May 2 3 Portsmouth to Yorktown and Lay Day There 34 9 Miles

Well it was not our fault, and no harm done at our 9:15 departure from the Tidewater Marina. The lovely young lady who works in the office came to help us off the dock. It is obvious that she had never done such a task before, though we did not know this. I asked her to take the bow line while Lene undid the stern line. We were port side to the dock with the wind blowing from that side. What our willing and cheerful helper should have done was hold the bow line and walk aft as we backed out after which she should have tossed the line on deck. The wind would then have blown our stern to starboard, so we would be able to back up a little further, turn left and motor out. But she just threw off the line on our deck immediately and when we backed out we drifted sideways to starboard in the narrow lane. Fortunately there was a turning basin down a bit, which she pointed out to us, and we were able to turn around in it and head out.
But the wind gods were not cooperating. The first part of the passage was essentially north, where the wind was coming from, and about 15 knots actual, (20 apparent). Also, we had a batten problem. The Velcro strap that holds the batten (flexible rod that stiffens the sail) in its pocket in the sail, was partially torn off and not holding. So the batten was sliding out and this was not good for the sail either, so no main sail use today.  We passed the Navy Bases Destroyer Pier from which I did my

Midshipmans cruise in 1964, aboard the USS Dewey. DLG 17. As time passes destroyers get bigger and bigger.
Aboard ILENE, we cut across the Thimble Shoal. But our course gradually curved around to the west till we were heading west up the mighty York River. We got to where we could put out sail and put out the small jib which gave us an extra knot. But when we got to the river itself, where a beam reach could have helped us, the wind gradually died, so it was a motoring day -- again!
Once on the mooring, Roger the Tailor sprang into action and the batten problem is fixed. I lowered the dink for the first time since Beaufort SC and connected the two parts of the new, stronger, wider, easier to use ratchet strap.  We dinked in, paid for our mooring and had dinner with Stan and Carol, at the Restaurant in the Marina. We celebrated his retirement after almost 50 years of teaching Genetics, most of them at William and Mary. I called it fine dining based on service, taste and presentation, but Lene, who likewise relished the food, says that fried food cant be fine dining though it was mighty fine to me. I did have a "wardrobe malfunction" trying to get properly shod before dinner. Both are red, they are jumbled in a locker and I didnt notice this until after dinner.

Our friends again drove in their two cars and left one for our use for the next day! They also brought us the box from Doyle Sails with the five plastic panels with which we can now enclose the cockpit. A very peaceful night.
In the morning, we dinked in, brought the box with the panels from the car via the dink to the boat and installed them. It will take some getting used to for me to be comfortable sailing with them on. The rear one has to be removed to lower and raise the dink. When the dink is down, one has to crawl out under the rear panel to the swim platform to board the dink. With the side panels on, the handles for the big winches for the Genoa sheets can only go half way around, slowing operations. Many of these issues can be resolved when we get back and Junior, of Doyle Sails, puts straps on from the top so that the panels can be rolled up, and fasteners between the aft end of the dodger and the forward end of the new cover need to be attached.

It was beautifully warm and sunny and the adjacent beach in the river got a lot of use. There was also a food festival on Saturday and one for art on Sunday.

We did laundry, bought some gifts, and did the shopping.











Lene dressed for dinner and I shot her by the two green excursion schooners docked at the marina.

In the evening went to dinner at the home of David and his family.
David is Stans son, who I saw last when he was an adolescent and an avid player of Dungeons and Dragons.

David, Lene, Me, Davids wife Wendy, their son Josh, Carol and Stan. Their daughter, Sam, soon  to graduate, is the best looking of the lot of us, by far, but she was the photographer.

Three generations were enjoying each other and we enjoyed them all. They did the best dry rubbed ribs I have ever had, corn bread etc., and it was a delicious home cooked meal. And another very quiet night on the mooring with a full moon.

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April 30 May 1 Two Lay Days in Portsmouth Zero Miles

Lenes finger, at the right, is pointing out our slip on F Dock at this Marina, a huge one. In 2012 and 2014 we stayed at a free dock by the Radisson hotel, a couple hundred yards to the upper left of the poster but this time we wanted repairs and might have had to haul the boat so a marina was needed.

Gaston showed up with his assistant promptly as scheduled. I had cleared out the aft cabin to give access to the area of concern. He laid a pencil on the shaft, so light that it would easily detect vibration. Nothing. It does not happen at the dock, even when, tied onto it tightly, we run the engine in gear up to 2500 rpms, trying to drag the dock. He dissembled the flexible coupling again, tested for alignment with feeler gauges, reassembled it and pronounced that it was within tolerance. So the problem is outside the boat, at or near the propeller end of the shaft. He suggested that we wait until the fall and when the boat is hauled, we check the cutlass bearing and remove the propeller and ship it to California for what will be an expensive reconditioning job. He said that we are not in danger from the current situation.
Then he lent us his truck and we visited the supermarket, the drugstore, and a law firm where I signed a document and got it notarized. I spent a few hours planning the places we could stop along the Potomac on the way up and down to Washington DC. It is slim pickins for anchorages and marinas with water deep enough for ILENEs 58" draft. I have asked the 6500 members of a "private group" on Facebook for more information.
Later Gaston came over and paid us a social visit. He was born in France, raised in Israel and is an excellent mechanic. He was affiliated with and sailed in the Caribbean 1500.

The weather has been rainy most of our two days here and so we did little. I had visited the nautical museum and lightship in 2012 and toured the historic district. It rained then too!
They also have a Childrens Museum and one honoring Virginia athletes. I took a pass on those. There is a small Jewish Museum and a historic 1812 house, both of which can be toured, but only in season, not now.
So we took showers, took on water, cleaned the boat, blogged, read, cooked, ate and watched the first two episodes of the PBS series Wolf Hall, based on a novel by Hillary Mantell, which my book group read a few summers ago, about Thomas Cromwell, an attorney in the time of Henry VIII.

We would have left the second of these two days but the forecast of rain and 25 knot wind in our faces deterred us and the forecast came true.

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October 25 Portsmouth VA to Elizabeth City NC 43 8 Nautical Miles

Today we traversed the Great Dismal Swamp, one of three inland routes between Norfolk and North Carolina. This is the westernmost route and most of it is a very straight and narrow (about 50 feetwide) canal

that is not very deep (about eight to ten feet).A new route to a new port.
One thing about it is easier. Normally I piece together many legs of a days journey, measure the length of each lag and add them together. But in the ditch, the charts show the mileposts from mile zero in Norfolk to over a thousand miles later in Florida. But these are in statute (land) miles and so one must take only 85 percent of them to get the nautical miles. Today we started half mile north of mile zero and Elizabeth City is at mile 51, leading to 43.8 nautical miles. And describing "legs" would have been difficult after we exited the canal proper into the Pasquatank River, which is nothing if not sinuous. Oops, upside down. Eliz. City is the black boxes (streets) toward the upper right, the old down town.

But this path is more challenging because there is no sailing allowed, and the road is so narrow, requiring constant attention as when driving a car. Also there are hazards above and below. Below are "deadheads" -- water soaked tree stumps that lay on the bottom and give us a thump when we hit them. We know they are there and that we will take a few hits (four today) but unlike coral heads in the Bahamas, they do not sink your boat. The peril above is tree branches that overhang the canal and get whacked by our mast (about three times today).

Here is some of the flora we harvested with our mast and shrouds, showing also the straightness of the canal, the diagonal to the lower left corner.

It was a long day, but warm at last and sunny, and windless. Normally we dont like windless days but no sailing is possible in the canals so no big loss. We got underway at seven in morning mist, and headed up the Elizabeth River to make it to the first lock, at the northern end of the swamp, at its 8:30 scheduled opening.


Here we are, all five boats, locked up together.

The lock business and the associated bridge took an hour and we timed the next 22 miles at five knots to arrive at the second and last lock for its 1:30 opening, and arrived in Elizabeth City at about 5 pm. A long, slow, ten hour day.
Yesterday we crossed paths with a mammoth container ship; today a more modest craft.

Eliz. City calls itself "The Harbor of Hospitality" and this billboard

is 50 feet from our slip. It proves this true by providing seventeen free guest docks, and we took one. In the morning, a man and his daughter offered us a ride, three miles, to the supermarket and Judy and Rich, who work for the Coast Guard, gave us a lift back. Yep, a friendly town. We are bow in. On the way in we looped our starboard stern line over a piling and  then ran forward to hand a bow line to one of the friendly volunteers who secured it to a piling near land on the port side. Easy, in the absence of wind. The other two lines loop around pilings off the other two corners and I added a spring line to keep us from crashing into the street ahead of us if there was a surge (but no surge tonight) and we were totally secure. Black line is starboard aft line and white is spring line.

The last step was loosening the starboard forward tether and tightening the port one to bring our bow above the short stubby dock so that we could climb down from the bowsprit onto it.

On arrival we took free shoreside showers

and had dinner ashore before returning for the evening. There was a very easy camraderie among the crews of the boats here, all enthusiastic about their similar but individual adventures. Next to us, separated only by our biggest fender, is a beautiful Shannon, "Whisper", whose three very young, very blond children came aboard to play with our crew. Witty was not really a happy camper in this, but he played along well enough. I missed the photo op.

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October 24 Yorktown to Portsmouth 43 Miles

We were underway from 9:15 to 4 pm, and under sail except for the first ten minutes and the last hour after the wind died. This was quite a contrast from when we made the reciprocal passage in late may or early June 2012 when we had no wind at all. We went from a deep broad starboard reach to a more beamy port reach after the jibe, out in the Bay.
But first we were approached, fast, by an orange machine gun toting RIB. The Coasties aboard told us, politely,  that we must keep 500 yards distant from a vessel they were escorting. We barely saw it at first,  but it came up on our starboard beam with another orange dinghy escort.

Other VHF announcements to the world from the Coast Guard said that they would use force, including the possibility of deadly force, on  any vessel that got too close.

It was a clear cold brisk day out on the Bay. Lene resorted to MANY layers; me, a few less of them. we crossed a lot of water on banks that had depth in the teens before entering the deep water of Hampton Roads and later, the Elizabeth River, which divides Portsmouth from Norfolk. The Roads was the site of the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac.  This big guy passed us,

going slowly out. We were properly outside the channel, but not far enough outside to make Lene happy.





The water is deep here virtually wall to wall. And this area remains a center of Naval activity. We expected to see these guys,

but not the Battleship Wisconsin, which I had thought had been retired long ago. Note the nine huge 16 " diameter guns, each capable of hurling a one ton projectile 20 miles.

Once out of the Bay -- yes we are now south of Chesapeake Bay -- despite shaking out the reef and switching to the Genoa, we did not have enough wind and hence resorted to motoring.  We took the free dock by the Renaissance Hotel. No water, no electricity, no hands to help us with our lines -- you just get what it says, a free dock for the night - the same spot in which we spent two nights in 2012. It is across a little basin from the ferry that will run you over to Norfolk for $4 round trip. Luckily that noise and the resulting wakes stop at night.

Lene made a perfect landing and I rigged up the fender board to keep us off the pilings. We took a short stroll through town on Lenes successful search for coffee and met up with folks from four boats that are traveling together, and, since the canal is narrow here, with fixed times for lock openings they will be with us as well.  Back to our boat for a good home cooked meal. Here is Norfolk, across the river from our boat.

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