We are now in Norfolk, VA waiting for a good weather window to go up to New York. Unlike the ICW, Norfolk is a BIG city with traffic, lots of Navy ships, jets taking off, and constant noise. Very different from what we have had for the last few months.
New York City is about 265 miles, which with decent winds will take us about 2 and a half days. Right now the wind is blowing directly from NYC, so we'll wait here until it shifts. The wind has been against us all the way up the ICW, but we didn't really care because most of the channels are so narrow that we wouldn't dare to put up the sails. One minutes distraction and we would be stuck in the mud.
The ICW is not exactly relaxing, even though it is well sheltered from storms, etc. There are times when the course is straight and the autopilot can follow it, but the human still needs to be watching the chart and the depth sounder to be sure that we are in the middle of the channel. Us West Coast sailors hardly ever use the depth sounder. I owned quite a few boats before I ever had one. The only time I cared about depth was when we were anchoring. The rest of the time - it was always deep enough. Wow, not here! We live by the depth sounder and it has an alarm that starts beeping when we are in only 9 feet. At 6 feet, we are hitting the bottom with the keel (which we have done a few times now). If we have 12 feet under us, we are quite content. The ICW is supposed to be 12 feet at mid-channel. Yeah, sure!
Anyway, we're in Norfolk and have taken on fuel, water and groceries. We greased the steering cables, one of Andi's favorite activities because she gets to do it, being the smaller of the two of us. So it looks like we will take off tomorrow morning. Stay tuned.
This is a small sample of the kind of pristine country we have been cruising through. Very little development except for rich peoples houses from time to time. We conclude that there are a lot of rich people.
After we got into Virgina, we tied up for the night at the "Great Bridge" in Chesapeake, VA and walked down the street for Mexican food. Here you see a big barge going through the bascule bridge. We had more and more bridges the closer we got to Norfolk.
In the old days of sailing, we used to spend a lot of time wondering where we were or doing calculations to figure our where we were. Now we have the charts right on the computer screen and drive the "little red boat" along the winding channel. You can't believe how much labor and stress this saves.
And here I am, steering from inside as usual. 8000 miles and never got a sunburn! But I like to stay close to the computer and the cruising guides.
Finally, the last two bridges before we got into Norfolk Harbor. Many of these bridges only open on the hour or half-hour and so it is critical to time one's arrival or you spend a lot of time going in circles.
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