After cruising around just inside the mouth of the inlet with our depth-sounder on, looking for a sheltered location that wouldn't leave us high and dry when the tide went out. We found one that was a nice compromise, and threw out the anchor. We also threw our second anchor out to hold our stern out of the channel. I went inside and turned on the VHF to listen to the weather report. Blasting in on every channel was a severe weather alart. Severe tunderstorms with the potential for dime size hail, damaging winds, and potential tornados.
Let me tell you something about the Machipongo Inlet area - it's in the middle of nowhere. About 13 miles from any road, no houses, no nothing. Nothing between us and the Atlantic except a narrow strip of sand. Not where you'd want to be in a tornado.
I pulled up the radar and watched it obsessively while Cody fastened everything down and put away stuff that would blow away. The weather alert was only until 8 o'clock and it was already 7, so it wasn't like this could go on indefinitely. There were ominous black clouds swirling around us to the north and west. After a little while we saw a larger sailboat pull into the inlet and just sort of motor around. It was pretty shallow if you left the main channel so there weren't many places for him to go. We saw his jib begin to unfurl, and then the storm hit.
It was crazy. It went from a fairly calm evening to some sort of scene from some hollywood movie where climate change causes a sudden and catostrophic global superstorm. We sat huddled in our boat, unable to see anything outisde the windows for the mist and downpour. The winds were 40-60 mph, and it pushed our boat ever so slightly. You culd feel it shift, but unable to see anything through the windows it was impossible to tell what was really going on. We were worried about the other boat out there, and left our radio on in case he needed help. Not that we'd be able to do anything, but there was no one else around.
And, just like it started, it was over. It had lasted about 10 minutes. It's not hyperbole to say that it was probably the scariest 10 minutes of my life. Cody wasn't worried, for what t's worth, which is one of the advantages of having less imagination. Sometimes being firmly rooted in reality is a boon.
The other boat seemed fine. He appeared to have just motored into the wind. We couldn't figure out why his jib was still partly unfurled, but it probably was accidental. He dropped anchor but was gone before we left in the morning. Our stern anchor had dragged, but the bow line hadn't, so we had pivoted around the bow, being pushed towards the beach. All in all, there are worse places to be pushed.
I actually slept pretty well that night, surprisingly. We awoke to strong winds and a small craft advisory in the morning. I was still a little traumatized so we decided to just hang out and relax, then head out midmorning. Unfortunately, when we tried to motor out, we found ourselves aground. The water was just shallow enough that our skeg was hitting the sand. We were in a deep pocket, but around us were sandbars that wouldn't let us move forward. Concerned about our lack of fuel,I suggested that, rather than trying to motor through the sand, we get off and try to push her out. The water, happily, was very warm. It took about 15 minutes of pushing, trying different angles, dragging with the anchor line, but we got her free! As it would turn out, it wasn't a minute too soon.
We were headed for Chesapeake Bay, and the wind was ripping. We were averaging 7-9 knots, which feels pretty fast. We got just south of Cape Charles and turned west to head towards the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, when the wind started to die. We made it within about a mile of the bridge before we had to get the motor going. We were down to about 2 gallons of gas, and it was 11 miles from the other side ofthe bridge to the nearest marina, so we were starting to get a little worried.
The bridge is pretty amazing. Cody says it's one of the 7 engineering marvels of the world or something. It consists of huge tunnels that take traffic under the bay and bridges that connect the tunnels. This allows for all the big ships that need to go up the Chesapeake - rather than build a huge tall bridge, the ships just go over the tunnels. More than the bridge, however, I was impressed by the pelicans. Pelicans are huge! They look like dinosaurs, and the way they dive straight into the water for fish is amazing. There were tons of them on the Chesapeake.
Well, we got over the tunnel and the wind sucked, so we started to motor. Then the wind picked up, and we were able to sail for about 4 miles. We got within 4 miles of the entrance to the harbor and then felt safe with the amount of gas we had left to motor the rest of the way in.
Remember how I told you we got going in just the knick of time that morning? Well, imagine if we'd waited an hour, and the wind had died even sooner? We'd almost certainly run out of gas. As it was, we pulled up to the fuel dock just a few minutes before they closed for the day. The guy working there seemed distracted and he told us someone was on his way in with a big motor yacht needing 80 gallons of fuel when he'd run out across the harbor. We offered to bring him a couple gallons so he could make it in. He was really appreciative and told us he'd give us a discount if we did. Well, we were unable to find the stranded boat, so we went back to the fuel dock to get better directions. Another guy had just pulled up on a jetski and he offered to bring the stranded boat fuel, and he could do it much quicker than us. The fuel dock guy ended up giving us our gas for free even though we didn't really do anything, calling it the "good karma" discount.
Fully fueled, we set of towards Norfolk. It ended up being about 10 more miles of motoring, and we went right past the naval base there. I drove the boat so Cody could get out the binoculars and look at all the mind-numbingly huge aircraft carriers and warships and stuff. It was all pretty impressive, really, and there was just so much of it.
We had heard that there was a free town dock in Portsmouth, just on the other side of the river from Norfolk, but when we arrived we saw that there was no overnight dockage. We knew there was a nice place to anchor nearby, though, so we decided to dock the boat and walk to get some dinner. It had been a long day, it was late, and we were starving. We walked towards downtown, looking at the menues of a couple restaurants. A guy in period dress, who I just assumed was crazy, came up and asked us, in a fake English accent, if we were looking for anything he could help us with. Well, how about a nice place to get dinner? He showed us down the road to a great restaurant with great prices, then asked us if we were coming to the Blackbeard Festival the next week. Ah! That explained the period dress! (We'd actually wanted to go to the Festival, but the timing hadn't worked out.)
We had a very nice dinner (right up there with those amazing meals that so stand out in my mind) and as we were paying I asked our waitress if there was a place nearby to get ice. She directed us to a 7-11 a few blocks away, then came back a couple minutes later and said, "You know, we don't want you to walk down there, it's not a good part of town, do you want a bag of ice from our ice machine?" Everyone we met in Portsmouth/Norfolk was very, very nice.
We made it back to the boat, bag of ice in hand, then motored to the anchorage and got settled for the night. The next day we were going Intercoastal!
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