Tuesday May 3: Mile Zero on the ICW - Norfolk

We've now reached mile zero on the Intercoastal Waterway which runs along the east coast of the US.

Which means we arrived in Norfolk, VA. Which means we have traveled 1200 miles over the past 5 1/2 weeks. All at the average blazing speed of 7 mph!

Halfway to our destination of the North Channel in upper Lake Huron. I feel like the turtle ....

After parting ways with Buck and Donna at Oriental NC, we continued traveling north along the Neuse, Pamilco and Alligator Rivers - stopping at Dowry Creek Marina and Alligator River Marina.

Time to head across the last large sound in North Carolina - the Albemarle Sound.

Albemarle Sound

It was about 15 miles across the sound so we were again up early and moving. Goal: get across before the winds had time to build up.

Good idea and it worked well. Too well. We were up so early we passed by the marina we were supposed to stop at for the night at noon!

Coinjock Marina

Too early to stop and we gave up what is supposed to be the best prime rib anywhere - Coinjock Marina. Just what we needed anyway - prime rib plus leftovers for several days .... the health gods were looking out us!

There was the always good breakfast on the flybridge. Coffee and freshly made blueberry muffins - way better than the prime rib would have been :-)

We ended up spending Monday night at Atlantic Yacht Basin just south of Norfolk due to a miss-timed bridge. Plus it was getting late and it had turned into an 11 hour travel day.

But we were well poised for the bridge and lock we needed go go through first thing. It's pretty easy to time a bridge when it's a couple of hundred yards down the waterway!

It's a weird lock though. You either go up a foot or so OR you go down a foot or so. Depends on the tide level in the Norfolk harbor!

It was a slow lock due to the tow that came through the bridge behind us as it was necessary for the tow to enter the lock first. Worked for us for sure. I would not want to be in the lock and then have this guy come in and squeeze next to us!

It was pretty interesting having to squeeze in between the lock wall and the tug. Mmmm - which side do I want to scrape? The lock wall with rubber or the tow with bare metal sides? I vote for neither and fortunately was able to choose the neither option - but it was close on a number of occasions :-)


So it's now Thursday and we're on our way - driving to Ohio. And bonus: Washington DC is on the way to Ohio from Norfolk. Literally a 20 minute detour to Matt and Wendy's home in Alexandria. We spent last night there after a 3 1/2 hour drive and are now headed the remaining 6 hours to the farm. What a great idea Steve had!

We actually even had plenty of time yesterday to have a great Thai lunch with friends George and Pat (on Reflection) from Banana Bay. They brought with them a couple of filters that arrived after we left Marathon. Talk about custom delivery!

Funniest thing last night at Matt and Wendy's? One of the oven baked potatoes was overlooked in the poke-before-baking routine.

After an hour in the oven, Steve reached in with the oveglove on, touched the unpoked potato and it totally blew up! Literally blew the insides of the potato out! Never saw THAT before! Note the totally empty potato skin ....

Back to blogging when we return to the boat in a couple of weeks :-)