Bridging the Gap

May 31 – June 3, 2011

AMERICAN STAR at the Great Bridge

Part of the reason we stayed an extra day or two at Columbia was because of the holiday weekend. Since we wanted to be able to stay at the free lock dock in Great Bridge, VA, we thought if we arrived on the holiday weekend it would be too crowded. Plus, the holiday weekend would be bringing out local, sometimes crazy, boaters and we would prefer to avoid them when possible.

Since we weren't in any hurry, we left Columbia at 8:00 a.m. and had the anchor down by 1:30 p.m. outside of Broad Creek, just a bush area south of Currituck Sound. Staging there would let us get into Great Bridge midday, when all the morning people would have already left and most of the night people would not have yet arrived. The area is not very far from the Pasquotank River where a blimp manufacturing facility is located. I was entertained watching this “test” blimp flying around. I say that because it didn't have any writing on it and I saw it heading back to its home port area.

Blank blimp

A few other boats arrived towards nightfall; there was plenty of room for everyone. Despite a beautiful sunset, doom settled upon FLUKE as night's cloak of darkness enveloped us. We had our insect screen down over the salon doors, and when we went to close the doors for the night the screens were totally covered with those midges we had seen on the Albermarle. The loud humming noise they were making was eerie. We couldn't roll up the screen from the inside or thousands of them would have gotten inside the boat. So, I had to go the “back” way to the cockpit, via the upper deck ladder, to close the salon doors over the screen. I became covered in the midges and didn't want to inhale for fear they would clog up my nose! I closed the doors in a hurry and then immediately stepped out into the wind so the bugs would get blown off me. We wouldn't know until daylight what a mess nature had wrought upon us.

Beauty before the beast

I shouldn't have done any whining about what I thought were a lot of midges during our last “attack”. Things can ALWAYS be worse, and this new midge mess proved that to be true. The difference between this and the previous attack was how long the midges stayed aboard. This time we had them all night, and they left the mess to prove it.

Many small butts make BIG mess

We spent 3 hours trying to get the midges to fly off the boat by using a broom, fan, and finally the shop vac to suck them up when we got tired of how many kept getting back on the boat. I could scoop up two-handed piles of them from the cockpit floor. We filled our shop vac twice; they all died from impact when they got sucked in the vac, so we could just dump that overboard without having to worry about them flying back aboard. This plump little guy found nirvana for one night as he easily feasted to his heart's content. Notice all those green spots next to him; that is the midge poop which was all over the boat and proved to be more trouble to get rid of than the bugs themselves. We would spend 6 more hours cleaning that.

Amphibious stowaway

At least the weather was good and we had lots of interesting scenery to pass until we got to our destination. I will always tell you that my spirits are elevated with bird sightings, so this guy boosted my midge misery when he allowed us to make a close pass.

Eagle eye

I was reminded of insects again when we had to pass a tug pulling a dredge and its associated pumping pipes, which they always trail along in the water. When the set-up is real long like this one, they need these powerful little tiny tugs to help them push everything through the turns and not let the pipes get cock-eyed. The little tugs don't just go along to help move from point A to point B. They also have the important job of moving the heavy dredge pipe around at the job site. I think of them as worker ants tending to the big fat queen!

Tending the queen

We were pleasantly surprised to see plenty of space available at the lock dock when we passed through the Great Bridge, located in Chesapeake, VA. Historically, this piece of land was a bottleneck that would force the British troops advancing from the north to have to pass through. The mural depicts the fateful battle that helped turn the tide in the Revolutionary War when the British were defeated and many doubtful southern Loyalists turned coat and joined the Patriot cause. Today the Great Bridge lock is important for separating the salt water of the Norfolk area from the freshwater flowing from the NC swampland. We will look forward to a future stop to visit the finished Great Bridge Battlefield and Waterways Visitor Center currently under construction.

Learning as we cruise

Great Bridge is a wonderful stopping place for cruisers, not just because of the free dock (no water or electric). Practically any supplies that may be needed and many kinds of restaurants are within walking distance. Picking up good phone and internet connections is easy too. If you've followed us through here before, you know that we just HAVE to stop here to go to Dairy Queen and get Blizzards. Too bad that's not all we “needed” this time.

One of our inverter/chargers seems to have died. Wayne has tried everything he can think of to get it to run consistently, but it keeps failing, and there is no consistency to its failings. Since we have two of the units we haven't had to stop the cruise altogether. However, we have had to alter how we use our electrical power. The units are responsible for converting 12V battery power into electricity usable for any household appliances (microwave, TV, computer, some lights, small appliances). Plus, they will charge the battery bank when we are plugged into shore power or when we run the generator. We have taken the time underway to investigate our replacement/repair options through communication with the manufacturer. Turns out that they will not repair the unit since they only are supporting their latest model and have told us the new models will not work as part of a pair with the old one. That means we have to replace both models at an estimated cost of $5K! That does not make us very happy cruisers. We are trying to work a deal with them to get a new pair discounted 50% or else we have told them we will switch to another brand. It just so happens another cruising boat, whose captain installs those units and has a pair aboard, is only 2 days behind us. We have discussed the option of meeting up with him along the way.

Those of you who followed our adventures in the Bahamas last summer will remember our frustrations with our refrigerant leak. Despite undergoing extensive, and we thought conclusive testing before leaving Vero, we thought we had lost the coolant again . All kinds of trouble-shooting could not resolve the situation. Stopping in Great Bridge to have to call a service person to FLUKE was the priority. When the guy came out and put the gauges on the lines, they indicated low freon. He recharged the system and ended up selling us a set of old gauges he was no longer using so we could monitor the pressures ourselves. Wayne tried to talk him into selling us a partial can of the refrigerant, but he said that you have to have a license to buy that gas in that container. However, you can buy the same stuff in tiny cans at automotive stores, and that's what we had ended up doing in the Bahamas. So, Eddie walked to an automotive store and bought some cans of freon and an adapter fitting. We ended up paying more for the gas than we paid in the Bahamas (a true rarity); the salesman said the price had just gone up.

You cannot possibly be bored here as a cruiser. There are always boats of all kinds to watch coming through the bridge or the lock or stopping for the free dockage. Seeing the river cruiser, AMERICAN STAR, was certainly a surprise, not only to us, but to one of the locals too. I happened to be talking to her as the bridge opened and we could see the boat. She remarked she had never seen it go through before. Oddly enough, I remembered seeing that boat on the Hudson when we passed it in 2009. She had to make a close pass by FLUKE and then an even tighter pass by a barge which had pulled over to the side to let the river cruiser get by and enter the lock from which the barge had just exited.

Making a pass at FLUKE

Since the whole lock and bridge area is a free park, many locals come to fish, watch the boats, and especially crab, mostly with lines baited with chicken parts. I love going out and talking to the crabbers. Eddie says he can see why I am so happy here: I'm with my own kind, meaning the crabs!

Eddie loves watching the boats, especially the huge commercial tugs/barges that slowly creep by. One night he looked out his port to watch one of them pass and was startled to see the sailboat in front of us being pulled out from the dock by the turbulent waters stirred up from the powerful tug. Realizing that the stern line had come undone, Eddie rushed out and yelled to Tony to throw Eddie the line to pull him to shore before his boat was hit by the barge. Isn't it amazing how Eddie can be so helpful to a complete stranger and yet make such nasty comments about the woman who prepares his meals?!!

One day I spotted what appeared to be an interesting piece of driftwood floating between the lock walls. I pointed it out to Eddie and told him I thought it had “potential” to add to our ever-growing collection. Do you remember that episode of I Love Lucy where she and Ricky go out West with a travel travel and she has to pick up rocks everywhere they stop until the point the trailer can't move anymore? Well, that's how it is with Eddie and I and the driftwood. Poor Wayne hates it, but it doesn't cost anything, and he can't complain about the space any piece takes up because Eddie is the one who puts everything away, including all the stuff Wayne is always leaving out. So, we watched the piece of wood most of the day. Finally it got close enough to where Eddie thought we could get it. He said he could lasso it because he lived in Arizona and that's what cowboys did there. Right. Here is the result; Cowboy Eddie nailed it the first try!

Come along little dogie

We could all agree on one negative thing we dealt with at Great Bridge this time. There was an ice cream truck that traveled on both sides of the lock each day playing the same bars to some catchy, annoying tune that gets stuck in your head over and over and over. We could hear it even when we knew the truck couldn't possibly be around. Lucky for us, we had visited Vineyards on the Scuppernong in Columbia; a glass of wine made the music stop.

Okay, so maybe Eddie is right sometimes about the crab lady aboard. The pincers retract and a smile appears when a boat like this goes by. The Great Bridge brings great surprises.

Bears are everywhere