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...