We are in Norfolk at the AGLCA spring rendezvous. If you are thinking about doing the Loop this the rendezvous to attend. There are three full days of activities and seminars covering all aspects of the loop.

Susan and I participated in the “Best Boat for the Loop” panel. We did some slides on how we picked our boat, some pictures and then a few slides on the importance of being able to be able to launch a dink.

In the afternoon we did a dock walk to catch up with some Loopers we had traveled with. It’s always nice to see old friends.

We then walked up Grandby street on a mini-pub crawl.

We stopped at Brick Anchor Brewery and ran into soon to be Loopers that lived in Norfolk, they are starting the loop this June. I had local Virginia beers, Green Flash Le Freak Inperial IPA, Licking Creek Magic Beaver and Angry Clown. Love the beer names.

We went down the block to the Norfolk Big Easy Seafood Company for some oysters. They had seven different kinds at pretty reasonable prices.

Up the street is Tappit Local, a new brewpub. A huge selection of local beers on tap and lots of bottles from all over the US. It was Big Ugly Brewing night, so I sampled the Mercy Killer, Ape Hanger both Russian Imperial Stouts. The bartender recommended the Licking Hole Heir Apparent Stout. Great combination of chocolate flavors.

From there we went to Hells Kitchen. We had awesome wings and steak nachos. It’s a popular place with the after work crowd, but is less busy after 6:30. It has an open kitchen, you can watch the staff make your food. There are a number of TV’s showing past parties and some interesting snark. My favorite was “If I end up in Hell it will take a few days to figure out I’m not still at work”

It was a great day, looking forward to the Wednesday sessions.

We got into Colonial Beach on Thursday with the intention of going one more place on the Potomac and then heading north. But the NOAA forecast for Saturday had waves of 2-3 feet.

Let’s talk wave forecast for a moment. When they say 2-3 foot waves they mean that 90% of the waves will be 2-3 feet. 9% will be bigger at 3-4 feet. And 1% may be bigger at 4-6 feet. Not happy thinking that every hundredth wave will be huge. So I opted to wait. And it may be a long wait, the weather looks this way until Thursday.

On Saturday we did a bike tour of town, there was a beach festival and we went up to see the car show and the vendors seling from everything from seashells to sauces. There were a lot of families on the beach, it was a great day of fun and sun.

Sunday we snagged the marina truck and headed around. On of the downsides of having family members that are recycle oriented is that I don’t want to toss easy recycled trash out. We have a lot of cans, glass bottles and plastic bottles. At this point we had lots so we headed out to the transfer station.

Of course the instructions of “head out of town on 205” neglected to say “West or East” and I picked West. After 2 miles I figured out that I was not going the wrong way but we came up to Wilkerson’s Seafood. Ok, See Food and Eat It has been my mantra, so we stopped. Susan had amazing fried oysters and I had the prime rib sandwich. (Ever wondered what happens to left over prime rib? Slice it into ¼” slices then do a quick grill, wonderful!)

Now going East we found the transfer station and transferred our recyclable items to their big recyclable container. Environment saved!

Virginia is the birthplace to three US presidents, and George Washington tops the list. We toured Mount Vernon, and now it was time to visit the birthplace. But first it was antique time! Susan had prior experience in selling real antiques, and I’ve spent many an hour looking at Junque. So we stopped at an Antique Emporium (aka a big barn filled full of stuff) to see what bargains we could find. Sadly nothing that we needed or wanted badly.

George Washington’s birthplace was pretty neat, there was a great visitors center that talked about his grand-father and father’s farms. Most of the early founding fathers were pretty wealthy, and it’s nice to see some of where they got their money from. I have been impressed with the National Parks tat we’ve seen this trip, lots of good info and places to visit, I’m happy that we purchased a pass to all the parks.

While Virginia is full of government contractors, some of their greatest exports is beer and wine. On the way home we stopped at one of the local wineries. Karma of starting off with Canada wines and ending with Virginia wines. The ones we tasted are pretty good and we selected a bottle to take home with us.

I’ve posted often about “marina cars”. They are all a little different, but most of them are run of the mill cars. One of the marina people wanted the truck we had to run to pick up some bigger items, so they wanted to trade us to take the car. It’s a 1975 Corvette. Umm, pickup truck for a Corvette, let me think, a nanosecond, and I’m in. In a wild squeal of burned rubber and flying gravel we were off!

OK, so not really. We both got into the car and had an “Ummm” moment, when we both realized that our butts were lower than our ankles. We were in, but there was a big debate if we could get out later on. Cool thing about marina’s they have 70 ton boat lifts, so we can get out here, the restaurant could be a different story. I gingerly back out, not a good thing to hit the stands of boats “on the hard” so they fall over.

We made it to the Lighthouse and got out of the car. Dinner was as good as a week ago. I had the mussels and a grilled portabella mushroom. Susan went for the filet steak. When kids say “awesome sauce” they are talking about the sauce she had.

The night was quiet, I watched NASCAR and Susan did internetty things. Monday will be boat tasks, mostly along the lines of cleaning.

Monday and Tuesday were indeed that, just hanging around the boat. I did get some things done and we did get bike riding in so from that standpoint it was good.

The wind died down overnight but the rain came, so instead of yesterdays stunning bright morning, we woke to a gray drizzle. Since today would be a long day we opted for breakfast off the boat. Our first try, Jacks Place, a local favorite was closed. So we ended up at the French Country Cafe.

We had the “French Breakfast”, eggs, meat, a potato galettes and a croissant. They were very good. The place is set up semi cafeteria style. You place your order, you can pick up additional items, juice, coffee, silver, etc. and pay. Once your food they bring it to the table.

We met a Looper, the Captain of the “Zendo”, they had been at our dock but visiting with friends. They were headed down today to Colonial Beach and then on their way. (Turns out we saw them down there, they were anchored off in the harbor.)

Next we went to the Torpedo Factory Art Center. It started out as a munitions factory at the end of WWI and during WWII made the Mark III airplane torpedo and the Mark XIV torpedo for submarines. They have one of each on display. In the mid 70′s it was turned into artist studios. There are about 130 artists there now. Some of the spaces were open and we got a chance to see some great art. I picked up a card of a really cool kite sculpture. The sculpture is $1,800 so I’ll need to put it on my Christmas list.

Normally today would be an “it’s raining, stay in port day”. It’s about 64 miles back to Colonial Beach and normally it would be about an 8 hour run. If we leave around 11:30 today we will be with the falling tide the entire way. On the way up we averaged only about 7 knots since we were against the tide part of the way.

We got pumped out and took off at 11:45. As Mark says “The tide giveth and the tide taketh away.” On the way up we were against the tide doing about 7 knots. Once we got past the no wake zones, we set the speed to our normal RPM and flew down the river at about 9.8 knots the entire way (some peaks of 10.2) until we got close to the 301 bridge (near the Navy Test range). As we got closer the speed started to drop since we were in the next tidal pool. The test range was also “open” so we were able to stay on the Virginia side and cut a few miles off. The final result is we got to the Colonial Beach harbor and into Boathouse Marina about 6:00 PM. A six hour run vs the almost 10 it took to go the other way.

Because the temperature started off at 62, I fired up the generator and Susan made grilled cheese for lunch. It was nice to have a hot lunch on a cold day. For dinner it was chicken and her version of Spanish rice (rice, salsa, corn) and grilled onions and peppers.

We were both tired, I crashed early, she stayed up to see how one of her show season ending worked out.

Cold and a little blowy in the morning. I did laundry, changed fuel filters and got caught up on some email stuff. Susan cleaned and also did some email stuff.

For dinner we went Denson’s Market and has an amazing dinner. We went with the owner of The Boathouse Marina. The appetizer we shared are Sugar Toads with a Cheerwine reduction. The fish is the Northern Puffer Fish. They take the tail, bread it and deep fry it. You eat it like you would eat a chicken wing, there is a series of connected bones down the center. It was very good, but strange for us, but it’s a Chesapeake Bay specialty. Between the three of us we also had scallops, fresh swordfish and really great home made crab cakes. My side was spinach with bleu cheese and bacon. A great dinner. We got eclairs to go, along with home made sausages and crabcakes for later on in the week.

Our host took us on a tour of the town, so we got to see all the great little houses and the backstory on some of the town. One of the great sunsets of the trip was tonight, so it turned out to be a great rest day. We both feel really good, having the day off made a huge difference.

We shared one of the eclairs, they are HUGE and also very good. It made a great end to the day.

Today was forecast to be hot and it was, mid day temps went to 85, and there wasn’t much wind. But first things first.

We got up and had a slow morning. The last few days have had us up and going pretty early, so it was nice to hang on the dock a little while. We pushed off about 8 AM into the very still water. We swung around into the Potomac on a wide lazy arc to miss the shoaling at the tip of Colonial Beach.

Coming into the river we were soon approaching the Navy test fire range. A VHF radio call to the range officer on “Range Boat 3” confirmed that the range was active and we should move over and stay along the Maryland shoreline. We did that and facing an oncoming tide slowly worked our way up the river. And when I say slowly it was just that. Our normal cruise speed is engine RPM of 1,800-1,900 RPM and we go 8.1 to 8.4 knots. With the engine at 1,900 we poked along at 6.9 knots.

Based on our speed we knew it was going to be a long ride. But it is a very pretty one the Potomac has some good vistas.

Along the way we passed a government site with some big radar / satellite dishes, the world famous Quantico Marine Base, a really neat power line spanning the river and some amazing homes.

We turned up into the Occoquan River and headed up the very narrow channel. I had not thought the current would be so bad, so we were almost two hours later than planned. So we were at dead low tide, and showed about 4-5′ under the keel the entire way.

We got tied off and while we were checking emails, etc., there was a short cloud burst that went by. We were hoping for cooler air, but instead we got more humidity. There were rain bands to the west, it wasn’t clear if we would see them or not.

Dinner was at the marina restaurant, we did our appetizer selections and sat back to watch the view and enjoy our food.

When we got back to the boat the crews of “The Chief”, “Para’Dice”, and “Lady Min” were doing docktails. We joined in and got good tips on where to go and what to see across the next few days. The crew of “Para’Dice” is in the planning stages of their Looper adventure, so we talked some about our trip.

The rain bands that may or may not arrive and did so with a vengeance. The skys opened up and it just poured. (There was a ton of sticks and stuff in the water the next morning). When the rain quit I had a short chat with the Captain of “Para’Dice”, he had a few more questions.

On the plus side it looks like the new weather stripping on the upper helm door is working well. We’ll keep a towel there just as a safety measure but there was no moisture from last night.

Flashback: One year ago we were still in Ilion, NY, working our way through the Voss’ Menu (we are now regulars, after 5 days everyone knows our name)

Excitement is in the air. We are recreating the maiden voyage of the “Quo Vadimus” from May, 2011. We’ve spent the last two days at Atlantic Yacht Basin, yesterday was pretty much goofing off.

Today we were off the dock at 6:45 AM. Once again one of those wispy fog mornings. We made the 7AM Great Bridge Lift Bridge opening. We slid into the Great Bridge Lock at 7:10 past the squawking geese (nesting pair at the end of the lock). We rose 18” and like our very first lock in 2011 our last lock of the Great Loop is over, no muss, no fuss.

We took it easy during the first two hours. Since the “Steel Bridge” is gone, there wasn’t anything to time for. We almost got hung up at one of of the rail road bridges, but the tender called out that I should pick up the pace and we passed under with lots of time to spare.

The Navy Yards were abuzz with a carrier and 4 warships coming into port. Lots of chatter and lots of requests by the Navy ships for people to get out of their way. I’m always amazed that people don’t pay attention and won’t move fast enough to get out of the way. It’s not like they could easily stop.

We were in the bay proper by Thimble Shoals by 11AM. We were happy that we waited out the weather from yesterday. Today we had 10 knot south winds kicking up a minor swell on our stern as we headed north.

This section reminds me how big the Chesapeake Bay is in the Virginia end. You can’t see the Eastern Shore and after awhile there is only water to the South and North.

Througout the day the winds picked up so when we turned into the Rappahannock the waves were 1-2′. We needed to angle off to get into the river so it was a little rolly for awhile. We got into Norview Marina to get pumped out. While there we talked to “Field Trip”. They had come up yesterday with the north winds and said that it was not a fun time.

Our slip was next to a custom 57 power cat. The owner told us all about it, it sounded like a great boat. He has the same problem most of us do, people say “wow, I want to come down and ride, but they never actually show up. He’s downsizing to a 45 power cat, I asked if he wanted to take a 45 Bayliner in trade and he said that he was a multi-hull sailor, no mono-hull for him.

But our little 8 hour 45 minute voyage of 62 nautical miles left us pretty beat. So Susan grilled pork chops and we were both in bed by 8:30. But it was a great day, we recounted the fun trip that we had with Dennis bringing the Quo Vadimus home for the first time. Ir was also great to have completed the last lock, 105 in total.

So after the 90 degree yesterday in the Dismal Swamp, we woke to a 65 degree morning. I was happy it had cooled down and it made the mosquitoes die off. Flashback to the slaves that dug this by hand, not a happy time. We putzed around the boat and then at 8 AM pushed off into the channel.

It’s a 15 mile ride to the bridge and lock, and the Quo Vadimus idles at 6. So I took a tip from my friend Doug and just used the port engine for the three hours at just above idle and we were good.

So since you asked, we go slow since 1) the canal is about 40′ wide 2) there is a ton of material at the bottom and it sometimes surfaces you go past fast. There are two boats following us so I didn’t want stuff up in the water for them to hit. 3) There was rain / storm last night, so there is stuff for me to move around, but not lots of room to do it in. So it was slow, slow, watch the turtles and the snakes and the birds and life in the 1800′s drift by.

We got to the bridge right at 11AM in time for the opening. The bridge/lock master was really nice, the three of us passed through and got into the lock in short order. He had lots of good tips on places to go, anchor and eat. I noticed that he didn’t work for the Army Corps of Engineers, but for an outside service company. Wonder if they are outsourcing the lock work, but he said he had been there for 20 years.

We got out of the lock and did 8 miles to our next to last lock on this trip, Great Bridge. We locked through tied up about ½ down the lock. There is a nesting goose at the south end and boats make them cranky. This was the nicest lock on our trip with brand new rubber sides, we really didn’t need our fenders. We will pass through this lock on Friday and we are officially done with locks on the loop. Yay Us!.

Under the Great Bridge Draw Bridge and into Atlantic Yacht Basin. The Quo Vadimus was purchased here in 2011, so she has “crossed her wake”, but our official crossing won’t be until we get to the Bohemia River. We are stopping here for the great fuel prices at $2.40 a gallon. This is less than ½ price of what I paid in Rochester almost a year ago and $3 less a gallon than my top price in Canada.

Docking here is also cheap at $1 per foot, there have been few places along the trip this cheap.

I stopped in to see our broker, Bob, at Virginia Yacht Brokers. He said we could sell Quo Vadimus now and quickly, but said if we were still boating and having fun keep on going. He has sent a few future Loopers to us in the past to help with Looping questions.

We had a visit from a future Looper that has purchased a 4788 to start their loop next year. We passed along all of our Looper tips. (Go now, have fun, don’t listen to other Loopers on where to go make it your own adventure, but spend as much time in Canada as you can!) [irony]

While at the dock we watched a huge parade of boats from 20′ day cruisers to 70′ yachts. There were two RIB boats with marinnes and a support boat. After 6 the crew boats come out there have been two 8 man and one 4 man shell one the water. This is a really great place to watch boats come and go.

Susan made a great dinner that starred corn on the cob. It’s cool that local vegatables are coming into season, and yes this corn was from Florida, but as of 4 weeks ago that was “local”.

We are coming off the river system so stuff like winds and tides are making a difference again. The Thursday forecast is for winds from the north. That means that the wind starts at our home in the Upper Chesapeake and drags water down so by the time it reaches us waves are 3-4′ (or more). No trip north for Thursday.

Sleeping in was easy since it had cooled down again. We both got caught up on computer stuff (hey new title pictures!) and some other odds and ends. I happened to see a carpet cleaning company working on the mega yacht behind us and we asked how much to do our boat. Not much it turned out and we now have bright clean carpet. Yay us!!

Lunch was at a Japanese buffet that you order off the menu. Which would be more of a prix fixe, or table d’hôte, but those are more of a fixed menu. We had the run of the menu, but limits on some items. None the less we stuffed ourselves and waddled out an hour later. My big treat was Hershey’s Ice Cream in a small cup. We had the cups as kids and my children had them as kids, it’s really great ice cream.

Did naps in the afternoon and watched boats go by until baked chicken dinner. It’s amazing how good a simple baked chicken can taste.

After dinner I spoke to one boat, it’s a refit oyster buy boat, but now it’s a cruiser with the oyster spaces turned into nice cabins. I also saw the “Active Captain Boat”, so they made their goal of Norfolk.

Did a little engine work for the rest of the trip. I can’t get to the sensor without crawling into the engine, so that will wait for the weekend. The belts on the new alternator were loose so they got tightened up. Checked all the fluids and we are ready to roll.