Friday June 27 — As we’d learned the hard way, we needed to leave at a higher tide or else we’d be grounded. We untied at 0550. The day was grey and overcast, and the sun was not visible behind the cloud cover. At first, the sea conditions were surprisingly uncomfortable, with sea spray regularly coming over the bow. It calmed down within an hour or so, though.
For the majority of the trip, we had 2-foot swells and 3-foot wind chop and light wind. There was a fair amount of traffic, and all kinds of boats, including sailboats, trawlers, tiny fishing boats, etc. There were several small craft that AIS identified as “MC experimental” that appeared to be military vessels doing circles. There was a small ship that particularly caught our attention. AIS identified as “High Speed Vessel” that looked like a small research vessel. Later, we found out it was a service vessel for a near-by off-shore wind farm.
Crossing the shipping lane was a little scary. At different points in time, we were on a collision course with 2 different vessels, so we needed to alter course each time to avoid them.
It was hot and humid outside, so Eric ran the generator and the salon and downstairs A/C units the entire 7.5-hour trip.
As we approached the entrance to the Little Creek Harbor, it was apparent that the west side was a military base and the east side had residential housing.
Once in the harbor, we almost immediately turned west into a channel.
On the south side, commercial and military-looking vessels lined the channel. We couldn’t see much beyond the vessels, but we knew it was a military base.
The north side of the channel had high-density housing and/or hotels that looked relatively new and marinas filled with recreational boats.
Our destination was Morningstar Marina, one of the first marinas for recreational vessels on the south side. After all of our years of being surrounded by military bases in San Diego Bay, we certainly felt right at home being next door to a military base!
Two marina staff were waiting by our assigned slip to help us tie up. Eric wanted to back in. He tried three times, but the current was strong. We kept getting pushed out of alignment before we got all the way into the slip. He was about to give up and go nose in, but the marina staffers said they’d put us into an easy to enter spot temporarily until slack tide the next morning.
Since we weren’t staying long, we pulled nose-in to the slip, next to a unique vessel. It’s currently used a dive ship, but was originally built as mine sweeper, and was made out of Kevlar.
We were pleased to see that the marina had floating docks. As we were working on getting Kosmos situated, the generator shut itself off. Oh no! This happened once before. The other time, the cause was a plastic bag that had gotten sucked into the intake. Eric figured it was another plastic bag, or (since the jellyfish were flourishing right now) maybe a jellyfish. He was too tired to deal with it today, and since we were plugged into power here at the marina, it could wait.
After we rinsed Kosmos down, we went to lunch at the onsite restaurant, called Stony’s, for our celebratory meal.
The food was good and the portions were huge.
One of the reasons we picked Norfolk was because we have friends in the area. Christi has a close friend from college, Karen, who lived relatively nearby. In the evening, Karen, her husband, Mark, and one of her adult children, Lauren, came to see us at the marina. We gave them a tour of Kosmos, then we all went to Stony’s. They had dinner, but since the three of us were still full from our enormous late lunch, we had dessert. It was wonderful to see them in person again. Sadly, we forgot to take photos.