Had to say good-bye to the lovely Hampton Yacht Club this morning (Monday 10/28). At about 8:30 we headed south to Atlantic Yacht Basin marina in Chesapeake City, VA. This meant we were also leaving the Chesapeake Bay after an exciting two months exploring and enjoying her wonderful sights.

Our route took us right through Norfolk, VA which is a big busy harbor full of big ships, tugs, barges, etc. On the VHF radio we heard something like – this is warship 74 – all vessels must stay 500 yards away, check in on channel 16 or 13. We can hear her on the VHF, but we can’t see her. AIS only shows ships by name and there is no “warship 74”. So, we hail her on channel 13 – no response. We hail her on channel 16 – no response. We don’t know if we’re encroaching or not because there are a lot of big ships all around us. Yikes! We hear more conversation on the VHF – sailing vessel so-and-so stay out of the channel. Anyway, we never saw a warship 74 underway, never heard from her, and we made it through Norfolk unscathed. Later we Googled warship 74 and found she is the USS John C. Stennis, a nuclear powered, Nimitz Class supercarrier and she was still moored when we passed her by.

Our journey today should have taken about two and a half hours, but because we had to wait for two railroad bridges to open, transit one lock, and then wait for the lock-bridge to open it took us over four hours.  Our destination was Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake City, VA because we had an appointment with their yard to have our generator serviced. We arrived around 1:00, checked in and walked into town. This is a great place to provision but it’s not a very “cute” place. Within walking distance is a strip-mall with a wonderful new Kroger, a Tuesday Morning, a darling nautical shop, a new pet store, a dollar store and a couple of restaurants. We stopped at the pet store and gave the doggies a much-needed bath then had lunch at Chili’s.  Back at the boat we were told the yard messed up and didn’t order our generator parts so they couldn’t do the service work. Bummer! They did comp us on the slip rental for their mistake. Nice.

We really got a sense of the “southern migration” while tied up at the Atlantic Yacht Basin Marina/Yard. It’s located right on the ICW just south of the Great Bridge Lock. The lock/bridge opens every hour on the hour starting at 9:00 am. Each hour we would see eight to 12 boats exit going south. Amazing.  

We left AYB on Wednesday (10/30) morning at 8:58 – just before the first herd of boaters came out of the lock/bridge at the 9:00 opening.  At 9:22 one of the herd came zooming by us, then the second, then the third and at 9:33 the fourth boat passed us up. At 9:48 we came upon the North Landing Bridge which was closed. So, there we were – five power boats/trawlers (ones who had passed us by) and one sailboat waiting for the bridge to open. After the bridge opened Michael slowed so all of the what we thought were faster trawlers could pass us by. Turned out the three who passed were about the same speed as us and there we were, a line of four trawlers following each other traveling the same direction like lemmings. We stayed that way most of the way until we took a little bit of a detour. Otto had somehow gotten out of whack and has been a little “off” today and wandering off course between waypoints, so Michael made a few circles to recalibrate his compass once we were in a bay wide enough to do so. Otto is definitely an important part of our crew and is really missed when not on top of his game. Michael got him tuned up and he’s fine now.

We arrived at Coinjock Marina in Coinjock, NC about 1:25. This marina consists of one 1200-foot long dock. We were one of the first boats to tie up, so we checked in and had lunch at the marina restaurant. By about 3:30 the 1200 feet of dock space was totally full and we were squeezed in bow-stern-bow-stern-bow-stern….you get the idea. This marina seems to attract the “rich and famous” yachts as most were of the 70 to 100 feet mega yacht version. It was a bit like having your own private boat show. Beautiful!  We were the little guy on the dock along with fellow Looper Captain Crusty and Dorothy aboard Magic, a 36-foot Grand Banks, tied right behind us.

There’s really nothing to do in Coinjock but the weather caused us to stay Thursday (10/31) as well. Same thing happened on Thursday. In the morning almost all the mega yachts took off, heading south, then by about 3:30 the dock was lined with new mega yachts. Most also took on fuel in the range of 1000 to 1600 (or more) gallons. Wow! Sorry, I couldn’t really get a good photo of the line-up.

Friday morning (11/1) we headed to Manteo in the Outer Banks of NC. Our four and a half hour trip today was a little rough crossing the shallow and windy Albemarle Sound. We arrived at the Manteo (pronounced Man e o) Waterfront Marina around 1:15, checked in, had lunch at Poor Richards then back to the boat. If you remember, Manteo is where we were earlier this year before Hurricane Dorian hit. We left about a week before Dorian came ashore. Although they didn’t take a direct you can still see some of the damage he caused but they have mostly recovered and looking good. Because of weather, it looks like we’ll be here through Sunday. Will keep you posted….