Norfolk, VA

7/10/07 – I woke up and ate a granola bar for breakfast. I saw Robert arrive at the lock so I walked over there and met him at the gate. He invited me in and showed me around the lock facilities. We walked into the little house that they have there and he brewed some coffee and told me some interesting stories about some close calls that have happened during his thirteen years as a lockmaster. He borrowed my handheld VHF radio to go operate the bridge (he does double duty: the adjacent bridge and the lock) and I went back to my boat to get ready to cast off. He opened the doors and I went into the lock chamber with David and Anita and one other boat. Outside of the lockmaster’s house, there is a garden with banana trees and is the ground is littered with huge conch shells that have been left by sailors coming north after a winter in the Caribbean. Robert claimed that he was the world’s best conch shell player and he picked one up and began blowing into it. We all left the lock and continued the few miles into Norfolk. We were joined by many big sportfishing boats when we got to the part where the people who took the Virginia Cut route joined us who had taken the Great Dismal swamp route. They were doing some construction on some of the bridges so we had to wait for a little while to get through. Going past the huge naval yard there was really neat. I made it to a marina in Portsmouth where the service department was going to change my oil. They had to go buy some parts but promised that it would be finished in a couple of hours. I went to eat lunch at a local restaurant and went to a maritime museum right on the water, where the doorman was so happy about the trip I was doing that he let me in for free. I finally went back to the marina and looked at my boat. It had been three hours since I arrived and they had not started my oil change so I just left. As I was in the middle of the river on my way to Norfolk, the skies opened up and it began pouring very hard. I made it into Waterside Marina and tied up. My mom and sister showed up pretty soon afterwards and I showed them the boat. I think my mom was less than impressed with the accommodations on the boat and was very happy that she is staying in a hotel. We went back to the hotel and went to a restaurant for dinner.