In the ICW

Leaving at 7 am, we had a pleasant sail & motor sail from Deltaville yesterday to Hampton Roads about 42 nautical miles to the anchorage at Fort Monroe,  Old Comfort Point.  We saw our first pelicans, numerous ocean tugs pushing coal, dredging platforms, ships, barges etc., shrimper style fishing boats, and a Carnival Cruse liner plus other ships in the Chesapeake Bay...the lower Chesapeake is like sailing on Lake Ontario, but much shallower and with numerous rivers entering along the way.

Our anchorage was a little noisy with the Highway but had a great view of ships leaving Norfolk Harbour.  This morning we left at 8 am  crossed the shipping channel to Norfolk Harbour.  This is a US Naval base with many warships, submarines, aircraft carriers, patrol boats etc. as well as commercial operations for ocean ships. 

There are also many dredging operations going on as many rivers converge here and they need to keep the harbour clear.  This is truly a huge and very busy harbour.  Keep your wits about you and your binoculars handy. We passed between an ocean tug pushing a dredging rig and huge loaded Maersk Container ship.  We didn't see the container ship in time to pass it to port as would we have preferred.

Leaving Norfolk Harbour, in the the Elizabeth River we motored at 6 Knots(speed limit) to wait at the first bridge for it to open, then zoomed to the next to wait for it to open, went through several more that were open, then a lock and another bridge where we were stuck for an hour waiting for a tug pushing two huge barges (commercial traffic has precedence). The chatter between the tug Captain and the bridge tender would indicate they were lovers (very amusing).  Then disaster!!!! The head backed up!  Here we sit at Atlantic Yacht Basin with assurance our repair parts will be here by 8:30 am. Cruising on a sailboat is often described as fixing boats in exotic locales - ours is not yet exotic.