November 3, 2019 Sunday

The brisk cold air that greeted us in the morning made it only more imperative we make distance south rather than enjoying the beauty of the southern bay. Helped by strong winds from the northwest we did another twelve-hour day. This day motor sailing with both the main and jib up.

Being a beautiful fall day there were lots of sailboats on the water, some enjoying a relaxing pleasure sail, but many were fellow snowbirds headed south with us. We slowly overtook a dozen of the other sailboats as we rode the 15-20 knot wind and building waves coming from behind us. Not that we were a fast boat, we just flew more sail than the others.

The autopilot doesn’t like a following sea so Mike did a lot of hand steering while Sharon started dinner in the crockpot and got caught up on some missed sleep. The air was still crisp all day but the sun was bright and helped warm the cockpit some.

We rounded the light house at Old Point Comfort and entered the river at Hampton late in the afternoon. There was much less traffic on the river than in previous visits but we still had a few container ships, tankers and cargo ships we needed to avoid along with the tour boats. It seemed a cool day to go out on a tour boat but they were out here to see an amazing sight of the massive naval shipyard with row after row of grey ships with fancy names like 69 or 728 painted on their sides.

A very quick stop in at the Tidewater Marina got us 25 gallons of diesel to replenish what we burned rushing south.

Next, we had a little trouble getting a comfortable place to anchor off Hospital Point, the breeze and current coming from different directions the other boats anchored were swinging in a variety of different directions. We didn’t like our first spot so we pulled up the anchor and reset it just as the sunlight faded and just like Goldilocks said “it was just right”.

The strong northwest winds of the day had weakened as we had headed up the Elizabeth River and the evening was calm with the exception of the coming and going of the ships on the river. There was a giant cruise ship, Caribbean Princess, across the river from us guarded by a single police boat. Somehow it slipped out to sea during the night without us even noticing it going.