Hampton, VA to Deltaville, VA & a Submarine

Yay!  We left Hampton this morning. It was later than we intended because of fog. 

Fog warning

Really?!  We’ve been stuck for seven days due to gale force winds and small craft warnings.  And now dense fog?!  Which is the opposite of windy - you get fog when there’s light or no wind. 

This is what we’ve been seeing all week for the James River.
It was way worse on the Chesapeake Bay - 4-5 ft. waves.

Every Looper from New Jersey and south through South Carolina made a mass exodus today due to the winds calming down.     

These are screen shots from our Nebo app. Every blue circle with a number in it is how many Loopers are there.  The green and red line is Taurus’s course.  Close to our marina for tonight, we were leading the pack.  😂 .



By the way, I took some photos in Hampton that show the rising tides.  When we first got to our slip, you could see the number 4 ABOVE the railings. Now it's BEHIND the railings, barely seen.

So the wind in the storm pushed water inland and created higher tides all week. At its highest, we could almost walk off the back of the boat onto the concrete walkway in front of the building.  See the "4" under the railings.

Chesapeake Bay in the fog today


No, that's not a bad photographer.  It's FOG!


We passed by a lighthouse in the fog



And to top it off, there was a submarine heading to the naval base in Norfolk.  

Taurus is the larger more-detailed boat on the screen shot of our chart plotter.  The blue square labeled US Govt Vess(el) was a Navy submarine.  Fred saw it coming and shortly after, we heard “Vessel Taurus, this is submarine E(something)”.  Fred answered and they agreed to pass starboard to starboard.  All that training in the rivers with tows came in handy so we sounded like we knew what we were doing.  

After the sub passed us, it got to the pack of Loopers way behind us.  And instead of asking what each Looper would do as he asked us, he barked orders and told each in turn to “Move North” or “Move to port”.  Fred was proud that since he knew it was a sub from our AIS (Automatic Identification  System) and had already moved to port to get out of its way, that the sub asked what we were going to do rather than the sub telling us what to do.  I’m bummed that we couldn’t see the sub in the fog. 😢 But one of the other Loopers got a picture of it.

The submarine that passed by us in the fog

Our marina for the night


They’re calling for more fog tomorrow.  ☹️  We don’t like fog.


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