Hampton to Great Bridge Bridge

Day 20, Monday, October 17, 2016

You can monitor my trip at the link: Second Winds Progress Live

We are underway.  We all 20 boats headed out of the Bluewater Yachting Center at 7:00 sharp.  Or destination is called Great Bridge which is only about 22 miles from where we started.  The big concern is that there will be limited docking space along the way so we left early to try to be the first in line.

 

As usual on a night before some sort of happening, I didn’t sleep all that well,

Aircraft Carrier at Sunrise

however, a hot plate of sausage gravy over my toast brought me around.

The first 8 miles of our journey is in Hampton Roads which is made up of the confluence of three or four rivers.  At the opening of the area, I could see off in the distance a congregation of Navy vessels the most prominent of which is a huge aircraft carrier.  I took a bunch of pictures.  Further down the way, I passed another naval ship yard with a number of ships in various states of repair.  As I

Another one

moved on, I came upon another, and another, and another driving home the point that Norfolk, Newport News, and Hampton are definitely Navy towns.  I finally quit taking pictures about the fourth boat yard. 

Mingled in amongst all of the navy stuff were also large shipping ports with their huge stacks of containers waiting to be loaded on the monstrous ships that carry these things piled high upon their decks.  As I traveled down the main shipping lane, I passed 2 of the container vessels slowly heading out to sea.  As the Roads narrowed down to a large river, I realized that there was a container ship bearing down of me from

The big guy that was bearing down on me

behind.  I eased over to the side of the channel to give him plenty of room.  Alongside of him and behind me was a cruising trawlers.  The ship had slowed down and was traveling along at about 5 knots and had been joined by two tugs.  One of the tugs radioed the trawler asking him to back off and pass behind the stern of the ship so that they could take him into a terminal on the right hand shore.  The trawler acknowledged and sped up as did I in my little boat.  I swung over towards the left hand shore and watched as they maneuvered the big guy to his mooring.

You had best believe that they were watching

Finally the river turned into the narrow winding ICW.  We traveled through flat swampland as our route meandered along.  There were occasional dwellings and small industries along the way but for the most part, it was wooded swamp.  We passed under a number of lift and draw bridges that we left in an open position.  I travel slower than the masses so I am basically moving alone by myself.  I rounded one bend and there was a gaggle of sailboats bunched up starting to move under a lift bridge that had opened for them. I was probably a quarter of a mile behind them so cranked my little 9.9 engine up to full throttle and chased after them.  At wide open, I was making 6.3 knots and it felt like I was crawling.  Luckily, the bridge tender noticed me and kept a long line of traffic waiting while I scurried under his bridge.

The next hold up turned out to be a lock.  There were probably 25 boats lined up

The Bridge Lock 

waiting to pass through.  I held my position in line in the wind for probably an hour and a half before I got my turn to enter.  Locking single handed is a bit challenging because they want you to have both a bow and stern line securing you to the dock. Once in, and secure, they dropped us 1 foot!  At the end of the lock, we encountered the Great Bridge Bridge.  It was another backup.

This is the location where we planned to spend the night and our leader had worked it so that all of us got tied up to the wall.  I was the last boat in and then three more boats rafted up alongside of us.

The temp was 82 and quite warm so a couple of us headed out to a local Dairy Queen for a salty caramel chunky blizzard.  We had arrived at our destination at about 2:30 so I spent the rest of the day talking to others around me and tinkering with little things on the boat.