Once more unto the breach

We are under way westbound in the Albemarle Sound, breaking new ground for us as we begin the "Albemarle Loop," a cruise around the sound that involves a half dozen free docks, some with power and water. We've always been in too much of a hurry through here, or had too short a weather window, to do this cruise, and we are looking forward to it.

Vector tied to the town dock in Columbia, NC this evening. A pontoon boat is our only neighbor.

It's been a full week since I last posted here, and a busy one at that, so there is much to catch up. Starting where I left off, with "the plan."  We still don't really have much of one, but we have at least decided to continue south, albeit at a relaxed pace. We have neither a destination nor a schedule, leaving us the freedom to do some spontaneous side trips like this one.

Dolphins playing in our bow wave inbound to Hampton Roads. Always a good sign.

Just after I wrapped up my last post, we rounded Old Point Comfort, entering the very busy Hampton Roads area, where we both had our attention on the traffic and conditions. Our route south along the Elizabeth River shoehorns us between the security zone for the navy base, and the edge of the ship channel, and on this pass, a working dredge complicated matters by forcing us out to mid-channel, threading our way through the traffic, which included the USNS Red Cloud making her way out of port.

"The Lone Sailor," Norfolk. I snapped this on Veterans Day.

We had a fair tide from Old Point Comfort all the way to Portsmouth, and arrived at High Street Landing just as the 3:30 ferry was departing. We found exactly one available spot inside the basin, just long enough for Vector but involving squeezing in behind the ominous fake paddlewheel of a stored ferry (map). One boater ran onto the dock, gesticulating wildly that we were too large for the space, or something like that, and trying to wave us off. After it became clear I was ignoring his warnings, he came over to take lines and was miffed that we neither need nor wanted his help. It took me a long time to come alongside; regular readers may remember that the pilings stop short of our rub rails at many tide levels, and I had to land dead square on our fenders.

Vector squeezed in between a sailboat and the bulkhead. You can see the ferry to our port quarter.

After getting squared away, I carted the recycling off the boat and took a short walk around town to see what was new. The Dollar General store that we sometimes relied upon for milk or other essentials has closed up, along with the Gosport Tavern. A new craft brewery has taken up residence, as well as a chandlery called Mile Zero Marine; I could not figure out if they were in any way related to the Mile Zero Marine that folded up in town a decade ago.

Dollar General no longer. A crappy store, but I will miss the convenience.

In the evening we walked over to the Tidewater Marina, where Dorsey and Bruce had docked Esmeralde, to join them for dinner at the marina restaurant, Fish & Slips. Fellow boaters Tim and Diane, who live in the area, drove in to join us. It was a fun evening, and we enjoyed getting to know Diane and Tim.

I am even sadder about Gosport Tavern.

Monday was, of course, Veterans Day, and as had happened to us on Memorial Day a few years ago, we soon found ourselves surrounded by city employees setting up folding chairs and a lectern for the memorial celebration. They also cleaned out all the leaves in a hundred-yard radius. We set our chairs up on the aft deck to take in the event. Unlike the last time, when Fifth District Commander, Rear Admiral Laura Dickey, stopped by Vector for a chat afterwards, we had no such visit from the current Commander, Rear Admiral John Vann, who was the featured speaker.

RADM Vann delivers his remarks. The USS Kearsarge, LHD-3, makes a fitting backdrop in the BAE maintenance berth.

After the ceremony, Bruce dropped by with his very fancy antenna tester to help me diagnose a long-standing cross-talk problem with my VHF radios. Louise kept calling it a "play date." We spent maybe an hour on it, and identified a lash-up of connectors and barrels that was suspect. After Bruce left I immediately ordered new connectors to our next stop to see if that would help.

Post Secondary Brewing is a welcome addition. I did not have my growler with me when I came across it. Next visit.

In the afternoon I took the ferry to Norfolk to walk around. I found the Waterside entertainment complex, right next to the ferry dock, seems to have entered the same sort of slump that led to its demise a decade ago, before it was completely renovated. The MacArthur Center downtown shopping mall has one foot in the grave, and the two shopping "arcades" were dead quiet.

Through the window at Mile Zero Marine. They are clearly a Victron dealer.

I walked for the first time, after numerous Norfolk stops, to the Freemason Harbor area, where I found a decent dinghy landing and an oriental garden with a pagoda restaurant. Good to know for our next stay at Hospital Point. At dinner time we ended up right back at Fish & Slips with Bruce and Dorsey, this time sitting at the bar. It was prime rib night, which turned out to be quite good.

Freemason Harbor basin. Looks like a good place to land the dink. I wonder who'd complain if we docked Vector.

Tuesday was much cooler, and a quiet day. I had a nice morning walk with Bruce (another play date?), and a separate shorter walk with Louise. But the day's highlight had to be the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush, CVN-77, passing us on its way north downriver from a maintenance berth at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth to an outfitting berth at the navy base on the Norfolk side. Two tugs pushing astern provided the propulsion and a pair at the bow assisted the steering, while a Seahawk helicopter orbited overhead on security detail. I joked with Bruce and Dorsey that the stern was still passing us as the bow was passing them.

USS George H. W. Bush passing High Street Landing.

In the evening the four of us walked down to High Street Pizza & Pour House for a farewell meal of deep dish pizza. It is uncharacteristic of any of us to spend this much contiguous time with another couple, between our evenings in DC and in Portsmouth. For whatever reason, it just comfortably happened this way this time, and we very much enjoyed the time we spent together. They've already left us far in their wake, and we won't see them again this season unless we end up stopping in Key West.

Her stern passing a long time later, revealing the two tugs serving as propulsion for this maintenance repositioning.

After three very pleasant days in Portsmouth, we dropped lines Wednesday morning, timing our departure to arrive at Top Rack Marina at slack water, as their fuel dock is perpendicular to the current. We gave ourselves extra time to slow roll against the tide, but our plans were derailed when we were first stopped by the Belt Line railroad bridge, and then stopped by Norfolk Southern Bridge 7 for an Amtrak train. When all was done it took us two full hours to run the seven miles from High Street to Top Rack.  Fortunately the current was still mild; we spent an hour bunkering 850 gallons and taking on water.

Monticello Arcade, Norfolk.

Esmeralde, meanwhile, left at first light for the run to Coinjock, and sounded a "Captain's Salute" on their whistle as they passed Vector. We were still snuggled under the electric blanket when we heard it, puzzling over the one long and two short blast signal, coming as it did, among the incessant one long, three short signals of the ferry. I'm sorry we were not on deck to give them a wave. The Norfolk/Portsmouth to Coinjock run is more typical than our slower-pace stop in Chesapeake, and Esmeralde had plenty of company.

Scope Arena and Chrysler Hall, Norfolk.

Lots of boats run faster than that, or get a later start than they did for whatever reason, and we had some mighty annoyed skippers waiting with us at Belt Line and Bridge 7, worried they'd miss out on the last of the prime rib at the Coinjock Marina restaurant. Most of them blew past us under way, and whoever did not, including the sailboats, all passed us while we were bunkering. But the joke was on them, because in the middle of the pack was the tug Gold Coast, pushing a loaded bunker barge. The tug and barge went right to the head of the line at the lock, and nothing else can lock through with a red flag load.

Oriental Gardens park and pagoda restaurant, Norfolk.

We arrived at the lock for the 3:30 locking, and everyone who had passed us before noon was still in the lock waiting to be locked through. That meant they'd all be waylaid by the rush hour lockdown at the Centerville Turnpike bridge and would not get through there until 6pm, well after dark. Not only did they miss the prime rib, they missed dinner altogether, and had to run Currituck Sound in the dark. The smartest among them called it a day and stopped at Atlantic Yacht Basin.

These two exotics were parked outside a $10 haircut joint in downtown Norfolk. I saw one of the drivers go in. Gotta save somewhere to make those car payments.

Adding insult to injury, we were late enough to the lock that the "good" starboard side, which is lined with rubber fendering, was full, and the lockmaster instructed us to come all the way forward on the port side and fender for the concrete wall. That meant that we passed every single boat and were the second to leave the lock, right after the boat immediately to our starboard. All the delay meant we arrived to the free bulkhead in Great Bridge just before 4pm to find it completely empty, and we had our pick of spots, taking the one closest to the bridge (map). Three sailboats that had locked through with us tied up behind us.

A pizza place in Norfolk is using Cushmans as delivery vehicles. Clever.

With plenty of time before dinner I made a quick walk through town to see what was new. The nice walkway along the docks has been finished, complete with spiffy walkway lighting. A new pizza joint has opened just a short walk from the wall, but they serve no beer. I picked up a few things at Dollar Tree and a couple of bagels for the morning at Panera Bread, forgetting there is a much better bagel place across the canal. We walked together to Vino for dinner, our current favorite in town and closest to the dock.

Classic steakhouse in a classic building, Norfolk.

We had planned on a two-day stay here, which is nominally all the city allows, and as such I had Amazon items coming to the nearby locker on Thursday, knowing they might be late enough that I would not be able to pick them up until Friday morning just before departure. So we had all day Thursday in town, and we started the day with a provisioning run to the nearby Kroger.

USS Wisconsin, BB-64, has a lot of holiday lights. I'm sorry I could not see it at night.

Later in the day, before the rain started, I walked around town again, stopping at Walgreens for my flu shot and picking up some much better bagels at NY Bagels across the canal. High spring tides had the lock closed for a few hours in the middle of the day, and our entertainment was listening to the effects of this on the radio. 

High Street Basin. The sailboat that was in front of us left. The parked ferry also went out and then came back, we assume for a routine engine run. It pushed us hard against our fenders.

It was raining all afternoon and I got some rainy-day projects done, including fixing the fresh water pump switch, which was "bouncing" and causing the pump to stutter toward the end of its cycle. When dinner time rolled around it was still raining, and we opted to just go right back to Vino because it was close. My Amazon delivery, as I had predicted, occurred well after dinner and I opted to wait till morning, after the rain, to pick it up.

I'd love to have seen this happen. Someone's bow smashed the nice new rails on the Portsmouth river walk.

Friday morning we ought to have been shoving off, but a forecast of high winds on Currituck sound along with a gale warning and small craft advisory had us remain in port, overstaying our welcome but with a "safe harbor" weather excuse. As if we needed any confirmation, just before they again closed the lock due to high water, the tug and barge Royal Engineer locked through, but then tied to the dolphins just west of us, announcing he was staying put due to high winds on Currituck Sound.

Us, some sailboats, and the Royal Engineer waiting out weather in Great Bridge.

The decision to stay an extra day gave me plenty of time for a leisurely stroll to the Amazon locker for my vhf connectors and some LED indicators I want to add to the transfer switch. I opened up the locker and removed three packages, closing the locker back up before realizing I was only expecting two items, and I had expected them to arrive in a single box.

I stopped in the hardware store to look at wood trim and I grabbed some free popcorn. They're putting it in the same bags they use for self-serve nuts and bolts, with blanks on the back for quantity, SKU, and price. I'm sure these are not food-service rated. Grease stains indicate freshness.

A quick inspection revealed that I had my own package, which I opened immediately in order to discard the outer packaging, as well as two other packages addressed to two other individuals. I stuffed those in my pack unopened so I could return them to Amazon, puzzled that the Amazon delivery person would indiscriminately stuff multiple items into a single locker.

When I got home I opened a chat with Amazon about the extra packages, and the chatbot cheerily told me to just keep them. It collected no information about them, so I foresee Amazon chats from those two recipients as well. One package turned out to be a women's thermal shirt, size small, which Louise is forwarding to our size small niece, who skis. And the other turned out to be, umm, well, I'll just post a photo of the label.

I Googled all the numbers but can't tell if this is "natural," clear, or rainbow color.

Out of an abundance of curiosity we Googled the intended recipient, a lovely young lady who lives in the area. There is absolutely no non-creepy way to reunite her with her lost love, especially considering she likely had reasons for sending it to a locker rather than her home. We hope she achieves satisfaction at a later date. The item is still in its unopened shrink-wrapped package and we are mulling over to whom we should send it; certainly we can not just drop it at Goodwill. The whole episode, along with reactions to a social media post about it, was our entertainment all afternoon.

I made the mistake of starting the VHF connector replacement late in the afternoon, only to discover after cutting off the old one that the new ones do not fit the cable. They need to go back to Amazon, but I also had to jury-rig things to get the radio working again after cutting off what had been a working connector. Fortunately I have some universal coax splices in my kit for just such emergencies and I was able to patch it back together by day's end. We walked across the canal to Buckets Bar and Grill for dinner, which had surprisingly good burgers and Vienna Lager on draft.

Albemarle sound towards the latter half of today's cruise. It seldom looks like this.

Yesterday morning we dropped lines for the 0800 opening of Great Bridge Bridge to run the gauntlet of three diabolically-spaced bridges. Fortunately, on the weekends the middle bridge, Centerville Turnpike, opens on demand, and so we were able to get through at 0825 instead of 0830 and had a more comfortable, but still high-RPM, run to the North Landing Bridge. Once through that at 9am we throttled back to our most leisurely cruise speed and had a very pleasant run all the way to the North River.

Three sailboats that had made the two bridges right behind us called to ask if that was our normal cruise speed, as I think they wanted to run just a little faster. But when they learned we draw 6', they all decided to stay right behind us and let us blaze the trail. We were like the mother duck all the way to Coinjock, with our three ducklings behind. They all peeled off at Coinjock Marina and we had the channel to ourselves the rest of the day. Once in the embayment that is the mouth of the river, we pulled off to Camden Bay for northwesterly protection and dropped the hook (map). We had three sailboat neighbors overnight.

Last night's sunset over Camden Bay, North River.

This morning we made our way back to the channel to cross the bar out into the Albemarle Sound, then made a hard right and set course for the Scuppernong River, which leads to the small community of Columbia, NC. I started typing this mid-sound, but I had to set it down as we approached the bar of the Scuppernong.

Approaching the Scuppernong in calm conditions.

Both our charts and local knowledge told us there is a very narrow bar channel with 7' of depth, and while the lowest we saw was 7.9', the channel was narrow indeed. Once across the bar things opened up, and we cruised another 45 minutes upriver, tying up at the town dock just before the fixed bridge (map). The town, along with the other six stops on the "Albemarle loop," offers 48 hours of free dockage to visiting cruisers. It's an older dock, but it has working 50-amp power and a water spigot.

Town Commons, right next to the dock, with Main Street behind. Louise for scale.

Sadly, there is not a single restaurant in town open on Sunday evening, and even if one of the three options had been open, none serves beer. We verified this with a short walk around town on arrival, and set our expectations for leftovers aboard. I returned ashore stag for a beer run to the nearby Food Lion, and then a lovely walk along the boardwalk trail through the cypress wetland of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. I'm sorry we missed the visitor center there.

Boardwalk nature trail.

While it is nice to have the power and we are allowed another night here, nothing is calling us to stay in this town, and so in the morning we will cast off lines and head across the sound to one of the other stops. The two western-most stops are not Vector-friendly, and so we will head either to Edenton or to Albemarle Plantation. We're looking forward to stops with at least one dining option.

Some maintenance may be in order.

We've learned our friends Stacey and Dave aboard Stinkpot are headed in this general direction, aiming for the Dismal Swamp Canal, which will let them out at Elizabeth City. That's our final stop on the Albemarle Loop, so we are adjusting our timing to intersect with them there. That will be almost a week before Thanksgiving, but we are now giving serious consideration to a standing offer for Thanksgiving dinner together, which would mean tagging along with them wherever for a week. Unless they go someplace too skinny for us (see, they always have an out if they need it), that's as good a plan as any.