Yorktown to Norfolk VA

Day 6, Friday, April 21, 2017

You can monitor my trip at the link: Little Star's Progress Live

The Restaurants along the walkway in Yorktown

We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning.  We fixed bacon, eggs and toast to get our day started.  We did some boat cleaning, had showers and cast off our lines at around 10:30.  We motored out into the York River in very light

winds and no waves.  We used our auto pilot in conjunction with the route on our chartplotter to travel down the York River and then down the western shore of the Chesapeake.  The weather remained warm and comfortable as we traveled south.

Little Star in the morning light

As the day progressed, we could see puffy cumulus clouds building to the west but nothing looked particularly threatening.  As we entered the Hampton Roads area, we noticed a shower over the Hampton, VA area.  To make a long story short, we were finally hit with

Three Aircraft Carriers in a row

a torrential downpour with relatively high winds.  At one point the wind meter showed 22 knot winds and the visibility had dropped well under ¼ mile.  Luckily it only lasted  less than 15 minutes and then the sun returned.

However, the rain was not the interesting part of the trip.  As we passed into the Elizabeth River, we passed the miles of Navy vessels that are in various levels of repair.  The first boats we saw were aircraft carriers.  At the mouth of the river, there were three of the behemoth monsters tied up side by side all of which were obviously being repaired.  As we moved down the river, we passed a large

number of other ships of different shapes and size.

As we approached Norfolk, I called the Waterside Marina to secure a slip for the night.  This place is in the heart of down town Norfolk.  We squeezed Little Star into their dock enclosure and realized that we needed to turn her around and back her into her slip.  The boat doesn’t back well so luckily Jim was at the helm and he made it look easy.

Big Container Ship that we had to dodge

We plugged the boat into shore power and turned on the A/C to chase off the humid hot air.  We also decided that a beer would be appropriate in this hot environment.  We fixed spaghetti and meat sauce for our evening meal and had to settle for cookies for dessert. 

After dinner, we spent time planning for the next several days.  The weather does not look good for comfortable travel.  They are calling for relatively high winds and rain for the next several days.  Approximately 65 miles down the Intracoastal Waterway, we will be crossing a large open water body of water called Abaxonal Sound which is notoriously rough in windy conditions.  It is not a safety concern but one of comfort that we working to provide. It looks like if we make for a very long day tomorrow, we can make the crossing Sunday when the conditions will be tolerable.  We shall see.

We also needed a few groceries so Janine and I decided to take an Uber ride to the store.  We walked up to a main road and signed onto the app and found that they would be happy to take us the 2 miles to the store for a mere 29 dollars.  We decided that we didn’t need those food items after all.