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...
No comments:
Post a Comment