August 2024 voyage to Portsmouth

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Thursday August 1st

Shorter sail today, but unfortunately there was no wind.

We had to motor all the way from the Ware River to Sarah Creek. The lack of wind was compensated by seeing dolphins in the part of the Bay between Mobjack Bay and the York River. They were so magical to see! There were 10-12 of them, popping up and diving down.

The dragonflies continue to come and hang out with us. They are pretty magical too. Got to Sarah Creek around 1300. We stopped at the fuel dock at York River Yacht Haven and filled up with 24 gallons, with our fuel expenditure ~ 0.58 gal/hour between the engine and the generator at best guess. The dock hands gave us our slip assignment and we headed over there after fueling. After docking we went to the restaurant at the marina: YROC (York River Oyster Company) for lunch. We watched Simone Biles help the US Women win Gold in the All Around Gymnastics competition during lunch. I had shrimp tacos (took one home) and Laz had a grilled chicken sandwich with bacon, pepper jack cheese and a spicy sauce. And fries.

Beautiful sunset views from our dock, including a nice sunset picture of baji-naji and this heron.

Headed up to YROC for dinner. I had to try the fried oysters, which were delicious. The breading was like a fried chicken breading, different from others. The oysters are local to those waters, which was cool. We tried a gouda crab dip as well. We took most of that home as it was a huge portion.

I had the tuna tower for dinner with a layer of avocado, tuna and mango salsa. Yummy!

Laz had the gumbo, which had shrimp, chicken and andouille sausage. It was tasty, and there were no leftovers.

Key Lime pie to split for dessert. Quite good as it was nice and tart. We got a take out carrot cake for the fridge. The slice our server, Sarah, gave us was enough for 4 people! Went for a walk on the docks before getting back to baji-naji. Had enough wi-fi to watch Primetime Olympic coverage and see the Women’s gymnastics competition. Those women are amazing, especially the GOAT Simone Biles

Friday August 2nd

Up at 0830. Today is our day to explore historic Yorktown. We had a recommendation for a diner we could walk to from the marina. We thought it more likely we could get an Uber or Lyft from the main road. Apparently it's not so easy to get one to the marina.

Walked through some pretty neighborhoods. I love this beautiful border along the fence.

The Eggheads diner was less than a mile away and had nice diner food with generous portions. I enjoyed my grits, scrambled, bacon and biscuit. Could not finish it all. Laz had scrambled with sausage, home fries and biscuit. Thus fortified, we got an Uber over the Coleman Memorial Bridge to Yorktown. Uber was $12, which was fine, but Lyft wanted $30 for the same ride. Strange.

Went to Mobjack Bay Coffee Roasters where I found awesome coffee and pastries last year. I bought some breakfast pastries, a pound of Watermen's Blend and a pound of Slack Tide decaf beans. We met the owner, Celeste, and I told her about my sailing coffee adventures from the Chesapeake to Maine. She was flattered I came back for her coffee. She and her husband moved to the area and couldn’t find decent coffee, so he started roasting beans. What was a hobby became a business, enough to quit their previous jobs. They also own the Little York Confectionary down the street. Celeste told me that the land is part of the National Park Service as a historic site, and they lease from NPS. The coffee roastery is in an historic home, the Cole Digges house. We went to check out the confectionary, which is also in an historic home. The young man there agreed to put aside some chocolate for me to pick up on my way home as it was so hot outside. He told us about the Yorktown & Co Steamer Wagon tour of the park. We had just enough time to walk down the hill to see the Waterman’s museum before the tour at 1330.

Did not realize the Chesapeake Bay was the site of a meteor strike some 35 million years ago. Very interesting. Learned some other things at the museum, like the fact that William and Mary College was founded with pirate money. Had to text Stacy Puls Prince, who met her husband there. They were not aware of the provenance of the founding funds. Headed back up the hill for our Steamer wagon tour.

The wagon driver was Celeste’s husband, Jo, the coffee roaster. Our docent, Jacob, is a high school student who is part of the Fife and Drum Core in Yorktown. He read the NPS script but also was happy to answer questions off script. Part of the tour included him playing the fife for us at different sites, the redoubts 9 and 10 that Hamilton won back, where the siege lines were, where Cornwallis stayed, aka commandeered, a nice home, and the site where Cornwallis surrendered.

We drove by the Victory statue, which was to commemorate the battle of Yorktown. It was not erected until after the Civil War due to lack of funds. Abraham Lincoln authorized the funds so as to bring together people after the Civil War. Yorktown’s battlefields also were part of the Civil War. We returned to the confectionary after the tour and received passes to the NPS visitor center and museum. We decided to take the free town trolley to the museum, which was pretty cool. Air conditioned which was a bonus. There was a replica of a ship that was used in the battle that you could walk through, and George Washington’s tent, amazingly preserved all these years. It was a pretty nifty museum. We took the trolley back to the Confectionary to pick up my chocolate and then walked down the hill to the Riverwalk area for dinner.

A view of the Coleman Memorial Bridge from Yorktown side.

A view of York River Yacht Haven from the Yorktown side. baji-naji is to the left of the boat with the yellow hull. Can’t see Boji as the land is blocking the view of our bright orange dinghy.

Decided to go to the Riverwalk Restaurant for an early dinner. The fact that it was 95 out made it an easy decision.

Started with the deviled eggs which had crab, bacon jam and onion straws on them. Amazing and delicious!

Laz had the filet with pimento cheese sauce, broccolini, a sweet grilled cornbread and mashed potatoes.

I had the wiener schnitzel with asparagus and potatoes au gratin. The original sauce has alcohol, so they brought a different brown sauce on the side. The veal was excellent, the potatoes too salty. Brought home 1/2.

We split a lovely blood orange crème brûlée for dessert. Got a Lyft back to the marina for the $12 fee. Got back home to watch the replay of the France v Argentina men’s soccer game, which is the game that Jacqui and her friend attended. Love that she got tickets for canoe slalom in Paris, this soccer game in Bordeaux and sailing in Marseilles on Aug 5. Part way through the game’s first half, baji-naji was rocking and rolling more than usual. We opened the shades and saw a line of pitch black clouds coming our way. We saw the jib start to unfurl and Laz saw the Boji's bow against the hull. We went out to bring up the swim platform and see if we could refurl the jib.

The video shows only a little of the power of the wind and the photo doesn’t show how dark the clouds actually were. I asked Laz to put on a life jacket as he was headed to the bow to untangle the jib sheets. The wind was strong enough to pick up Boji, dump the 50 pound marble chip bag in the drink and flip her. Someone in a boat two slips down called out 'Crazy!" when I was trying to communicate with Laz about the jib. I was a bit curt. When Laz was finally able to untangle lines and refurl the jib, I went over to apologize for being brusque, and the gentleman, Mark, was very nice. He's sailed many boats in many places over his 70+ years, and thought this squall/storm was extraordinary. He looked at his instruments and saw 65mph blow through. Wow. He also offered to drive us to the hardware store to get more gravel for Boji in the morning. Came back in and finished the game which was almost as crazy with a melee at the end!

Saturday August 3rd

Laz was up at 0730 as he hoped to get the marble chips first thing. He knocked on Mark’s hull at 0830, and they set off shortly thereafter. I fell back asleep after Laz left and woke with a start at 0844. Got coffee and yogurt prepped and the usual pre departure chores. When Laz got back we were able to flip Boji upright, bring her back to the dock, load the 50# bag of marble chips in her stern, and tie her back properly.

As we got baji-naji ready to sail, Laz noticed this little stowaway on our bimini. We were off the dock from York River Yacht Haven by 0930. We were able to put up the mainsail after exiting the Sarah Creek channel. Great breeze from the SW, so we unfurled the jib and had a fantastic sail all the way across the bay, almost exactly to the mouth of the Little Creek entrance.

It looks fast even in a still picture. We got to Morningstar Marina and I needed a couple of tries to back into a port side finger. The Nonsuch that spun around and came back up the channel did not help. All three dockhands were women, nice, and very helpful. We had to reset the furling line as the webbing was out of whack when it came unfurled and Laz tried to refurl. I was too tired to walk back to the restaurant, so I made dinner aboard.

Leftovers: one shrimp taco for me and the single wiener schnitzel with some of the gouda crab dip on top. I heated up the rest of the gouda crab dip with the leftover pita to accompany our dinner. We are staying put another night because of expected bad weather tomorrow.

Sunday August 4th

Slept in until after 0930 and headed over to Stony’s for brunch. I was surprised there was no line. When we asked our server, she said it was an unusually slow day.

As we walked over to the restaurant, I noticed this fine fellow right on our finger. We were using the swim platform to get on and off, so he had our finger all to himself.

Laz had a sausage, cheddar and caramelized onion omelette with a delicious biscuit, and I had traditional eggs benedict and a fruit cup. We saved leftover home fries and one egg benny for another day. Headed to Food Lion after brunch, to do some light reprovisioning, including milk, yogurt and OJ. I could not resist the Nature’s promise boneless chicken breasts and the Harmless Harvest Coconut water, so I had to do some serious refrigerator Tetris to fit it all in. Luckily my Tetris skills are strong. I had a nice long chat with Kathy Reichert, and we also talked with Corrie and Jesse on the Island Packet Zephyr, to our port side. They needed to replace water tanks and their fuel tank and ran into delays as their contractor’s wife fell ill and apparently has required a lot of care. We met Jesse last year when he was looking at our Takacat. They ended up buying the open bow version. They are also custom ordering a wind vane so they had a plywood mock up of one to see if it would fit. We met Mark on Adagio, an Island packet on our starboard side. He is a retired air traffic controller and hopes to sail to the Caribbean some day. We worked to fix the foot tensioner on the jib; the wind whipped the line, broke the plastic jam cleat and tore the foot fabric several inches. I threaded the line back and we patched the fabric with sail tape. Handy stuff. Laz tied the rest of the line to the clew, to keep it from flapping as the plastic cleat is no longer operational. We also replaced the rigging tape on the back stays. They were coming off and quite ratty. No further chores as the storm was threatening.

Back to Stony’s for a Newport salad (split, and a good thing as it’s huge) and a margherita pizza. We had a take out chocolate cake for back on baji-naji.

Sunset. I spent the evening working on this log. The app has become quite slow and unwieldy on the phone, so the best place to do this is on the computer. Unfortunately I have to download the photos to the computer first. A bit of a process but I am learning how to best do this. We are headed a short distance to Hampton tomorrow.

Monday August 5th

Headed out of Little Creek with light winds as predicted, 5 kts. Lots of activity; we saw all kinds of ships when we got into the Bay.

Warship 74. No other identifier on AIS, but not really needed.

Warship 78 also going out.

Nice view of the Chunnel, or the water over it anyway.Thought it was funny that when we drove this way we couldn’t see the Bay for all the rain.

Dolphins greeted us! They really enjoyed fishing and playing in the channel.

The fish roils were everywhere, with fish leaping quite high out of the water.

Pelicans hanging out on the marks and in the water. Plenty of fish for them to catch.

The Jeffery S going out.

The DMO Listo, a barge and tug, was hot on our heels coming in. They did not answer our hails when we tried to check in. The wind has softened then changed direction so we were able to stay out of its way.

The Cartier, powered by LPG, was heading out. One hoped for sparkly expensive gems, given her name, but I don't think that's the cargo here.

The DMO Listo approaching Thimble Shoal light with Grandview Beach in the background.

A Viking moving fast. I learned what a tuna tower on a boat is, no avocado or mango included, unlike my dinner in Sarah Creek.

So many dolphins! They followed us into the narrow channel to the Hampton River. Some swam right up to baji-naji then flipped, belly side up and swam off. So playful. It was a joy to see.

We were able to sail all the way into the narrow channel into the Hampton River and took down our sails just outside Safe Harbor Hampton. When we got our slip assignment and got in, we noticed a Dufour 500 GL a couple of slips over, Soul Mates. We look like her baby sister. We are dwarfed by her in the first photo above. You can always tell which one is baji-naji by bright orange Boji.

Our across the dock neighbor, a Pardo, looks like the Tesla Cybertruck. Not my favorite look. After a quick lunch aboard, we took down the main sail as Laz had contacted Jim the sailmaker here, and Jim is able to pick up the sail and patch the delamination for us. We spent much of the afternoon and evening going over charts with Debbie and Todd McKeller, who bought Soul Mates in Grenada. She is a former 2016 charter boat that they have fixed up and upgraded. They are from California, sailed up from the Caribbean and Florida and are exploring the Chesapeake. They have a 6 1/2 foot draft, and prefer to anchor, so we were introducing them to our favorite gunk holes. It was 1900 when we looked up so we decided to Uber to a local Italian/Greek place for dinner, as Surfrider is closed on Mondays. They are leaving in the am, but we are staying to tour Hampton. Unfortunately with Hurricane Debby heading up, we will be in Hampton a few more days than we thought. We stayed up til MN watching the Olympics. Mike Tirico does a really nice job hosting, and it is amazing to watch the women’s gymnastics and see Simone Biles, truly the GOAT.

Tuesday August 6th

Up 0845. Breakfast of yogurt for me and the last of Beiler's doughnuts for Laz, who was up earlier. Jim from Hampton Sails and Canvas picked up the mainsail at 0910, but Laz did not go with him to show him the issue as Jim has Covid. We discussed what needed to be done. The northern tail of Hurricane Debby making its way to us later today. Waved goodbye to the M Kellers who are off for Deltaville.

The “ducklings” are out! Sailing school in Optis. Meanwhile, boat chores included topping off the forward water tank, filling the aft tank and washing baji-naji. The water pressure here is quite fierce so I did not use soap, just hosed her down. Did not even need the spray handle. Jacqui is in Marseille today with her friend, watching Olympic sailing from the water. Literally, in the water. So fun! This is a good day to do laundry, so we were able to clean the linens and dirty clothes between halves of the USWNT playing Germany in the semi-final. I had my delicious fried oysters at Surfrider, as a po’boy. Did not need the bread so brought it back for garlic bread another night. Laz had a burger. I had tater tots that were sadly cold.

The view of the sky when I came back to hang clothes to dry on baji-naji. It started to pour when I was in the laundry room rolling over laundry shortly afterwards. Luckily I did not miss the only goal of the game. The USWNT are through to the final! Even better, they will play Brazil in what is likely to be Marta's last international game.

Back aboard in the rain to do computer chores, set up my EPL team, Laz emailed Mom’s obits to Andover and Wellesley. There is too much email and news to peruse! I made baked chicken breasts with hummus and lemon on top. Roasted the broccoli with garlic , salt and pepper and toasted the ciabatta all in one pan in the oven. They joys of cooking inside with air conditioning!

Wednesday August 7th

Slept in since we weren't running off. I made a nice breakfast aboard, scrambled eggs/rest of the home fries.

After breakfast I called IBX for our member numbers and to get online access. We are covered as of Aug 1st. Yay! Cancelled my UHC coverage which ends 8/31.

Dave took us in the Bluewater water taxi to the town dock. We saw a jet ski that sunk, looks like a whale trying to breach. Apparently a sailboat was being towed by two jet skis and one sank. Why jet skis? Because the sailor sued TowBoatUS and pissed off everyone so he was not able to call them for a row! Dave's brother is the head of the local TowBoatUS, so he has the scoop! It started to rain all little as we were under way.

Walked from the Town dock to the Virginia Air and Space museum. It was amazing , with everything from tall ship models, planes, rockets, space capsules and the shuttle. Lots of great info and interactive stations. Kids were all over those but us adults got to play as well. After we went through, we walked towards the restaurant area of Queen Street.

We had a late lunch at Venture Kitchen and Bar. I had an excellent tuna poke bowl and Laz had a shrimp taco and a classic waygu beef taco. From there, we found a local salon that would do men's haircuts, Barry's. We walked in and one of the stylists, Gary, had just had a cancellation and was happy to cut Dan's hair. He had a nice shampoo as well.

We took a Lyft to the AMC movie theater complex to see Deadpool and Wolverine. So good. So many MCU and pop culture references. Ryan Reynolds is a funny guy. Dinner of salads at Surfrider. Lots of leftovers. No room for dessert! Took a Lyft back to the marina. Unfortunately this driver was a smoker, not while we were in the car, but the car was quite full of old second hand smoke.

More rain storms, but a sunset under them.

Where there is sun and rain, you can usually find a rainbow. This was looking from the Surfrider restaurant towards Hampton University.

We had dinner at Surfrider. Wedge salads, mine with shrimp and Laz’s with chicken. Took a lot home as these were generously sized. Frustrating app..I cropped these photos but the app will not recognize the cropped images and continues to upload the uncropped images. There was no room for dessert!

Thursday August 8th

Today's morning chore was to clean the head and the shower stall. My hair gets everywhere and there is a lot of it! It was a wet and bedraggled hair tarantula that was cleared from the shower drain. Jim brought our patched mainsail back and I decided to put back on, as that is the easiest place to store it in a storm. Laz was not sure about this, as the wind was 10+ kts but it was enough in front of us to get the slides back in the storm track and tuck the sail back in the sail bag with two battens in place. We stowed the other two battens in the sail bag to install later. Sure enough, the winds picked up to 15-20 later in the day.

Picture is before we put the main sail back on. We tucked Boji back behind baji-naji as the winds were coming from the S. You can see the new bag of marble chips aboard Boji.

Leftover salad for lunch, topped with potato chip crumbs.

Headed to Surfrider for a snack around 3p, as there really wasn't much salad for lunch, and had a delicious shrimp and corn chowder with a virgin Pina colada. Laz had pretty good onion rings. The Pina colada was too sweet, with the classic ice cream headache. Watched the US men's basketball team get beat by Serbia in the semi final. Went back to baji-naji for a nap at half time and woke to find that they had won! They were down 17 points so good for them. There were on and off rain and high winds all day, courtesy of Debby. Laz showed me how to take out the speed/depth sensor and replace it with the plug designed to sit there. Sure enough the speed sensor was dirty with lots of slime impeding its motion. We cleaned it off and replaced it. Tested it by spinning the sensor and looking at the navs and lo and behold it works again.

Back to Surfrider for dinner. I had not had a burger in a long time so had an excellent mushroom cheddar burger with fries and Laz had a steak sandwich with steak tips. I brought home 1/2 the burger and our leftover fries. Stayed up too late reading. Still in Hampton tomorrow as we wait for Debby to sashay on up North.

Friday August 9th

Rain and a lot of wind overnight as expected. Went for a walk before breakfast to see how the marina looked. Everything seemes fine. We met Zee, a Pakistani Punjabi (apparently Punjabis don’t sail, according to him, so he is an anomaly), on his Cabo Rico 42, hull #14 out of 18 named Fitri (which means natural, in Punjabi). We talked for over an hour about sailing and all kinds of things. He’s from Dallas, and his boat’s home port is Port Townsend, WA because he would like to end up there some day. We got back on baji-naji at 1100, time for breakfast! Had coffee and the super delish cinnamon roll from Mobjack Bay Roasters. I read my book, then made lunch at 1330 of leftovers, my cheddar mushroom burger for me, chicken souvlaki and margherita pizza for Laz. There may have been fries. I took another walk after lunch.

There were still rain clouds and ominous skies as Debby makes her way north.

I had fun looking at the bright sea anemones under the docks and watching the crabs scuttle around (insert video)

View from the other side of the marina, including an egret flying overhead.

A nice view of our girl and Boji on my way back. While I was walking, Laz got several chores done: he dixed the latch on the vanity cabinet, tightened up the belt on the engine, checked the oil, tried to fix the blinking lights on the LED strips and overhead lights with limited success, as it is likely a grounding issues. He disconnected the overhead lights altogether. Fixed the port side shade snap; it needed to be screwed back in properly. Many chores done meant a shower then into town for dinner. We offered to buy Zee dinner for the loan of his Jeep, but he wanted to stay put at the marina. It was interesting to ride in a 6 speed Jeep.

We went back to Venture Kitchen and I had what was supposed to be a spinach salad with mandarin oranges, blueberries and pistachios with grilled cod, but they ran out of spinach. And apparently blueberries. It was good nonetheless. Laz had a chicken enchilada bowl, interesting concept, and tasty. I went back soley for the strawberry shortcake which was good but needed more strawberries. Laz had key lime pie. We ended up taking dessert inside as the bugs were starting to bite and the smell of pot from neighboring diners did not pair well with dessert.

A view of the outdoor seating and sunset. Our last night at Safe Harbor Bluewater and Hampton. Off to Portsmouth tomorrow to explore more of the Hampton Roads and the Elizabeth River.

Saturday August 10th

Noticed a puddle on the floor behind the sink when I got up. Investigation showed a leak from the T valve of the cold water feed into the hot water heater. Frustrating! We went to see if the shop might be open Sat am, for that part, but no such luck. Ran into Zee going to the shore head for a shower and he offered to drive Laz to Home Depot to find it. While waiting for Zee to clean up, we put the last two battens in the main sail and tied off the reefing lines. The guys came back with the part and a spare, turns out Zee needed a Home Depot run for Fitri anyway. I helped Laz get the broken part off as he was having trouble pulling it out with the barbs on the end. I wiggled it a different way and it popped out. I thought I moved some wires that shouldn't have been moved but everything seemed OK. Hoses reclamped, no more leak! A good quick victory. Got going later than we wanted, abou 1100 but it was still a few hours away from the anticipated rain. When we turned on the navs we figured out what wires I had pulled…the navs were not working. Laz put connected the wires back and off we went! We decided to sail out into the Bay for a little bit.

Love that this boat is called Epic Trader.

The Stuyvesant is a working boat that we also passed.

The sail patches look good on the main.

We saw some more dolphins playing in the channel.

We were moving along nicely but noticed the clouds were thickening. Check of the radar showed that a small cell was moving our way. We turned around to go back into the Hampton Roads and towards Portsmouth.Once in, we saw more dolphins. They don't seem to mind the busy port or all the big ships. We heard chatter on the VHF that a large container ship coming in was going to need the whole channel in the Elizabeth River. Wow. The channel was narrower than usual due to a dredging operation.

Aircraft carriers are so cool.

The clouds we saw thickening are dark and right ahead.

The Zim Canada was steaming in at 13+kts, but slowed down to below our speed once in the Hampton Roads. The captain hailed us and asked is to maintain our speed, and we should be fine and not in their way. There were so many Navy ships all the way up the river. Had to dodge a dredging barge that had a long tail that looked like a floating flexible tunnel to mark off the area of water the dredger was working in. Not sure if it dumped some of the mud in the island behind it.

The rain clouds were getting closer. Passed many tug boats like the pretty Sarah. There were a few McAllister sisters as well, including two who went out to accompany the Canada.The heavens opened up with the dark clouds that we saw now completely over us. There was minimal visibility and I could barely see O Canada behind us, but I knew she was there. The squall was moving fairly quickly. By the time Canada headed to her dock we were well on our way towards Portsmouth.

I could barely see this lighthouse or filling station which became clearer as the rain lightened a bit. Turned to port to follow the Elizabeth River.

Tidewater Marina, the Virginia version! They are a Suntex marina, like York River Yacht Haven and Liberty Marina in Jersey City. Got a nice reusable bag as our swag and info about the town. Rick, the dock master was very nice and helped us into our slip. He gave some recommendations for dinner.

We walked into town, passed the Portsmouth Light Ship. A hot day despite the thunderstorm that came through.

More Navy ships across the river in Norfolk.

Decided to have dinner at Still, an eclectic that. The food was outstanding! Watermelon salad with cucumber and chili sauce, burrata with roasted peaches, a delicious baguette with narrow and garlic butter. They brought some miso butter as well, the marrow was better.

Lamb lollipops and roasted brussel sprouts

Roasted fingerling potatoes with parmesan and a lovely parmesan garlic sauce.

Duck tacos. Tasty but not as good as the others. Duck was a bit dry.

Elk, duck and venison sausage, house made mustard. Two pieces of each and delicious smoky flavor. The duck was my favorite, the other were very good.

Raspberry marscapone tarts for dessert. So much food, we brought home one tart, 1/2 the burrata and the watermelon salad.

On the way back we walked a different route to see the other restaurants and ice cream stores. Too bad we were too full for ice cream, it looked good. Cool history of this Frenel lens.

A close up of one of the Navy ships across the river.

A beautiful view of Norfolk across the river.

Beautiful sunset over the marina and baji-naji. Off to Cape Charles tomorrow.