Sailboats Sailing South
20 November 2009 | Lafayette River/Norfolk VA
Beth / sailing winds!
Yeah - other Sailboats!, Norfolk VA (Lafayette River) Nov.20/09, posting #15
After a little windlass trouble, we left our anchorage in Mobjack Bay at 0800 hours. Lots of wind - then no wind - then lots again. We managed to sail quite nicely almost from the start until we had to change to a more southerly course for Norfolk, putting the wind almost behind us. We managed to motor sail with the staysail out till it finally just flapped around too much and we hauled it in.
Cruising through the busy Norfolk harbour is always interesting and this time was no exception. It wasn't awfully busy; a military ship came along through the channel and moved ahead of us (interestingly, we had to maneuver a bit to let it cross ahead of us as it came out of the York River, and we arrived here at about the same time.) An aircraft carrier was entering the harbour as we were coming down the coast, and by the time we came in past all the slips, it was disembarking long lines of crew. If you look closely you might see them in this picture. We also had four sailboats going through the channel at the same time - this after seeing none for the past 2 days! One was headed out and the other 2 kept going past where we turned off for the night, so maybe we'll see them later.
Just after we anchored in the little bulge of deep enough water here, another Canadian boat came in - the Oz from Toronto. We had a quick chat on the VHF and discovered the crew is Ken and Connie, and they are Bahamas bound as well. Ken blew his conch horn at dusk so we really feel like we are headed south now!