We’re in Norfolk, Virginia. We arrived around 8 pm yesterday, and decided to stay a couple of nights in the municipal marina (Waterside Marina, $1.50/ft/night, water included which is a nice change from 50 cents a gallon in the Bahamas). Here’s the view from the cockpit.

There are loud-speaker military communications happening all the time it seems…and this morning at 700 hours, they broadcast what I could identify only as a 70’s era disco-type song. Loud. Everybody up!

It’s late coming, but I’ll take a minute to tell you about our last big ocean passage of the trip (we won’t be back out in the big blue again until we go from Cape May, New Jersey to New York City in a week or two).

So I already told you this, but we arrived in Beaufort, North Carolina at about 8:00am June 13th, after leaving Marsh Harbour, Abaco, Bahamas via the north Man ‘O War cut late in the afternoon on June 9th.

We had a salty evening with high-ish winds, forward of the beam, and the seas to go with ’em. When the sun went down it would normally have been the perfect prescription for violent and sustained vomiting on my part, but I took Stugeron! I had to stretch it to every 12, rather than 8 hours, but it worked just as well. I even skipped the last dose.

The rough weather was gone before morning the next day, and we had a very easy time of it with SSE, then S, then SW winds all the way to Beaufort.

Late Tuesday night we had a spectacular lightning show. It’s the most lightening we’ve ever seen. For a few hours, it seemed that the sky was illuminated more than it wasn’t. As the sun came up we passed through a few squalls – or they passed over us, not sure the best way to describe it. We didn’t need to shorten any sail, though – we just kept truckin’ through it. It was quite rainy and the thunder and lightening was very impressive. We were entering the worst of it when my shift ended at 6 am. Phill came out to take over, and I have one last squally image for you (didn’t get a picture – too much going on). Phill was in his boxer shorts and a navy blue long-sleeve t-shirt; the boat was heeling so he sported a very wide-legged stance at the wheel; the wind was howling and it was as though a special effects technician was tossing buckets in his face from stage left, and he’d have to give his head one of those wet-dog shakes to shed the water. I asked him from inside “Need help out there…I can stay up?” and he answered with a big grin “Nope. I’m just fine!”.

As we approached Beaufort inlet, we were so excited to get settled into the marina, that we beelined it for the first one we saw. We’d made reservations at Beafort Docks ($1.90/ft/day), and the dockmaster was watching for us. He noticed we were heading for the wrong marina and re-directed us. Phill laughed and said “We’re like the duck from that ‘Are You My Mother?‘ book” which I thought was hilarious at the time.

So we got settled and the US Customs & Border Patrol and Immigration agents came for a visit. They confiscated two apples and a pepperoni stick that was made in Denmark, finished our paperwork and wished us a pleasant stay in the US.

Then we went for lunch, finished a few boat jobs and had a nap.

We explored Beaufort the next day, then got moving again on June 15th, stopping only to sleep, all the way to Norfolk to beat some bad weather that’s supposed to roll through today.

It’s my 40th birthday. Phill snuck off this morning before the 70’s-disco-music-navy-rise-and-shine broadcast to get some b-day cappuccinos (the first we’ve had in a long time). We’re just going to wander around town today; I think I’ll get an expensive haircut, and we’ll probably go out for a nice dinner tonight.

Talk again later…