to 5:30 p.m. so we stopped for fuel and water around 3:00, then still had to
circle around in front of the bridge for over an hour before it opened. The bridge tender was very nice on the
radio. We went through the Great Bridge
Lock just before sunset and tied up alongside the waterway to some trees just
as the sun was going down. TAMURE was on
the other side of the waterway so we called them on the phone. It was great finally catching up to them, but
after being underway for over 30 hours we were too tired to visit.
Wednesday we decided to spend the day at Great Bridge, run
some errands, and do some boat projects while resting up from the previous two
days. The weather made a dramatic
change, it was 93 degrees in the afternoon.
Scott and Kitty came over to our boat for dinner. We are enjoying having a boat big enough to
comfortably have guests.
Thursday was a nice sunny warm day and we had a pleasant day
of motoring to Broad Creek. We had a fun
time on TAMURE with Dan and Donna from GERTIE. It was a flat calm evening which
was a good thing for sleeping. Luckily
we put the screens in because when we looked out there were thousands of bugs
on the boat. In the morning every
surface was covered with dead bugs.
The sunrise on Friday was gorgeous with the sun shining
through the mist. We had another nice
day on the waterway. Off Tuckahoe Point
one of the dishtowels fell overboard so we had a chance to do a man overboard
drill. We anchored for the night in the
Pungo River. When we came into the
anchorage we circled around where we planned to anchor to make sure there was
plenty of swing room. We went below for
a few minutes and when we came up on deck again we were shocked to find we were
right next to a small grassy island. We could not believe both of us missed
this, then we realized that the “island” was undulating in the waves. Bill checked it out in the dinghy and found
that it was a floating mat of grass. We
dinghied over to TAMURE for dinner. The wind was expected to increase to 15-20
after 8:00. At exactly 8:00 the wind
suddenly when from about 5 knots to 20 knots. We made a hurried goodbye and had
a fast downwind dinghy ride back to the boat.
Saturday morning was still windy so we decided to head for
the Pungo Creek, about 15 miles south.
Before we could leave Bill had to clear a huge mass of grass from the
anchor rode. Although the wind was
15-20, gusting to 25 it was a beautiful day.
The sun was glinting off the water, the white caps were shining, and
there were hundreds of small puffy clouds.
We stopped in Bellhaven for fuel which was challenging due to the wind,
then anchored in Pungo Creek near TAMURE.
Sunday the temperature had dropped into the high 40s/low 50s
in the morning. We pulled up the anchor and set out for Bear Creek. The wind came up from a useful direction and
we had a FANTASTIC time sailing! It is
rare to be able to sail in the ICW, but we were able to sail for hours. I love this boat! It is so much fun to sail. We were making such good time that we
continued on and anchored for the night in Broad Creek off the Neuse River. We had drinks on TAMURE with Ben, Tambi, and Molly from SANDFLEA.
No comments:
Post a Comment