iFloat Loop: 05/09/25

When we arrived at Tidewater, both Stulie and iFloat stopped at the gas dock for fuel and to get pumped out. We then were put in our slips, in somewhat windy conditions. Luckily for us the wind was blowing in our favour and we got set in with no drama. Once in their slip, the crew of Stulie had to wait for their props to be serviced. Chris had called ahead and arranged for a diver to remove the props and take them to a prop shop to be fixed. It didn't take the diver long to get them off, but now Stulie was trapped until their props could be restored. This was a Friday afternoon, so we didn't expect anything until Monday.

That evening we gathered with other loopers for docktails. The marina was the overflow docking marina for the AGLCA Spring Rendezvous, so the place was full of loopers. We met crews from several boats we had not met previously. Since the rendezvous was here, lots of people were just starting out their loops, so we were now the "vets". That night we watched a bit of TV then crashed into bed early, as it had been a long day.

Next morning we were up as usual around 6 am. Normally I get up and make coffee, while Louise snoozes a bit more. This morning was no different, and I sat reading for a while until Louise got up. When she was in the salon, I made coffee for her and then sat back down. As I was getting comfortable, I felt something moving in my pants (I wear sweat pants in the mornings). I jumped up and whipped off my pants, while Louise asked "what are you doing?". Turns out there was a huge spider inside my sweat pants. I was ready to squish it, but Louise stopped me in time from making a mess of my sweats, and instead used her spider-grabber to dump the spider in the bay. Talk about a wake-up call.

The cruise ship terminal was across from our marina. We got to watch the early-evening departure. The ship undocked, moved forward, pivoted 180 degrees and left. The whole time we could hear the calypso-metal-drum music from the bar on the top deck of the ship. Yah Mon!

Once we were ready to face the day, Louise went with Chris and Julie to the local farmer's market, while I changed the oil on the main engine and serviced the batteries. Our batteries are flooded-lead-acid type and require the addition of distilled water about once a month. Once these jobs were done, I fixed a few small things around the boat and then Louise and I settled in to binge-watch "Lioness".

Small in-law house in someone's backyard.

Wrecked sailboat outside the marina. It is amazing how many wrecked boats you see along the ICW, almost all of them are sailboats. This one looked fairly recent, but you can see the condition of the bottom is not great. This boat was not well maintained.

Someone installed some portholes into their fence. Gives their dogs a chance to see though the fence.

On the way to the farmer's market, Louise, Julie and Chris stumbled over a car show. This one had some nice examples, but was not in the same league as the one we saw in Southport.

3D scroll work for sale at the Farmers market.

House with a slate roof.

Device to clean the horse shit off your boot before you go in the house, I assume a leftover from earlier times.

The next morning we woke up to pouring rain. It rained pretty much all morning, so we did some boat chores, then more binge-watching.

We have a laundry rack, but since the rain was off and on, we hung some things up in the salon to dry.

Water taxi. The service took you from one side of the river to the other, between Norfolk and Portsmouth. It was quick, and not very expensive - return trip was 4$ each.

In the afternoon it cleared out a bit, and the rain eased off, so we took the local water-taxi over the river to take a boat tour of the naval yards. We made it to our tour boat just in time and set off on the tour, which was pretty comprehensive. The naval facilities here are absolutely huge.

Assault ship. This thing carries hovercraft and landing craft in a special area in the stern of the vessel.

Arleigh Burke class destroyer. There were several of these in the harbour, and when we left Norfolk, we heard radio traffic from one that was conducting exercises in the Chesapeake.

There was a large coal-loading terminal here, capable of berthing four large vessels at a time to load them quickly with coal. The coal from here is shipped mostly to Europe.

We passed two container terminals on the tour. When we were leaving the harbour, we had to pay attention to the radio as there were huge container ships coming into and out of the harbour all the time.

Guided-missile cruiser. The modern ships all have stealth shapes, not as cool looking as the WWII ships IMO.

There were at least three dredges working in the harbour, plus we passed two or three in the next couple of days. The waters here are shallow and constantly silting. There is a huge area opposite the navy base where they dump the sand. Looked like they are creating artificial land for another container terminal using it.

Smaller warship in a dry-dock.

U.S.S. Cole. This is the ship that was attacked by a suicide bomber terrorist a couple of years before 9-11.

The navy has several patrol boats guarding the naval yards, and they mean business. Check out the machine gun on the bow of this guy.

Super-carrier stern. This is one of the newest carriers in the fleet, and uses electromagnetic catapults instead of the older steam ones. It was wider than many ships are long.

Side view of the super-carrier. This guy is over 1000 feet long.

There were two super-carriers in port when we went by. USS Gerald Ford (#78) USS George H. W. Bush (#77)

This is a mini-carrier, a Wasp-class assault ship which carries helos and harriers.

There is a WWII battleship here set up as a museum.

After the tour we had a drink at this roof-top bar that Chris and Julie wanted to visit, then headed back to the marina in the water-taxi. It was getting dark by this time, so Louise and I decided to get dinner at the marina restaurant. It was awesome and actually surprisingly pretty cheap, so we decided to go back the next night.

The side of this building was painted as a mural in downtown Norfolk.

Selfie with Chris and Julie in the roof-top brew-pub in Norfolk. Grain - had lots of different beers and ciders to try.

Monday was spent waiting for Stulie's props to get installed. The diver had promised them that the props would be put on by lunchtime. Well, lunchtime came and went and no diver. Chris and Julie had to go to Walmart for some things, and asked us to watch for the diver. Chris was in touch with him by phone, and he was supposed to show up in the afternoon. Afternoon came and went with no diver. Chris and Julie took a long time at Walmart. They had run into a paperwork snag and the run took them all afternoon. They told us later that it was in a real sketchy neighbourhood, and they did not feel at all comfortable on the trip over (they went by scooter) or even at the store. Yikes! While we were waiting for the diver in the afternoon, Louise and I finished binging both seasons of Lioness. We spoiled ourselves by another trip to the marina restaurant for tuna dinner.

Next morning we had a good weather window, which was slated to close in the early afternoon. The diver had assured Chris that he would be there at 7am and get the props installed right away, so we left at 6 am assuming that Stulie would not be far behind us. We are glad we left early. Conditions were perfect for the first 5 hours of the trip, then the wind kicked up and we got the snot kicked out of us for the last hour or so. We eventually made it to the Stingray Point marina and docked it perfectly in heavy winds. Boo-yah! Stulie meanwhile, were delayed until 10:30 as the diver kept stringing them along and then eventually showed up at 10. Only took 20 minutes to get the props on once he showed up. Needless to say, their trip to Stingray was not as nice as ours.

They had a variety of plants in the garden at the Stingray Point marina. This place was really well kept and we really liked the grounds and facilities here.

Really nice garden and gazebo.

Next morning we slept-in a bit then got underway around 7am. We decided to leave later than usual, since we had a fairly short ride this day. Since conditions were nice, we saw lots of looper boats moving on AIS northward up the Chesapeake. Along the way we heard a radio exchange between a containership and some fishermen. Apparently the containership had run across their crab traps. Why would someone put any kind of fishing gear anywhere near an area where giant ships go I will never know, but from the sounds of it their gear got destroyed. We arrived at the Glebe anchorage around noon and got set up.

Old lighthouse in the Chesapeake. Not manned anymore, so not well-kept up, but still functional.

The Glebe anchorage is in the Caan river, and was a nice wide area surrounded by well-kept houses. We were not completely protected from the Potomac, but the conditions were so mild that it did not matter. That evening we played cards with Chris and Julie, Skip-Bo.

The anchor was a bit tough to pull up in the morning. The chain was COVERED in mud, and the front of the boat ended up with mud all over. The muck had just SUCKED in the anchor, and initially the windlass could not pull it out. When this happens, we put some tension on the chain and gently bump the engine forward so that we use the boat to pull up the anchor not the windlass. It took a couple of bumps, but we got it in, although it was covered with mud. Really stinky stuff too, lots of hydrogen sulfide. This kind of thing is a pain, but it is really reassuring to know the anchor was set solid.

Our anchor and chain were absolutely COVERED in muck, which got spattered everywhere on the front of the boat, including on our looper flag.

On the way out of the anchorage we heard the coast guard announce a "pan-pan" on the radio. This is a message that there is a vessel in distress. After listening for a bit, we discovered that someone had triggered a DSC distress signal by mistake. The coast guard had to collect all their info anyways, since the distress was triggered, then they cancelled the "pan-pan" alert. About a half hour later we heard another pan-pan as a different boat had triggered a DSC distress call. We could not hear details of their radio exchange with the coast guard however, but after about an hour this pan-pan was also cancelled.

DSC stands for Digital Signal Calling. Modern VHF radios are equipped with this feature that automatically transmits your vessels info and GPS position if you trigger a distress call. Good safety feature, but you have to be careful not to hit the wrong button.

The conditions were super-calm on the Potomac, and we made good progress the rest of the day, at least until we got to St. Clements island. At that point, Stulie was cruising down the east side of the river, (Maryland) while we were more on the west side (Virginia) . Chris texted Louise to ask if we had heard any thumping sounds on our hull. She replied that we had not. Chris reported they heard four loud thumps, and were concerned that they might have hit something. At that moment, on channel 16 we heard "northbound trawler on the Potomac river, this is navy range patrol boat 1". Stulie replied to them and were told we were entering a live-fire restriction zone and had to alter course. The navy boat asked Stulie about the other boat travelling with them, so we got on the radio to tell them we were also listening.

At that point, the navy officer asked us where we were going, and then gave us detailed instructions about how to alter course to pass safely by the live-fire zone. Basically a list of buoys (each one has an identifying number) that we were to follow to pass safely. We replied that we were altering course to port to exit the zone.

This shows our route and track across the live-fire zone. Our planned route is the straight black line running from the right to the left ending at waypoint "B16" (we were travelling right to left on this image). St. Clements island is at the upper-right of the image, near the white box with the vertical blue line and triangle "1 8" (this is an indicator for tides at that location). The live fire zone is in the centre of the river, and extends across the image. It is outlined by dotted red lines and yellow buoys. You can see one of these buoys near the centre-left of the image marked "J". Our track (record of where our boat actually went) is the solid red line. You can see we stared at the right near "haulover inlet", then diverted to port towards the Nomini cliffs then turned to starboard to get to our destination at the Boathouse.

It took about 10 minutes to get out of the area (the Potomac is big here), and as we cleared the area, Chris got on the radio to tell the Navy boat that we were clear. We continued along to our destination marina for the day, at this point about 18 km away, all the while we could feel thumps on our hull. Chris got on the radio and speculated that what we were "feeling" were explosions. We could not see any aircraft or splashes, but we sure could feel them. The thumps could now be both heard and felt.

We made it to the marina safely, and the dockhand told us that the thumping we had heard and felt was the Navy practice-firing six-inch guns. He told us that many years ago they also used to fire 16-inch guns along that range. Yikes.

As we approached the marina we passed through another kind of minefield, crab pots. They were everywhere in the approach to the place. Our destination, The Boathouse marina was a kind of rustic place, with gravel parking lots and older docks. Personally, I feel more comfortable at places like this than at some of the super-high-end marinas we have visited.

The marina had a golf cart for visitor use so we borrowed it and set off with Chris and Julie for some shopping. Lots of golf carts wizzing around each small town we visit. A few corners were a bit wild as we took them at speed, but we got to our destination alive and did some provisioning. All day long we could hear the 6-inch guns firing, as the Navy base was close by. For dinner, we went to a local Thai restaurant called Sunflower which was excellent. They specialized in French, Thai and Japanese cooking. We had sushi, pad thai and red curry. We made it back to the boat just in time as there were black clouds and lightning on the horizon. We missed the worst of it unfortunately, I was hoping we would get a heavy rain that would wash the salt off the boat.

We were up early the next morning as we had to pass through the firing range again and we had found on the navy website that there were more exercises scheduled for this day. We needed to be off the range by 8 am, and it would take about 1.5 hours to traverse the zone, so we were underway at 6 am.

We had a weird experience when we first came out of the boat early in the morning. It was still dark, and the whole harbour was HUMMING . Turned out that there were so many midges flying around that they made a humming sound, like some kind of weird sci-fi movie. The boat was covered with them. As soon as the sun came up though they disappeared and they didn't bite. The day was grey and dismal, and we went in and out of misting rain.

Ghost fleet of Mallows bay. This bay holds the largest shipwreck fleet in the northern hemisphere. There are more than 230 ships sunk in this bay. They were sold by the Navy in the 1920's, and towed to the bay, where they burned and sank.

We arrived at Sweden Point state park only to find out that there slips were too narrow to hold our boats. We had made reservations and pre-paid, so they let us stay on the breakwater. The water was pretty shallow here, but we had enough depth that we did not touch bottom. We also arrived a low tide, so it was a bit white knuckle, but when we leave tomorrow it will be high tide so we get an extra 2 feet of water. Tomorrow we will arrive in Washington D.C.