Day 121: Norfolk to Deltaville

Norfolk always seems a little too far for Ben and me to do for a weekend trip, so we weren't sure if we would make it to Deltaville in a day. After dinner Thursday night Ben routed the trip into the GPS and we discovered it was only 51 nm, which has become a pretty easy day for us at this point.

Norfolk is one of the busiest harbors on the east coast (here is where I should link to the source, but I just made that up). The harbor was busy with commercial and navy vessels as well as at least one other pleasure craft when we left Norfolk at 6:50 am. We heard an announcement on the VHF from a Coast Guard cutter about a commercial vessel that was requiring 1000 ft of clearance, we thought it was a little odd, but didn't really pay much attention. The wind was over 20 knots from the west, and we knew we might be able to sail a lot of the day so we went ahead and raised the main sail (with a reef) for the first time since Florida. About 15 minutes after we raised the main, we noticed a marine police zodiac with it's lights flashing behind us. We double checked that our radio was on and functioning, and continued on our way, assuming the boat would hail us if they needed anything. After some hand gestures from the police, and us raising up our radio several times indicating they should hail us, they finally came through on channel 16. I'm not sure what channel they had been on, but 16 is supposed to be used for hailing, so we're pretty sure they were accidentally on some other channel thinking they were on 16. The marine police asked us to keep to the right of the channel and out of the way of the approaching container ship. At the time the container ship was still aways behind us, but it did catch up quickly. It also had at least 3 marine police zodiacs, a coast guard zodiac and a coast guard cutter in the entourage. We also heard several more announcements on 16 about the container ship, it's Coast Guard buddy, and it's "no fly zone." We're not exactly sure what was on that container ship, but we've passed by many container ships on different trips to Norfolk and none of them ever required a 1000 ft.

We made it out of Norfolk harbor at about 9 and headed up the bay. We were a little nervous passing in front of this Naval Destroyer, and I had flash backs to the Coast Guard boat from our first gulf stream crossing, but it was pretty easy to see on the radar that we would pass way in front (and we did).

After we got into the bay, the wind died down a little and we shook out our reef. We thought about turning off the motors and actually sailing, but the GPS indicated we'd be back at the docks at 2 pm which made us realize we could actually get back to Charlottesville that night, so we decided use the motors to maintain over 7 knots. The wind died down a little bit in the afternoon, so we had to motor at the end anyway. We made it back to the dock about 2:30 and surprisingly my 1993 Mustang, which has been sitting in the marina parking lot, neglected since November 11, started right up. We packed the car to it's full capacity and had to leave a few choice things on the boat (including the pressure cooker, which we have fallen in love with). I'm sure we will be back soon to pick those things up. Also, the water was off at the docks, so we'll need to head back soon to wash the boat anyway.

We reset the GPS Trip Info on the second day, so completed just over 2708 nm in four months!

It was sad leaving Whisper, but we're excited to start our lives back up, and are proud of our accomplishment. It's also a really cool thing that we'll always be able to say we've done. We really enjoyed our time being part of the live aboard community, and are looking forward to being a part of that community again one day (although sadly we realize it will not be for a long time).

We are getting used to living on land again. Driving on the highway was a little scary - it felt VERY fast! We cannot believe how big our house is, or how much "stuff" we have. Ben has enjoyed the kitchen, although he is needing to "find" everything again. Daylight Saving Time was a good thing for us, we are now getting up at a reasonable time and are able to stay up past 10 pm. I'm really going to miss writing updates on my life, however my "regular" life is probably not interesting enough to blog about.