Virginia, the bumper-boat state

We are underway southbound in the Pamlico Sound, finally back in motion after nearly a week pinned down by weather. We're not alone; with the first good weather in that long, everyone, it would seem, is on the move.

This serving tray was on the wall at Back Bay Ale House. I grew up in a Ballantine household.

When last I posted here, we were underway offshore to Atlantic City. We made good time and thus arrived a bit ahead of the flood, pushing our way in Absecon Inlet on the last of the ebb. We had the hook down in our usual spot (map) just before 5:30 and we immediately splashed the tender and headed to dinner at the Back Bay Ale House in Gardner Basin. We decked the tender as soon as we returned home, for an early morning start.

Saturday morning we weighed anchor at 5 AM to catch the tail end of the ebb. Conditions looked good for a straight run to Hampton Roads, but as cheap insurance we ran closer to shore on the route toward Cape May instead, giving us both a calmer ride and also an easier bail-out. The slight diversion added just a mile to the Hampton Roads route.

Leaving Absecon Inlet at zero-dark-thirty. Taken through a messy window.

With the forecast holding and actual conditions 3nm offshore excellent, we made the call about halfway to Cape May and came left onto the direct route. With westerlies for the whole ride, I plotted the course very close to shore off Assateague Island. The longest fetch was the open jaw from Cape May to Lewes, and even that was decent.

Traffic offshore was very light. We were passed by a couple of power cruisers, and we passed a couple of sailboats. I had one tug towing a barge, the Bart L, going the other way that I had to dodge; he was doing exactly what I was doing and "running the beach" as my tow-skipper friend calls it. By contrast, all the pleasure traffic was another ¾ mile or more offshore.

Our view underway when maneuvering I have towels over the plotters to see out the window.

We had a fair current the whole way, and before the start of solo watchkeeping I dropped the rpm so we would not arrive too early. As expected, though, we reached the mouth of the Chesapeake while I was still in the berth. This was the first open fetch since Delaware Bay, and here toward the end of the good window we found ourselves in 2-3 footers on the beam. Louise increased rpm accordingly, and I ended up waking up a good hour early and took over the watch at 8 AM, before we even reached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.

Our intended destination was the anchorage at Phoebus, as we always prefer anchoring over docking at the end of an overnight passage. I will spare you all the gory details, but while we were offshore I spent hours Saturday working out travel arrangements to go back to NJ for a visit with my folks from the Hampton area, since the weather had us whizzing by them without being able to stop as I had planned. I had the perfect trip arranged by train out of Newport News.

Sunrise over the North Atlantic.

What we learned before Louise even turned in was that there was not a dock to be had anywhere near Hampton on Monday for love or money. Evidently the enormous "Salty Dawg" offshore rally was staging in Hampton Roads and waiting on good offshore weather (they all left this morning). I call every marina from Newport News to Portsmouth and nary a space was to be had. I had cancelled all the travel reservations by Sunday morning.

What that also told us was that it would be a very, very tight squeeze into Phoebus, if we could fit at all. All of the rally boats who could not get a dock, or those who simply did not want to pay for one, were packed into every anchorage in the Hampton Roads area. And so it was that we decided to wave off Phoebus even as we were crossing over the Bridge Tunnel.

Sunset and a blurry crescent moon over Assateague Island.

Fortunately, we had the flood behind us coming into the roadstead, and that flood would take us as far down the Elizabeth as we cared to travel. We decided we could muster the energy to get tied up at High Street in Portsmouth, or maybe even Great Bridge if necessary, since it was the middle of the day in fair conditions. We knew wherever we stopped, that's where we'd be pinned down for the impending winds.

Normally I cross the ship channel and run down the northern part of the Elizabeth just outside of the green side. But an hour out we heard an announcement that they were moving dredge pipe and the whole channel would be closed until after noon, and so instead I swung wide and took the red side, where we could get around it. A cruising sailboat under power whom we had seen offshore, who does not understand the special channel rules at Thimble Shoals, nearly ran us into one of the reds in the Auxiliary Channel, even after clear communication on the radio. Clueless skippers in the very busy Hampton Roads area was a key reason we slowed down enough for me to be on watch as we arrived.

Lots of offshore wind farm activity now in Norfolk.

The diversion proved wholly unnecessary, as they had reopened the channel by 9:45, well ahead of the noon estimate, but I was already on the red side and had to stay there. Just as well, because by this hour the ship pilots were already fed up with the pleasure craft operating erratically. One pilot on an ultra-large (a special category with special rules) had the patience of Job explaining how, yes, he was indeed going to need the entire channel.

We arrived to High Street right around noon, and, unsurprisingly, the basin was entirely full. Our secret-squirrel spot on the outside bulkhead was open, but we had to think long and hard about spending three days pinned down there in a windstorm. In the end, we opted to pass it by and press ahead to Great Bridge, taking a chance on there still being room at the bulkhead.

Lots of activity on the water, at least for now while the last of the funds holds out.

Our planned fuel stop at Top Rack is between these two docks, and even though it meant arriving an hour later to Great Bridge, we decided to make the stop and fuel up. We took on 750 gallons and left the dock in plenty of time for the 2:30 lockage at the Great Bridge Lock. The bridge past the lock, normally hourly, is opening only on the even hours now due to mechanical issues, and we had the lock to ourselves.

We were relieved to find two spots left on the bulkhead just before the bridge. Had there been none, we would have had to lock back through the other way and go back to Top Rack. We were tied up before 3 PM (map) and got secured for the coming winds. Louise, who had been fighting a severe allergy attack all day and did yeoman's work to dock, lock, and dock again through all the sneezing, crashed.

Vector at the Great Bridge bulkhead. We never saw anyone on the sailboat behind us, which seems to be just stored there.

She was in no shape to go out to dinner, and I ended up walking to Jersey Mike's, in the plaza that replaced our beloved Mexican joint here, for an Italian sub and some chips for dinner aboard. I had to walk right past the now-shuttered Vino's Italian Bistro, which had been our go-to since the Mexican place closed, until they moved out of walking distance earlier this year.

Monday the winds started building as forecast, but it was still a pleasant enough day to get off the boat and walk. That let me go straight to Kroger for emergency supplies. Louise had gone through every tissue on the boat over the course of two days of heavy allergies, and I had to replenish the Strategic Kleenex™ Reserve. She felt OK by dinner time and we walked across the bridges to the Lockside Grill for dinner. Monday turns out to be $6 burger night (we had no idea) and the place was packed, with people mostly older than us.

Coming home from dinner we got a strong smell of diesel crossing the bridge, and we could see a sheen moving past the boat. I made a report to the Coast Guard. I snapped this picture a full 17 hours later. There is a fuel dock just the other side of the bridge from us.

Tuesday was the most intense day of the storm, with winds gusting to 40 and heavy rain all day. We stayed cooped up inside all day, surfing the web and checking off indoor projects. Except when we were paying attention to the parade of boats that, for some reason, were still coming through the lock and bridge. Many never got the memo about the reduce openings for the bridge and had to station-keep for over an hour. And the weird schedule had too many boats to fit the lock on some openings, leaving the latecomers with unplanned two-hour delays.

By dinner time we were stir-crazy, and when the rain let up to something less than torrential, we grabbed our umbrellas and walked to the closest place. With Vino's gone that is now Chili's, and despite docking here for a decade we had never set foot inside. I think the last time we ate at a Chili's was on a Red Cross disaster deployment maybe 15 years ago, and we are no longer acclimated to this kind of American chain-restaurant fare. At least they had several beers on draft.

Vector on the wall as boats wait for a bridge opening.

Wednesday morning we could have gotten underway and made a Thursday window to cross the Albemarle, and in hindsight I am really sorry we did not. But Louise's phone went to the great cell tower in the sky in Atlantic City, and the replacement I ordered on Amazon had not yet arrived to the locker. By the time the notice came in the afternoon we had missed the window to depart. I took the e-bike down to the locker in light rain, hitting the dollar and grocery stores again on the way home. We walked to dinner at Kagura, with acceptable Japanese fare at an all-you-can-eat price of $26. Louise reported the sushi as a B-, but everything else was decent.

At 11 PM, after Louise had already turned in, I listened to a latecomer as he came through the lock. Apart from towboats, almost no one comes through the lock after about 6 PM. He asked both the lock and bridge tenders if they could see any room at either of the free docks, and as it turned out there was a big space right in front of us. Being nosy I watched him out the back door as he approached from the lock, and then I moved up to the pilothouse to watch him dock.

As seen from across the canal. We have three fenders out "just in case."

As I looked out the pilothouse door I was aghast to see him rapidly approaching Vector, and I flung the door open in my bathrobe just as his starboard side made contact with our port. We had set three fenders out on the port side as a precaution, and the center one saved us from what would have been a lot of damage from his rub rail. It cushioned the blow enough that Louise said it was my screaming rather than the impact that woke her up.

Unfortunately, his complete lack of skill and panic of the moment meant that he turned hard to port and applied power to get away (hard to starboard and rocking astern/ahead was the correct maneuver) and he swung his stern right into us, missing the aft fender and putting a deep gouge in our hull paint. After that he managed to get it docked, and I took a photo of his transom and told him to come by in the morning to provide his insurance. I did not want to go back out  in the rain.

This gouge is about 3" long. Fortunately not down to bare steel, but it's well into the fairing and will need to be ground, faired, primed, and painted, "hoping" it will blend in.

In the morning we heard him calling the bridge at 7:45 for the 8:00 opening. He had not said a word to us and I marched over there to get his info. Never even an apology, just some mumbling about how "these things happen." I showed him the damage, told him there might be more we have not found yet, and got his name, number, and insurance information. He was already gone by the time we called the Virginia Marine Police to come take a report.

There are few words to express how upset and disappointed I am that we have been hit yet again and need paint repair yet again, but while we are literally headed away from the place that should do that repair. We managed to go ten years without anyone bashing into us, and this is now the third time this year. Arranging repairs is highly disruptive, and we are never made whole for that disruption.

Buckets, a sports bar, is one of our dining options. Not today.

Any thought we had about shoving off Thursday morning went out the window as we were waiting on the marine police. Realistically we would have had to make the same 8 AM bridge opening as Dimwit had, and, even then, we'd be stuck in the North River for two nights waiting on today's window to cross the Albemarle. We decided to overstay our welcome by yet one more night, and I had a nice walk in the afternoon. We just went back to Lockside for dinner, which I guess will be our new standard here. It was very quiet in comparison to Burger Monday.

Yesterday morning we dropped lines at 5:45 for the 6:00 bridge opening. It was just us and the towboat Island Fox pushing a deck barge. We had to close the blinds on our back door as his floodlights were coming right in and ruining my night vision. Me made the 6:30 opening at Centerville Turnpike, just before it locks down for morning rush hour, and I moved over to let Island Fox get ahead of us.

Sunrise as we approach North Landing Bridge. That's Island Fox ahead of us.

Normally I have to either run wide open throttle to make the next bridge a half hour later, or else slow roll at idle to make it a full hour, and in the pitch dark it would have been the latter. But they open on demand for tugs with tows, and we just followed Island Fox through the bridge at 7:20, and just stayed behind him the rest of the day. With such an early start, we had time to make it all the way across the Albemarle and to an anchorage off Croatan Sound, but it was still blowing 25 when we got to the south end of the North River.

I called ahead to one of the faster boats that decided to plow across the sound and asked for a condition report. "Breaking over the windscreen" was all we needed to hear, and we pulled over to a familiar spot in a partial lee off Camden Point (map) for the night. We had the hook down before 2 PM. The new solar kept us topped up all afternoon and through dinner, until we needed heat in the evening.

Sunset over Camden Point last night from our anchorage.

This morning we slept in, getting underway around 8 AM, and the conditions have been perfect. Which is why pretty much every boat on the east coast is on the move. These are great conditions for the Pamlico Sound route, and yet still hardly anyone uses it. We've seen only three other boats since leaving the North River, while watching a whole conga line headed for the Alligator on the marked ICW route.

Peeling away from the conga line.

The downside to this route is a dearth of reasonable overnight stops, and tonight will find us in a lee at the Long Shoal River. We will be online entirely courtesy of satellite Internet. Tomorrow we should be back in civilization.