Norfolk at festival time

It has been a full month since I posted here. It has been an eventful month, and there is much to catch up on, yet Vector has barely moved in that time, being just a hundred miles from where I last posted, as the crow flies. Almost the entirety of that movement was in the first few days, and we have spent the last three weeks in the Norfolk/Portsmouth area. Be forewarned: long post follows.

Tall ships on the Norfolk waterfront at night, from our anchorage.

I am typing from 30,000', as we wing our way west to Lake Tahoe for our niece's wedding in just a few days. I often do much of my blogging "underway," and I suppose this counts. It's hard to find a block of time in which to write when we are stationary and either getting things done or enjoying the area.

Vector in Great Bridge.

When last I posted here we had just arrived to Belhaven harbor. They have completely renovated the boat ramp at the western end of the harbor, with spiffy new docks (previously I had to tie up precariously to a concrete bulkhead), and I headed ashore to walk to Food Lion for provisions. With a storm coming in we put out additional scope, and ate aboard with the harbor rougher than we like for tendering ashore. After the storm passed I landed for a walk, and ended up with a surprisingly good ice cream from the joint downtown.

Louise surveys the Great Bridge market.

The next morning, Wednesday, we found ourselves in a conga line of northbound boats on the Alligator-Pungo Canal. We passed up our usual anchorage at Tuckahoe Point to make a bit more distance, ending the night at a new spot for us off Deep Point (map). We had a nice dinner aboard in this quiet anchorage.

Gosling season. The family at right is particularly large.

Thursday's forecast for Albemarle Sound had conditions steadily improving throughout the day, and so we remained in our calm anchorage until 10:30 to have more favorable conditions. We crossed the sound without issue, and, after arriving to the North River, we pressed on upriver to another new anchorage for us near Lutz Creek (map). We had our final dinner aboard for some time to come.

I came across this nice mural for the first time on this visit.

Friday morning we weighed anchor right at 8 am to time the 2 pm opening at the North Landing Bridge. That turned out to have been a miscalculation, as we found ourselves with more adverse current than anticipated, especially in the Coinjock Cut, and I had to increase RPM. Things got better on the North Landing River and we were actually a few minutes early.

Also my first visit to the Chesapeake library.

The spacing between the North Landing and Centerville Turnpike bridges is absolutely miserable, and I have to wick it up to 2200 rpm, our "run up" speed (we run this speed for about ten minutes every day to prevent wet stacking of the engine exhaust) for the entire half hour to make Centerville. Missing it by a few minutes means station-keeping for an entire hour. We made it with seconds to spare, putting us at the Great Bridge Bridge for the 3pm opening. There was plenty of space at the docks on both sides when we arrived, and after clearing through the bridge we tied up in our preferred spot on the bulkhead just west of the bridge (map).

Locking through at Deep Creek.

I needed a US mail box and I hoofed it to the closest one I could find, at the civic center. It's a miserable walk, with no sidewalks and hardly any shoulder. As long as I was over there, I stopped in to the library, which was very nice. It had fast Internet and plenty of seating with power outlets. With all of our previous go-to dining options here now gone, we walked to Chili's for the first time in a very long while. They at least have a decent selection of drafts.

The Dismal Swamp Canal was no small feat.

The remains of an original lock.

Being now quite early for our first appointment in Norfolk, we remained in Great Bridge another two nights. I made more than one run to Kroger for provisions, and Walgreens for meds; Great Bridge is a good "shopping stop" for us. I also returned to the Civic Center on the e-bike with a huge load of accumulated recycling; there is none available near the docks, but the city maintains a set of large dumpsters for the purpose across from City Hall.

Vector tied up at the City of Chesapeake's "Elizabeth's Dock" on the canal.

We dined at old standbys Lockside Grill and Woody's, both of which are just OK. The latter requires crossing the busy Battlefield Boulevard; going we were able to time it with a bridge opening, which stops the traffic. Coming back we were going to have to dodge traffic, but a line of geese and goslings decided to cross the road just as we arrived, stopping the traffic for a brief moment and we piggybacked on their good fortune. We also took in the Sunday Market in the park right next to us, grabbing lunch and dessert from a couple of the food trucks.

Vector at High Street. Usually there is a destroyer or an assault ship behind us at the shipyard, but this time it is a RoRo.

With yet more time to kill before we were due in Norfolk, we decided to do the very norther end of the Dismal Swamp route, just as far as the Deep Creek Lock and the free dock just beyond it. The canal past that point is really too shallow for Vector. We dropped lines to make the 9am lockage at Great Bridge to arrive in time for the 11am lockage at Deep Creek. On the way to the lock I called the lock operator to alert him we were coming and to ask if he could tell if there was room at the dock.

These oval markers are on many structures in Old Towne Portsmouth. Readers my age will recognize the symbol in the middle, relevant in light of this year's festivities.

Somehow it came up that we were going to spend the night and then turn around, and he tried to convince me that was not allowed. In actuality there is no rule against it, but evidently they've had trouble in the past with small boats using the dock as temporary storage (the dock has a 24-hour limit). Once he understood that we just wanted to see Deep Creek and that our boat was a poor candidate for continuing south he was more amenable, and by the time we left the following morning he was actually asking for us to return. He did ask us not to post the stay on social media — they really don't want this to be a trend — but I am taking the position that this blog does not qualify.

My first visit to Nelson Park. This piece weighs as much as our bus did.

We had carefully timed for the 11am lockage because that was close to high tide, which we very much needed for the last few hundred yards of the approach. After clearing through the lock we had no trouble easing over to the dock to tie up (map), although some fishermen had to move out of the way. We needed the deeper south end of the dock, where we found about 8'. The dock has 50-amp power connections, also free and very welcome on a warm day.

Sunset Thursdays free weekly concert in Festival Park.

I spent the afternoon walking through the lockside park, over to the old lock and the confluence of the creeks, and then across the new drawbridge, still under construction, to the little shopping center to check it out. There is a Food Lion, a few other stores, and the excellent El Puente Mexican restaurant, where we returned for dinner. A 32 ounce (!) draft Dos Equis Ambar was just $8.

We were surprised to hear hoofsteps outside, and looked out to see the Portsmouth PD mounted unit.

In the morning we walked the park a little together, and I continued on over the footbridge and back. We made ready to depart for the 11am lockage to have depth on the other side, but ended up waiting half an hour longer for southbound traffic. We had an easy cruise north to Portsmouth, but it was windy, blowing 20 gusting to 35.

Sunset over Portsmouth from our marina in Norfolk.

We arrived to the High Street Landing just as a bunch of commercial traffic was passing and I had to circle for a few minutes. In the heavy wind we really needed to land on the one bulkhead with tall pilings (map), which fortunately was empty. A day later the ferry guys asked us to move because they needed to store a boat there and it is technically their wall, but by that time the winds had abated and we were able to safely get over to the lower pilings with fenders deployed. We wallked over to the High Street Pizza and Pour House for dinner; thick Detroit-style pizza. Nowadays our favorite in town.

Our view across the marina basin.

We woke to the cruise ship American Liberty as our across-the-dock neighbor. American Cruise Lines and their frequent stops here is the reason we can no longer use the outside bulkhead, formerly a good back-up option for us when the basin was full. I had a nice walk around town, and had a brief touch-and-go meeting with friend Eric aboard Terrapin; shortly after tying up and before even disembarking he decided the low pilings were a no-go and headed to the anchorage instead.

This photo captures the entire essence of Jack Brown's Burgers in downtown Norfolk.

We remained at High Street two more nights, hitting up burger night at Baron's Pub, and a new venue for us, long-time High Street fixture The Lobscouser. This latter establishment turned out to be both more casual and better than we had expected, and it will henceforth be on the list of available options in town. While we were in Portsmouth I unstrapped the life raft and moved it to the port side of the boat deck in preparation of taking it to Viking in Norfolk for service.

We had no way to put on a cross-stern line until I asked the marina to move one of the adjustable cleats.

Friday began our reservation at Waterside Marina in Norfolk, a place we have not stayed in a decade. Little has changed. We crossed the harbor, all of about a half mile, landed at the pump-out dock to take care of business, and drove around to a slip in the basin (map). After a quick lunch we offloaded the life raft and I walked down to Enterprise, less than a mile from the dock, and picked up a rental car. Loading the raft into the car involved driving down the pedestrian promenade. I dropped the raft off at Viking mid-afternoon and then parked the car in the city garage across from the marina for the night. We walked to Grace O'Malley's on Granby Street for dinner. They have 20oz Irish drafts and decent pub fare.

The dying gasps of the MacArthur Center Mall. At least it was a good place to get my steps in on the 95° days.

We were up early Saturday to drive to the airport at 5:30am for Louise to catch her flight to California. This is the entire reason we opted to spend this week at Waterside rather than at anchor, so we would not be making zero-dark-thirty tender rides to high bulkheads with luggage for an even earlier Uber ride. I was happy to be able to schedule both the life raft and the ride to the airport on the same one-day car rental. After dropping her off I took a little scenic drive out Willoughby Spit, and I also scoped out our next marina across town. I was a little surprised to find the marina divided across two sides of a creek and I ended up calling them to make sure we would be on the side we expected.

Saturday market. Vector is hard to spot in the marina.

I had the car back at Enterprise a little after 9am, and I stopped for a nice breakfast at Hair of the Dog on Granby Street. I will just say the place is aptly named; the Betty White breakfast special comes with a shot of whiskey. I enjoyed it enough to return later in the week. The mercury climbed into the 90s before I finished my eggs, and I spent the rest of the day in the boat with all the ACs running, mostly making phone calls and ordering new eyeglasses. I went back out at dinner time for a burger at Jack Brown's Beer and Burger, which is literally the entire menu. It's off the list for us because there is nary a back on any seat, there is always a wait for a table, and the only vegetables to be found are the LTO for the burger. I sat at the bar so I marched right in.

Rotate aft turret 45° CCW and fire as they bear.

I got the rest of my walk in after dinner by strolling through the MacArthur Mall just a block away, because I knew it would be air conditioned. I've been watching this mall declining for several years, but I was stunned to find fewer than 10% of the stores occupied (the two anchor stores shuttered years ago), just one stall in the food court operating, and the stadium-seat 18-plex theater on the top level, which had seemed to be carrying the whole mall, dark. A quick search revealed that the entire building will close at the end of June and be razed for a mixed-use development.

Anna Hyatt Huntington's The Torch Bearers in front of the Chrysler.

I spent the better part of a week stag, and I was happy to be at the dock, where I could get a walk in each day with little fuss, I could easily take in what the town has to offer, and I could walk to dinner each evening, where I always chose a venue with a nice seated bar. I was also happy to have the power for the air conditioning, as afternoon temperatures were in the 80s or 90s most days.

One of the more unusual pieces in the extensive glass gallery.

During the course of the week I walked a lot, scoped out dinghy landings, and spent a lot of time working on travel plans and marina reservations. We need to stop in NJ for a while after Norfolk, a state we usually whiz through with all due haste, while I square away some things with my parents. There are a limited number of marinas we can even reach (NJ is all very shallow), and slips are scarce during the short boating season.

This hanging sculpture is made entirely of radiometers.

I had a lovely visit to the Chrysler Museum of Art, and separately to their Perry Glass Studio, where you can see glass artisans at work. Both were excellent and free, and I was pleased to see Anna Hyatt Huntington's The Torch Bearers out in front of the museum; I recognized it from a quarter mile away, as an identical casting can be found right in the middle of campus at my undergraduate alma mater, Stevens Tech; I passed that sculpture multiple times every weekday for four years. As with all her works, both castings were gifts of the artist.

Freemason Abbey restaurant. I ate downstairs in the bar.

I took in a market (weekly?) on the waterfront next to the marina, and I went to the Chamber Winds concert at the Attucks Theater. I found a comfortable spot at the bar for dinner at Chicho's Pizza, Freemason Abbey, 219 Bistro, and Grain, the rooftop tap room at Hilton The Main, where I happened to land on $5 burger night.

Newfound Chamber Winds at the Attucks.

Since we were here because of the convenient airport, and Louise was already out of town, I took one day for a whirlwind day trip to NJ to visit with my parents. I flew in and out of Philly so that I could use the American Airlines credit I had from the last-minute cancellation of our trip to the DR for our friends' wedding. The day started with a 4:45 Uber to the airport, and my return Uber got me back to the boat at 11pm after an hour-long delay in my return flight. It was a two-hour rental car drive each way for the trip from Philly out to where my folks are, near Manasquan Inlet.

Busy night for World Cup Soccer at the Waterside District. I was just passing through.

Louise had a return flight scheduled in around 7 Friday evening, and so Friday morning first thing I walked to Enterprise for another car, and drove up to Deltaville for the day to visit with Tim and Crisalida, whose aforementioned wedding we just missed, and help him out a little with their boat, which is in a boatyard there. Deltaville itself was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me, and we had a nice air-conditioned lunch in town before tearing into one of his HVAC units and looking at some electrical stuff. Driving over the bridge past Yorktown in both directions I noted some of the tall ships there, and a large festival on the waterfront.

We could just see a bit of fireworks over by the stadium after a baseball game.

I left Deltaville in plenty of time to get Louise at the Norfolk airport, with about a 45-minute leeway so I could grab a light bite for dinner either on the way or at the airport. Or so I thought. Traffic was backed up getting on to the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, and once I was on the approach and committed the two lanes of traffic had to part to let a fire truck and an ambulance through. A fire in the tunnel is a big, big deal, and I figured that was it for picking up Louise. We sat there at a dead stop for perhaps a half hour and then got moving again; the accident turned out to be outside the tunnel on the other end, but they close traffic ahead of the tunnel so it's not all stopped in there making fumes. I got to the pick-up just as Louise was getting to the baggage claim area.

Norfolk does not disguise its pride.

That turned out to be one of the hottest days on record, and while we had been scheduled to shove off the very next morning, I asked the marina for a one day extension so we could both recover and have air conditioning. That gave me more breathing room to return the car Sunday morning, let us get errands done at the dock, and let us walk to dinner at Leone's, an Italian place on Granby.

This nice bi-level grocery was a ¾ mile walk from our tender landing.

Sunday we got a late checkout so we could run the AC as long as possible, and we dropped lines at 11am for the very short ride across the harbor to Federal Anchorage N, also known as the Hospital Point anchorage, which was one of the designated spectator areas for the upcoming Sail250 Virginia parade of tall ships as well as the Juneteenth and Harborfest fireworks shows. We knew from experience that the anchorage would fill up, and we wanted to stake our claim to a good spot. We were able to get really the best spot, just inside the anchorage near the dogleg in the channel (map).

Setting up for Portsmouth's part of Harborfest at High Street Basin.

I'll say more about the tall ships and the parade and Harborfest in a separate post. This one is too long already, and I have a metric ton of photos from the parade and my visits to the ships over the following two days. Suffice it to say this is the biggest thing that has ever happened in this harbor, and the tall ships are all part of a larger event that will continue up the coast to Baltimore and New York, where they will be in NY harbor for the semiquincentennial on July 4th. That event will exceed the one I remember from the bicentennial in 1976, and I'm a little sorry we will miss it, but it was not in the cards to be in NY and do all this flying.

This lone sign was the only way to know not to tie up.

From this anchorage it is possible to tender ashore either at a pair of Norfolk bulkheads, one at the battleship Wisconsin and one in Freemason Harbor next to the Oriental Pagoda, or at the High Street Basin in Portsmouth, and so there is no shortage of restaurants or other services. Sunday night we tendered ashore at the Battleship and walked to O'Malley's again for dinner.

The Norfolk waterfront at night from our anchorage, before the arrival of the tall ships.

Monday I tendered ashore stag for a walk but was caught up short by signs saying the bulkheads were closed to mooring and vessels would be subject to towing. I had been forewarned this would be forthcoming for the event, but not this soon, and when I had talked to the harbor patrol on our way out of the marina they knew nothing about it. I had my walk without leaving sight of the dinghy.

Festevents, who runs the festival, put these signs on every third or fourth piling. They jumped the gun; the city only approved the closure from noon on the 16th.

After returning home I did a little more research, and learned the city council had enacted an ordinance for the show, closing the docks. However show management jumped the gun; the signs went up on the 15th and said the docks were closed from that date, but the ordinance clearly only allowed for the docks to close at noon on the 16th. Armed with this information we tied up near the pagoda at dinner time, signs be damned, and walked to Granby Street Pizza for dinner. They do a booming takeout and delivery business but have a few tables and even draft beer.

Artisans working glass at the Perry studio. Even with that furnace open it was cooler in this room than outdoors.

By Tuesday we knew we could no longer tie up at the basins, and I had already learned that Portsmouth had also closed its waterfront for the duration of the events, so we could not land there either. And this is where my advance scouting from my week alone and my conversation with the marine police paid off. I had identified a spot along a canal identified on charts as The Hague where I could land on a public part of the bulkhead and tie off to a tree, using our bungee anchor to keep the boat off the wall and the engine out of the shallows. The marine patrol had said they saw nothing wrong with it, and they said they never go in there anyway, and it was well outside of the zone covered by the temporary ordinance and under control of the show management.

Our secret-squirrel dinghy landing at The Hague.

We landed there a half dozen times for the remainder of our visit, keeping a low profile because there were dozens of boats in the anchorage that might have done the same thing had they known about it, and we wanted the lone spot for ourselves. We did also land at the Waterside Marina once, where a dinghy is $9 for four hours, but even that option closed after Wednesday.

Tall ships parading in, with escorts. Sails were furled a bit before reaching us but you can see some in the distance. You can see sailors on the yardarms. Many more photos in a separate post.

This spot is just ¾ mile from a very nice Harris Teeter grocery store, much closer than the marina, and I made a couple of trips during the course of our stay. And it had us looking at restaurants in a different neighborhood, leading us to discover Omar's, a short walk from the canal, which was quite good and has a Moroccan flair. It was a longer walk to Granby Street, but we did that, too, dining at El Patron, which was quite good and much larger than it looked from the street, and Luce, an unexpectedly good Italian place. We also made a stop at a mini-mart called MacArthur Market, which will receive packages for a fee of $4 per package, and where Louise had a new sewing machine delivered. We used our hand cart to tote it back to The Hague and wrestled it over the bulkhead into the tender.

The Blue Angels doing a flyover of the parade, just as USCGC Eagle arrives to the end.

As the day of the parade approached we spent more and more effort defending our spot in the anchorage. Most of the newcomers were respectful and relocated as necessary if I explained that we swing differently than many other boats, especially sailboats, and they were in the danger zone. Not so with one sailboater who got belligerent. I had been ashore and Louise texted me that I was needed for defense of the homeland, and I swung by his boat on my way home. After he started ranting I told him he was on notice, took some very deliberate photos, and drove away. About two hours later, after the tide changed, we came within 40' of him and he decided a 110,000-lb hunk of steel looming over him was not going to be persuaded by ranting, and he weighed anchor and relocated, tail between his legs.

Vector at anchor, in front of ARA Libertad of Argentina, and B/E Juan Sebastian de Elcano of Spain.

Thursday we had something of a windstorm out of the west. One boat west of us cut loose and managed to get their engine started mere moments before they would have impaled themselves on our anchor roller, and several boats swung out past the edge of the anchorage and were told to move by the Coast Guard. Friday was the actual tall ship parade and the anchorage became a zoo, as expected. It would have been worse had it not been stormy all morning.

Why it's called The Hague.

We resolved to just remain on board the entire day. By the time the parade arrived the weather had cleared and we had the best seats in the house. We had a nice dinner on board and we could very clearly hear the concert headliners, Sister Sledge and Patti LaBelle, even though the stage itself was just out of view behind a tall ship. We also had great seats for the Juneteenth fireworks show out over the river. Again, I will be making a separate post on the parade, the tall ships, and the other Harborfest events including the fireworks.

Just a taste of how crowded the anchorage got before the fireworks.

Saturday and Sunday I walked the show stag, and at dinner time we tendered ashore together to the Waterside Marina in Portsmouth, which has a dinghy dock that the marina had previously told us would be unavailable (it was not). We ate at Fish & Slips right there in the marina and also the Bier Garden in town (now off the list, as service was terrible) for the first time in quite a few years. We landed at Bier Garden after Guads tried to seat us at the worst table in the house. We took in a little of the companion festival along High Street both evenings. Saturday night we had more fireworks, with identical displays from barges on both sides of us.

One of many. This was from the Juneteenth display.

This post is already way too long, and as I wrap up typing we're already on the ground in Reno, having actually landed yesterday. When I get more time I will follow up with a write-up of Sail250, Juneteenth, and Harborfest, and then resume the travelogue, picking up where I left off here on Monday morning as the shows wrapped up. For now I need to turn my full attention to our niece's wedding in just two day's time.