Portsmouth, VA

With the boats packed in one behind each other on the face dock it is hard to leave, until the boat behind departs. The boat behinds us leaves early so we take off right after him and have breakfast on the way. Most of the morning we are in open shallow bays in narrow dredged ICW channels. Again we have good wind to increase our speed and are able to time the afternoon swing bridges better. Another beautiful day on the ICW. 

 

Life is too short for an Ugly boat !

Virginia Cut section of the ICW

Great Bridge, Virginia

The lock after Great Bridge

 

Waiting for the Rail Road Bridge, maintenance workers busy

 

Gilmerton Highway Lift Bridge

I have been emailing our Canadian friends Gary and Heather who are taking advantage of this long spell of good weather and have been sailing the coast from St. Augustine for the last 4 days to Virginia Beach, VA. They are trying to get home to Nova Scotia in June. They ran into an underwater pile in the Abacos and nearly sunk. They were able to get to Man-o-War Cay and lost a week or two getting the boat repaired.

Aircraft Carrier getting ready to deploy

Ocean Marine Yacht Center, customer

We get into the South Basin in Portsmouth, a very nice free dock. We were lucky there was only a couple boats in there when we arrive. By dark it is full with mostly trawlers who are staying for a couple days. The last boat to come in is “Sunshine”, Dom and Lois who we met in Nassau at the Harbor Yacht Club. We have run into mutual friends in the Bahamas and heard that Lois was having some medical problems, so it was good to see them here.

In the evening Linda and I go to the Commodore Theater, something we missed last time here. I pick up tickets and reserve our table an hour before they are opened for seating. The Commodore Theater is a restored art deco movie theater that now has tables and you can order dinner before the movie starts. Very cool place. The ticket and food prices are very reasonable.

Customers place their orders via telephones on each table, before the movie starts. Most people order and eat dinner before the movie starts. The movie tonight is the Marvel Comics, Civil War Captain America. A couple from the Trawler in front of Manana, “Carolyn Ann” a Great Harbor, kid us about taking their favorite table. They are regulars.