Great Bridge to Hamton, Blue Water Marina

Day 21 Saturday, May 6, 2017

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

We fixed blue berry pancakes with ready bacon for our first meal of the day.  I had considered making a dash out into the Chesapeake and into the York River for an

This pretty lady spent the night with us at the marina

overnight stay in Yorktown.  However, when I actually charted out my course, I realized that that trip would be over 50 nautical miles and the weather forecast was calling for strong westerly winds blowing out in the open water.  We decided to head for Hampton, VA and pull into a marina instead.

We started the engine at around 8:00, headed out into the ICW and then pulled into the front side of the marina for water.  Our timing was perfect for the 9:00

Passing through the Great Bridge Lock with the tow boat

opening of the Great Bridge Bridge which opens on the hour.  Just past the bridge, we entered the Great Bridge Lock along with a “light” tug boat (one that was not pushing a barge), a power boat and a nice cruiser.  The friendly lock tender assisted us with our ropes.  Interestingly, when we were heading south, the lock dropped us down about a foot.  Today as we headed north, the lock again dropped us down about a foot.  Obviously, the recent rains caused the water below the lock to be higher than the river above.

This is Norfolk

From the lock, the three smaller boats followed the tow boat up the river.  I knew that we would be approaching a Gilmerton Intrastate Highway bridge about 5 miles up the river and if the other boats got very far ahead of me, the bridge would close before I could get through; so I powered after the others as fast as I could.  Still the distance between the tow and the rest of us continued to increase.  When we were about a mile from the bridge, I heard the tow boat skipper call the bridge.  The bridge tender asked if others were following and he said that there were two power boats and one sailboat.  The tender asked the tow if he wanted to wait for us and he said he would.  Whew!  That was luck.

From there, we slowed down and continued on through the amazingly busy

Huge old crane in the ship yard

industrial area around Norfolk.  As we moved out of the narrow confines of the Elizabeth River into the open water of Hampton Roads, the winds picked up from the west causing an uncomfortable chop.  We watched as what I thought was a small red Zodiac take off after the large cruiser that we had been following up the river.  Janine said it looked like just a dinghy.  I was cold so while Janine took the wheel, I went below to put on some long pants.  Before I could get changed, Janine called to me that there was a US Coast Guard Zodiac pulling up alongside us.  There were three Coast  Guardsmen, well two guys and a lady, who pulled up close and asked if they could board us.  Of course I said yes.  The young gal, who was piloting the boat maneuvered up against Little Star and while we were both moving, the two guys stepped aboard.  They performed a routine safety inspection.  They were really personable and fun to work with. The inspection, although thorough, was light

Coast Guard Cruiser that we passed. The mother ship for our inspectors

hearted and non-confrontational.  All the while the young lady was riding close in her boat and I am impressed with her skills.  When they finished, I asked if they wanted me to stop and they told me to keep going.  The gal pulled the rubber boat up next to our boat and they stepped over and zoomed off.  We had no violations.

The skilled young pilot

The ride across Hampton Roads continued to deteriorate as we headed towards the Hampton River and the Blue Water Marina.  We had called ahead and were advised to notify the dock when we were approaching.  I called them on the radio and received our slip assignment.  It was down a fairly narrow alley and turned out to be a short finger pier with poles to be used for mooring.  That meant that I would have to back in.  The wind was blowing at between 20 and 25 knots.  I

The young inspectors

slowed down at the slip entrance, turned away, put the boat in reverse and backed in as though I knew what I was doing. The guys at the marina office said that they would be there to help us but they were tardy so Janine and I handled it the like pros.  I may get the hang of handling this big boat someday after all.

I decided to attach the shore power chord before we registered and found that the only outlets that they had were for 50 amp chords and ours is a 30 amp.  We noticed that all of the other boats had adaptors so when we went to marina office to sign in and get ours, the guy at the dock said that all of them that they had were being used. So we couldn’t have power.  The main reason we need power is to keep our refrigerator cool.  Without shore power our refrig gets up to above 50 degrees overnight.  Last night, we started the engine and used the engine refrigerator compressor to chill the box and we had to do the same thing this evening. 

And modern huge cranes

The marina was hosting a huge boat show in which they were show casing some 75 new and used power boats that they had for sale.  There were throngs of folks crawling over these beautiful monsters. The cheapest one that we saw went for a mere $350,000.  Lots of big dollar cars in the parking lot.

Even in the boat during the afternoon, we were cold so we turned on the propane furnace which made for comfortable reading and napping.

For dinner, we decided that it was too windy to grill out and also, although we didn’t ask, most marinas do not allow you to grill while in a slip so we fried our last burgers on the stove and accompanied them with garlic mashed potatoes.

We spent the evening reading.  It was cold and windy outside.  

 We welcomed bed at 9:00.