NORFOLK LAYOVER

Early morning fog on the breakwater

Well, the droning from the shipyard stopped sometime during the night - I don’t know when, since it didn’t keep me from falling asleep. This is a good thing because the same noise is there tonight.

One of our PDQ group, TIGER

After a restful night with a good sleep despite the noise, I woke up early and took my bike out to find a bakery. The one I was looking for had gone out of business, but I did find a Starbucks, which had to suffice. I was surprised at the fog this morning. It was warm and there was a breeze blowing, but the fog limited visibility to about a quarter of a mile. Later, we walked around the arts and crafts festival going on right by the dock, and there was a small farmers market where we bought some bread and produce.

There’s a small passenger ferry that goes from the basin we are in across the river to downtown Norfolk. It was easy to tell the schedule since every half hour when they docked they sent a wake toward the dock which rocked our boat. We took the ferry over to downtown and walked around some nice old neighborhoods along the waterfront and did a little shopping.

Six catamarans in the small docking basin

The afternoon was spent looking over the charts of the Chesapeake and listening to the weather forecasts. We may have a decent day tomorrow to get out of Norfolk and up, perhaps, as far as Deltaville, maybe even a bit further. This would position us to go up the Potomac the next available cruising day. That day might, however, be later in the week, since the forecast called for 2 to 4 foot waves in the bay on Monday. We might have to hole up at a marina up there for an extra day if that’s the case.

A Navy warship in drydock

One of the PDQ boats headed north this afternoon but did not make it more than a few miles before running into thick fog and having to find a protected anchorage. This, while it was sunny and bright here in Norfolk all day. After hearing this, I turned on my chart plotter and radar to run through all the operations I would need to do in case of fog. It’s been a couple of years since I have had to use the radar and didn’t want to be re-learning it all while bobbing around in a busy shipping channel…