Hunkered Down

The Tidewater Marina in Portsmouth was a good choice as a place to wait to see what Huricane Mathew was going to do. Several mega yachts and lots of cruisers have tucked in here. The marina staff are great and we are on a floating pier with 14 foot posts. You can tie tight to the dock and it moves with tide changes and storm surges. Much better than adjusting lines during the storm and the prediction now is that we will just get a lot of rain and ~30 knot winds with some stronger gusts. As long as we don't get a 14 foot surge we are in good shape here in the lee of the mega yachts.

 

A few days exploring historic sections of Portsmouth and Norfolk have been fun.  Took the ferry across to Norfolk and went to the Nauticus museum and saw the battleship Wisconsin. It is a World War 2 battleship that saw action in the Pacific, Korea, and was reactivated/upgraded by Reagan when he was building up the military and it fired some of the first cruise missles in the Gulf War. I talked to a guide who served in the Navy in Korea and asked about what it was like on a battleship in storms at sea and he said that the battleship guys should not even get Sea Pay because it is so big and solid that you couldn't even tell you were at sea.

 

While at Nauticus, we discovered that the joke about Carolina Steve's current cell phone being a museum piece is now all too accurate.

 

We also Ubered for the first time yesterday to get to the Norfolk Naval base to take a tour. The tour was interesting but probably not worth the logistics of getting there.  You can't take pictures except for one stop where you are very far from the ships. Here is a supply ship that fixes airplanes. The navy blue and gold strip indicates it is a non-combatant ship making it an automatic act of war to fire on it. Seems like a technical distinction because it will probably also start a war if you fire at a carrier.  You can also see steam pipes just above the cars that run all over the base. Our guide said they had to put them 14 feet in the air to keep the jar heads from tripping over them.

 

There are a lot of nice cruisers here all stuck waiting to go south.  There are great stories and lots of tips and impromptu pot luck diners. The tips and forums and guides are great but it also gets to be difficult to sift through contradictory advice and figure out when to move on and which way to go. We may not get to go the dismal swamp route as the storm is likely to knock over trees and high water can close the locks. One boat got stuck 1/2 way through for a week when it was closed last week. Should know more tomorrow. Hoping to move on by Monday or Tuesday.