Norfolk to Deltaville, VA

LST, Landing Ship Tank fold out the ramp and roll off the tanks

Norfolk it a huge marine environment with large channels, many intersecting points and gigantic ships both civilian and military. Plus navigation is a bit counterintuitive, you must go northwest to go east so you can go north. So when looking at current direction of travel it can seem wrong and that a course alteration is necessary up a river that does not go the planned route. We made all the correct turns today and proceeded up the Chesapeake to Deltaville in what seemed to be a negative tidal current even though the tide should have been in our favor. Oh well we made it. We observed 5 or 6 large ships headed up the bay, probably for Baltimore.

Lots of this size ship all lined up.

Southwest winds decreased during the day and now it is quite calm. We arrived about 3:00 and had enough time to use the marina car and go into town. Deltaville is a boating mecca, we counted three canvas shops, the hardware store also has marine parts and there is a fairly large West Marine, a rum store, and 5 or 6 marinas. This town has 1100 people and was built around building wooden boats. They will have their first ever Seafood festival on Friday, but alas we will miss it.

Dozier’s is a must stop place on the Chesapeake since they produce the Waterway Guides we all use to plan and execute our trips. There are guides for the Chesapeake, AICW, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, the Bahamas and on and on. Really great books we use them as a primary source for trip information and then add the crowd sourced data on Active Captain and blogs by other cruisers to gain meaningful information. That and it is a great marina, with a pool, clean showers, loaner cars, useable Wi-Fi and attentive staff. All in all a great stop 4.5 miles off the Chesapeake.

A spot of land on the Chesapeake

The Clubhouse and Marina Office

Calm and Peaceful, work done for the day time to relax