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| Waiting for the Bridge to Open |
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| Transiting Great Bridge Lock |
Adios to AYB
We awoke to clear
skies and cooler temps on Wednesday and just before 0900 we made our escape
from AYB. Within a half hour we were
through the Great Bridge lock and bridge and we resumed our northern journey. Soon thereafter Ghost Rider was beyond the remoteness of the
Chesapeake City area and into the busy industrial and military ports of
Portsmouth, Norfolk and Newport News.
This is an area where you need to pay attention to traffic.
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| Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Va. |
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| Navy Yard at Newport News |
The Naval Yard in Portsmouth is one of the largest shipyards
in the world, where the specialty and focus is repairing, overhauling and
modernizing navy warships. It's the oldest (circa 1767) and largest
industrial facility that the U.S. Navy has.
And they have some impressively sized ships there, including the
aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush (CVN-77), for what the U.S. Navy calls
“Planned Incremental Availability” – aka PIA, which is navy-speak for “lots of
maintenance.”
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| More Carriers at Newport News |
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| Carrier at Newport News |
(Side note: The navy is down to 10
carriers since the sequester budget cuts, and thus they run them hard; such
complex beasts require a lot of down time for maintenance…typically each
carrier is only deployed 20 to 25% of the time, all the rest is spent on
repairs, refits and training.) Likewise, the navy yards at Norfolk and Newport News are
equally impressive – we cruised for quite long stretches in close proximity to lots of floating grey steel.
We finally exited the ICW around 1230 (literally….it ends in Norfolk) and entered the wide expanse of the Chesapeake Bay. It was good to be back in big water again. The winds had picked up to around 15K with occasional gusts higher, thus we were in some short, hard chop of 2-3 footers at short intervals and took some spray. But it was still a very pleasant day out there, with air temps staying right around 80F, and water temp down to a reasonable 83F. After the last few weeks of heat indices above 100F, this felt really good.
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| Ghost Rider, Adventure & Their Fountain |
We also fought an opposing current most of the day in the
big bay, which combined with the head seas and wind brought us down to between
5K and 6K SOG, making for a fairly long day.
We pulled into the Deltaville Marina around 1900, then got the boat and
ourselves squared away per our usual “everything needs a serious bath”
routine.
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| Nordhavn 55 Adventure |
As it turned out, we were docked right next to a Nordhavn
55, Adventure, owned and crewed by
Brad and Lorraine – who coincidentally hail from Cape Coral, FL, directly
across the river from our condo in Fort Myers.
Yup, it’s a small world. Even though
we didn’t complete our cleanup routines until nearly 2100, they graciously
invited us over for a late happy hour (with seared freshly caught tuna), and enjoyed an excellent evening together.
As for boat business….Ghost
Rider ran well today with no anomalies, and the standby autopilot pump held
its own in some sloppy conditions. It
was a thankfully boring day in terms of boat system events.
We slept in on
Thursday (04-Aug) and spent the day relaxing at Deltaville as well as
looking at routing options between here and the Boston area. Late that afternoon, yet another Nordy couple
joined us on the docks, Jo and Robbie who have their Nordhavn 47, Southern Star, at a nearby boat yard for
some work. We enjoyed happy hour aboard Ghost Rider, and then we piled into
Brad and Lorraine’s other vessel, a
gorgeous go-fast 34’ Fountain center console, and we boated (at one point at
about 60 mph) around the Deltaville peninsula to a small and charming waterside restaurant,
Merroir. If you’re into
fresh-off-the-boat oysters, clams, crab cakes and flaky white amberjack filets,
it’s the place to go in this area.
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| Heading to Dinner on Brad's Go-Fast Boat |
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| Departing Deltaville (Pic Courtesy of Lorraine & Brad) |
We departed
Deltaville on Friday morning (05-Aug) and headed further north up the
Chesapeake Bay towards an anchorage at the mouth of the Patuxent River, a short 8 hour journey of 55 NM. The weather was good -- winds died down, so it was a smooth ride with temps in the mid-80's, with sun filtering through a high layer of cirrus.
We were joined by Jo and Robbie’s N47, Southern Star, in a loose trail
formation – they departed Deltaville about an hour after we did since they had
to wait for an acceptable tide on the north side of the peninsula. (By the way, they're from New Zealand, and yes, they got here via their Nordhavn....they have some serious ocean crossing miles under their keel.)
We arrived at Pax River anchorage just after 1800, dropped the hook, let out 200 feet of chain and deployed the snubber. Southern Star arrived about 25 minutes later and did the same. Then we lowered the dingy, cleaned up, and motored Casper over for a very nice evening with Jo and Robbie, which included a fresh mahi dinner. It was a little noisy for a few hours, however....Navy F/A-18 pilots at nearby NAS Pax were conducting what they call night FCLPs - Field Carrier Landing Practice - which is basically simulating carrier night landings on a small patch of runway, and that involves a lot of noisy afterburner use.
Around 1630 hours we were nearing an area marked as a
“Prohibited Area” on the chart, and our planned course was within about a half
mile of its boundary; a nearby US Navy patrol boat contacted us on VHF channel
16 and asked us to alter course to clear the area by an additional 1.5 miles to the east due to live fire exercises in progress there.
We promptly rogered that and deviated as requested.
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| Ghost Rider and Southern Star Anchored at the Mouth of the Patuxent River |
