Norfolk / Portsmouth, VA

Norfolk / Portsmouth, VA

In our last blogpost, we had just made a mad dash up to Norfolk and Nymeria’s 7th state, Virginia! We were able to find a marina in the heart of downtown Norfolk at their Waterside District. Since we had just spent 3-ish weeks in small towns getting to Norfolk, we were very excited to traipse around a bigger city. Though the restaurants onsite were lacking in overall quality, we were within walking/biking distance to a variety of options in the downtown and Ghent areas. There was also a water taxi to take you across the Elizabeth River into Portsmouth. The Waterside Marina had access to clean restrooms and showers but they didn’t have laundry facilities on site. But we did get a free concert each Friday and Saturday night from the back of the boat. 

Being in Norfolk made us feel safe as we were literally surrounded by fleets of Naval ships, with those getting upgrades/repairs down the Elizabeth River and those ready to be deployed up north toward the Chesapeake Bay. With the rich Naval history in the area, we immediately visited the Nauticus, home to a maritime museum and the battleship USS Wisconsin. We also toured the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum which had exhibits displaying artifacts of the nation’s oldest Navy yard dating back to Colonial Times. The Portsmouth Lightship Museum was closed while we were in town but it was still cool to see one of the actual lightships used to dot our coastline before we used more permanent lighthouses. We even met up with Justin’s brother, Brian, and his family to get a private tour the Norfolk Navy Base and of the SH-60 Seahawk Helicopters that he and his team keep operational. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that all my photos from that tour have some level of classified info in them and probably shouldn’t be shared online.

We also took advantage of some down time to tour Colonial Williamsburg which is a living-history museum with 89 original 18th century buildings. We made a choice not to tour Jamestown or Yorktown as we had used Uber to get into the area and it was quite expensive to get around. If we’re in the area again for an extended period of time, I would consider renting a car so that we could tour around a bit more. 

After spending 2 weeks in downtown Norfolk and an Amtrak trip to Washington D.C. (which well do a separate blog about), we moved the boat across the Elizabeth River to Tidewater Marina in Portsmouth. This marina was a bit cheaper but also had a laundry facility which used an app only, no quarters. With what was left of Hurricane Idalia heading our way, we also wanted to be more securely tied up at a marina. Tidewater had a full floating finger pier down one side and pilings for the other side, resulting in all 4 corners of the boat being secured. (Waterside,  though also floating docks, only allowed for one side to be fully secured as there was no piling to separate us from our neighboring boat.) Tidewater was also more of a working marina and we were in need of chasing down a leak on our starboard side. Luckily, Idalia wasn’t much of a storm by the time it hit us and it went quite a bit south of us as well. It did bring a lot of rain which helped us with finding our leak, that was a positive. (pics are of the flooding in the marina following Idalia and one of the many reasons why we love floating docks!)

Another reason for the move was because we had been hitting the town a bit hard and needed to slow things down with a grocery run and more cozy/quaint neighborhoods, shops and restaurants. We highly recommend the Post Secondary Brewing and seeing a movie at the Commodore, a restored 1945 Art Deco style movie/dinner theater. 

We were feeling quite accomplished after making it over 275NM to Norfolk after setting a crazy goal only 3-ish weeks prior. However, with it only being the end of August, we then devised a plan to play around in the Chesapeake Bay for a bit and maybe make it up to the Annapolis Sailboat show in mid October. With our end goal again in mind, we decided that we would likely turn around and head back down south around November or December. So we started our passage planning and were looking forward to putting up the sails and actually “sailing” in the Chesapeake Bay. Skål!

We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.

— Marilyn Monroe