Fishing Bay to Portsmouth (mile "0" of the ICW)

It's a good thing it was an early departure this morning, if anyone had had time to give it much thought, we might not have ventured out! The predicted NW winds of 10-20 kts with gusts to 30 was way too accurate today. Our course had us going 10 or 20 degrees away from dead down wind and the waves were often brutal. Certainly anything (or anyone) who wasn't securely stowed did some shifting today. In fact my favorite mug flew off the shelf and cracked! I'm hoping gorilla glue will put it back together. We had the first of the Good Soup that I had made and frozen before we left, because it was the first day when it was cool enough to warrant it. We were in shirt sleeves yesterday (and during our stay in Solomons) and had several layers on today. The ride was bumpy, but fast.
We made it into the calmer waters around Norfolk by 1 pm and arrived at Tidewater Marina at 3. We fueled up, filled water tanks and washed off the salt, took showers and installed our stern name banners for the long narrow trip down the ICW. We also got (I say we, but Dan did it all) two loads of laundry done, as we still had Dan's salty clothes from his untimely swim and they still hadn't really dried out.
At 6:15 we all headed up into Portsmouth to the Blue Water Seafood Grill for a celebratory dinner where more than half of us had the special prime rib! We added another couple for dinner. When Pete and Kathy pulled into their slip here at Tidewater, they were right next door to their marina neighbors from back at Castle Harbor Marina on Kent Island. So Bob and Irene, who are living on a Catalina 30 and heading to Florida for the winter joined us. We all were ready to turn in when we returned to the boat.
~~~_/)~~~~M&D

It was mighty rough as we passed Wolf Trap light on the way down the Bay.

We had a friendly visitor, this little sparrow, for about half and hour on our trip down the bay. I think he was looking for a place to rest. See if you can find all the spots he visited on board.

You don't get the idea of how much rolling and pitching we were doing from this picture of Sevilla, but I couldn't resist the sun on the water effect.

Every trip through the Portsmouth/Norfolk area brings wonderful sights, we especially like all the patterns the different loading systems make. We also got a kick out the the large ship pictured one up from the bottom on the left, its AIS statistics listed its length as 12 feet and its beam as 24 feet. It was one of the few military ships that did have any kind of AIS identification, surely for security reasons.

We celebrated successfully making it down to Mile Marker "0" of the ICW with a dinner out. Before leaving we all got a quick tutorial on how to use the new TriSquare eXRS radios we all have. We hope to be able to communicate easily without fighting for air time on Channel 68 or 72 on the VHF radio. Pete is the guru when it comes to these radios.