Hampton, VA

We are docked here again, waiting for our friend Diana to join us for the trip down the ICW and home.  Although we had planned one more night on the hook for yesterday, after we left Deltaville with no wind and it already feeling HOT at 7:15 in the morning, we decided to continue on to Hampton where we could plug in the power and turn on the air conditioning, avoiding the heat and bugs most likely to be encountered in an anchorage. 

It was a nice trip in spite of the heat.  Caught a small amberjack on our trolling line which turned out to be the excitement for the afternoon, but turned him loose to grow some more.  We saw numerous dolphins, some swimming along with the boat for short periods.  The bay was fairly calm and the 5 knots of breeze at least kept the sweat dried off of us a little.  As we were coming into Hampton Roads, a convoy of military go-fast-boats came screaming out beside us.  http://www.dailypress.com/media/photo/2011-07/63398863.jpg  They were a friendly lot, waving at me as their huge wakes set our boat rocking and rolling precipitously. 

Docking was an interesting event.  We do not put our boat in slips very often, in fact, almost never.  With a beam of 21.5 feet it really doesn't fit in most slips.  So we take a face dock when we go into marinas, which isn't all that often.  Here, though, they have wide slips which are really designed for 2 monohulls, one tied to one side and one to the other.  They let us take the whole thing since it is not too busy right now.

This was the second time we have backed into these slips.  (We don't really want to talk about that first time.)  There is a current in here that wants to move you away from one side or the other, depending on whether the tide is ebbing or flowing.  Our boat, being taller than many, picks up a lot of wind action as well and the wind, as usual, had picked up a little as we motored into the channel.  So we had talked about how best to approach this procedure after the first time and then again as we were about to dock this time.  We thought we had it figured out.  We thought each of us knew our appointed tasks and were confident that we could accomplish them.

It only took us three tries this time to get the boat close enough to the piling I needed to lasso, and when close enough, it only took me 2 flings of the dock line to get it over the (rather tall) piling.  If Tom hadn't jumped off the boat and burned his feet on the blazing hot cement of the dock (and if I had known that was what he was cursing at instead of thinking it was me) and if we had aimed for the down current piling instead of the up current one, things might have been a little smoother.  Maybe.  Let's just say we could use a bit more practice.  We did get tied up successfully and nothing was damaged.  Tom's feet were much better after soaking in a bucket of cold water.  And after the boat cooled down and we had showers and a beer or two, it was all good.