Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Coinjock Marina - Ocean Yacht Marina, Portsmouth, VA
48 Miles

Started out in a light fog this morning. And, that was worrisome if we ran into a fog bank a little further north in the Currituck Sound. The boat was soaking wet from dew. Dew can leave a boat wetter than rain it seems. Lots of wiping the windows inside and out to be able to see.
We get underway about 8:45AM and are headed north and hope to stay at Atlantic Yacht Basin. But the parade of southbound boats has increased over the past few weeks and there is no room there. Still we will give them a call when we get near as people cancel often.

The radio is alive with an emergency beacon from a VHF radio. This gives me the position of the distressed call as well as everyone else with range. The Coast Guard and the vessel say it’s a false alarm but the alarm continues to happened periodically until the radio is turned off.

We have to open three bridges and go through one lock before this day is over. I try to time those by slowing down or speeding up to arrive at their designated opening times.

I arrive at the first bridge about 15 minutes early and just float around near the bridge. Several boats show up on the other side of the bridge southbound and one more shows up northbound behind me. We get to go through first and that’s a good thing because the other bridge is about 1/2 hour away and we get a head start toward that opening.
I don’t have all of my software that I once had thanks to Garmin discontinuing the software that let me load the route for the day into the Garmin chart plotter. So, calculations are a bit off and I realize I’m going to arrive 8 minutes late unless I can pick up speed. Liquid Therapy is a 36’ Albin Trawler designed for long range cruising at slow speeds and adding full throttle will speed things up only slightly. Still I add power and the late arrival time changes to 7 minutes after opening. I call the bridge and ask if he will hold for me. He says the bridge will probably be still open as he had 7 boats coming through the other direction. And, luckily for me he holds the bridge for Liquid Therapy only having to delay the close about 1 minute.

The next bridge is Great Bridge and is timed with the lock. We are the only boat in the lock as we enter and there are no boats behind us. We have the lock to ourselves which helps since we don’t have great control of the boat with the swirling water. Susan tries for 3 different cleats before she finally snags one. Due to Covid the lock masters are not allowed to help. Liquid Therapy is almost perpendicular to the wall. I turn the wheel all the way over to the right and go into forward to get the stern to move to port. The anchor is the first thing to hit the wall but gently. Then the bow line gets tight as planned and the rudder starts to move the stern slowly around to the wall. Finally we get the stern line on lock wall cleat we have our port side to the wall. We ride the water being let into the lock up to the Elizabeth River on the other side of the lock. Now we are back into salt water leaving the black swamp water on the other side of the lock. Whew we are though all the hard stuff and now we just have to find somewhere to spend the night.

We are now in the industrial parts of Norfolk / Portsmouth will barges being loaded, little push boats moving around, restricted areas of Navy ships being worked on. Noise- lots of noises. And, then as I pass under the Gilmerton bridge and turn left there is a ship getting underway completely blocking the channel. Swirling water from the two tugs pushing the ship around to start out of the channel is something I don’t want to and should not attempt to pass. We wait and the ship is finally in gear as I see that swirl come out.

We had planned on making Fort Monroe again but exhaustion is setting in and we take a slip in Portsmouth.

We hadn’t been docked long when people start to board the boat next to us and we say hi. He has a new VHF radio box in his hand. He said his VHF started sending out emergency signals and they could not stop it. I believe he had to actually pull the fuse on the radio. He was near Deltaville when this started happening and we were hearing this near Coinjock. VHF doesn’t go that far so the Coast Guard with their giant towers must have been relaying that signal. And, that signal makes our radio alarm at full volume. You have to acknowledge the alarm to silence it. His position was 70 miles away and we were not close enough to assist if it had been an emergency. At least we went through the drill if there really is an emergency and know how that all works.

Today’s picture is spider webs in the fog at Coinjock Marina. Photograph by Susan