Hanging Out in Hampton

Day #388; Loop Miles to Date = 4,306

Our apologies for not posting for a while...mostly it's simply laziness! We are still in Hampton, VA and will be for another week or so. We're probably behind many of the cruisers who are heading south this time of year, but there are still plenty who will be behind us as well. And while we didn't foresee that we would be spending this much time in Hampton, it has been a nice change of pace to enjoy some cooler weather. For the past year, we have been living in an eternal summer...so fall temps and colors are enjoyable. One challenge is that we do not have an abundance of cold weather clothes with us, so heading south is definitely in the plans soon.

We have thoroughly enjoyed great times here with our friends on Act III and Corkscrew...dinners out, movies, shopping...and certainly lots of laughs. Each weekend, one of us has taken advantage of the Enterprise weekend car rental deal ($9.99 per day) so we have had ample opportunity to drive around and see the area, and as well accomplish any provisioning and shopping that we needed.

Not many exciting photos to share, but last weekend, we and Corkscrew made a trip to Williamsburg to tour around. Our second trip there, but Corkscrew's first. We had a glorious weather day, and the crowds were light - a very enjoyable day trip.

It is mostly still quite green in this area, although some of the maple and oak trees are starting to show a bit of color.

Not much else in the way of news from here. We've been accomplishing a variety of boat projects, and relaxing a whole bunch!

All for now...stay tuned...and Happy Halloween!

Waterside Back to Hampton - Post Matthew

Day #373; Loop Miles to Date = 4,306

A week ago, we were awaiting the arrival of Hurricane Matthew in Norfolk. And today, we are back in Hampton, VA cooling our heels. We were very fortunate to have stayed north of all of the destructive wind and rain, and only experienced heavy rains and winds of 30 mph with gusts in the low 50's. Our location was secure, and in the end, for us it was just a very rainy and windy couple of days. Norfolk received 8" or 9" of rain, and there was some localized flooding, but nothing that directly affected us.

So...why are we back in Hampton? We decided that we didn't need to get further south in any particular hurry, and opted to grab a spot in Hampton for awhile. We know that most of the marinas that we would head towards are up and operational...with only a few of them experiencing major damage. But, there is a considerable amount of water that is still draining into the Intercoastal Waterway, and along with it a potential for major quantities of debris. Many cruisers are continuing south, and most all of them will have no issues. But for us, the luxury of not being held to a schedule allows  for others to find the hidden surprises left by Matthew...we're happy lagging behind and learning about them second hand before venturing south.

Most of the heavy winds and rain occurred at night for us, so we don't have any really dramatic pictures, but here are a few that we do have:

This is the view out of our front window. It's kind of hard to see, but if you look at the dock directly across from us, you can note that the water line is just at the bottom of the dock. This was near high tide, and the short wall behind this dock level is about 2 feet tall. This shot was taken about 2 am on Sunday morning.

 

This is the same view taken about 4 am. You can now see that the dock is covered by water and that the wall behind it is about 6" from being covered. This was about as high as the water got near us. The dock that is covered was a fixed dock...we were on a floating dock, so we merely floated with this higher water level and had no issues. We figured that this was about the worst that it got all night...roughly a 2 foot storm surge above high tide level.

This is a radar picture of what we were in the middle of. This was taken at 9:40 pm on Saturday, and we are right in the middle of this...if you look closely, you might see the blue dot identifying our location. The eye of the hurricane was at Wilmington NC when this was taken, just after the storm headed due east as predicted.

 

Since we've been in Hampton, we've just been taking it easy and relaxing. We went to the movies a couple of times, ate out a few times, worked on a couple of boat projects, and caught up on about 10 days of laundry since where we were previously had no laundry facilities.  So, for now we are just hanging out and enjoying time with friends and the very enjoyable cooler weather.

 

 

This is the view of Hampton from across the river at Portsmouth. One night we took the ferry across, and went to a dinner theater called the Commodore...we saw Sully...an excellent movie.
 

One morning we had some fog while here in Hampton...just a random shot of a sailboat at anchor just outside the marina.




All for now...thanks for following along...

Update from Norfolk

Day # 365; Loop Miles to Date = 4,291

Just a quick update as we await some rain and moderate winds from Hurricane Matthew. We count ourselves as very fortunate to have stayed far enough north to avoid any really serious weather. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those who are experiencing the brunt of this very large storm.

We are still at Waterside Marina in Norfolk, and expect to see some heavy rains hit later today (Saturday) with moderate winds (30-35mph) overnight. We're very secure where we are, and have taken every precaution in the event that the winds or storm surge are higher than predicted. We are not taking anything for granted, but all indications are that we will have a fairly easy time of it. One of the biggest challenges that we will face in the coming weeks is figuring out where we will go next. As this storm wreaks havoc on towns and marinas that we planned to visit, it will take some time to sort out where we and all of the other cruisers will be able to go. Needless to say, there will be a log jam along the southern east coast as clean-up and recovery ensues...time will tell.

Of note...today marks the one-year anniversary of our Great Loop Trip! It was exactly a year  ago today that we left Island Cove Marina in Chattanooga to begin this journey. And now, over 4,000 miles later, we are happy, healthy, and still loving life! It is hard to believe that we have been living aboard for almost a year and a half...and we are excited that we still have many adventures and new experiences ahead.

All for now...we really just wanted to report that all is well aboard Sandrobber. Thanks for reading...we'll check back in soon.

Hampton to Norfolk (Waterside Marina)

Day #360; Loop Miles to Date = 4,291

We left Hampton on Thursday last week, and have been camped out at Waterside Marina in Norfolk ever since. We had a relatively short travel day to get here...rather gray, but an easy trip. We've been here previously, so it all looked familiar...an easy stop, with easy access to a mall, and plenty of restaurants and stuff.

But, before we left Hampton, we had some "excitement"...at least it looked like something was going on, but not much came of it all in the end. Around about 9am on Wednesday, this is what we saw out of our cockpit:

And there were more trucks and fire vehicles that you can't see in this shot.

 

Lots of milling around and discussion going on...if you look closely, you can see a TV cameraman on the far right...and the guy a bit to the left of that is the reporter. And this was before the guy from some state environmental agency and the Coast Guard showed up!

The reason they were here, was that there was an obvious slick of what we surmised was diesel fuel covering the water all over the marina and surrounding area. They couldn't figure out where it was coming from, and protocol dictated that they all mill around until someone took charge and made some decisions. Once the Coast Guard showed up, all of these local folks saw that there was nothing that they could do to help, so they disappeared. And soon after that, everyone disappeared. Later we learned that there was an underground diesel storage tank for the generator that belonged to the neighboring hotel that had a leak in it. And this leak had found its way to the water at high tide...this is gonna cost someone some big bucks to fix before it is all said and done. But, it provided us with a mornings worth of entertainment.

We were going to head to Smithfield for a stop after Hampton, but the weather was not very nice, so we decided to stay in Hampton a bit longer and make a day trip by rental car to Smithfield. We found Smithfield (home to the folks who process all that ham) to be a quaint small town, with a handful of nice shops and restaurants. We're glad we made the effort, and it was probably easier to see by car than by boat after all.

There were a couple of random bronze statues scattered throughout Smithfield.

And as well, as an homage to the local claim to fame, there were a number of rather artistic pig sculptures to be found. This one had a Shakespeare theme (if you look closely at the scroll on the hind quarter, you'll note that it says "Hamlet"...get it?).

On our way to Norfolk, we once again passed by the huge Navy yard...

An aircraft carrier being worked on.

We learned from our friend Jeff that this is a DDG-1000, the newest class of US Warships. In his words, it is "deadly, invisible, and expensive"!

If you look carefully, you can spot 2 nuclear submarines here...they're hard to see, but they are there.

This was the kind of day it was...just really gray.

So, now it is Monday, and we are diligently watching the weather with Matthew starting to make a mess of things. It is too soon to know what the exact impact will be where we are, but we are making contingency plans just in case. We are well protected from the north and northeast where we are now (which is where the worst of any wind would come from) but if it is going to get really nasty, we plan to move back up to Hampton. The spot we had there was a great hurricane hole, and even more protected than where we are now. We'll wait to see what the next few days brings, but it is only a 2 hour trip to get back to Hampton, so for now, we'll just bide our time and make our decision as the week unfolds.

This little beauty is parked right down the dock from us...it happens to be a 233 foot, $75 Million yacht. 4-storey elevator, indoor gymnasium, 20 crew members, 5 gigantic guest suites...just your typical neighbor. This one is owned by the guy who first developed Microsoft Word, Excel, and Office with Bill Gates. It is remarkable...and it is wider than our boat is long.

Stay tuned...