In Hampton

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's) 

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 39 - May 9, 2017

We decided this morning to extend our stay for a second day here at Hampton Public Piers, and we had a great day today. We ran the electric heater all night, as it is a bit chilly here when the sun goes down, and it was toasty when we got up!  

After breakfast, the first order of business was to re-provision. We Ubered to the closest Food Lion with our shopping list. We took four Seattle Boat Show cloth bags, mostly Raymarine bags, and after we filled our shopping cart, I was really doubtful that all the stuff in the cart would fit in the bags, and if it did fit, that we would be able to carry it! But it did all fit, so we Ubered back to Hampton Public Piers and carried them down to the boat. I think "to Uber" will go into the lexicon kind of the same way "to Xerox" and now "to Google" have. He Ubers, she is Ubering, they will Uber, we Ubered! 

We got back from the Food Lion about lunch time. There is a brewery right here at the marina called Bull Island Brewing, and I was hoping for lunch there, but their kitchen is not open, so I had lunch on the boat and then walked up to have "a beer." Actually, I had five beers, what is called "a flight," where you get to select five of their beers and you get a five ounce glass of each. The Belgian Trippel, the Weiss Sour, and the Double Dare Stout were all very good. The other two beers were an IPA and a double IPA. These were not bad beers, but just not what we Left Coast brewers think an IPA should be!

Apolloa12 Command Module

Next up was a couple of hours at the Virginia Air & Space Center NASA Langley Visitor Center. It was very cool to see the actual Apollo 12 Command Module brought here from the Smithsonian Institution! There was a 45 minute iMax film on searching for life in outer space - I had never seen an iMax movie before (seriously), and even a mediocre movie becomes awesome on an iMax screen! There were exhibits ranging from the Wright brothers to the latest technology for flight and space exploration, but the most interesting exhibit was a video we watched inside a full sized DC 9, about the multitude of instruments, dials, knobs and switches modern day pilots rely on to fly the big jets. Mind boggling!

When we got back from the Air & Space Center it was time for our sundowners, and we chatted a bit with Jonathan and Rosa on Salty, who were now in the slip next to us. We capped off the night by Ubering to the Surf Rider Restaurant at the Bluewater Marina, where we had an extravagant dinner out. This was only our fourth dinner out since we started this cruise, and we really enjoyed it!

Tomorrow morning we will shower, have breakfast, cast off our lines, find a place to fuel up, and go around the corner into Chesapeake Bay, headed for Charlie Vinroot's home on the Potomac. We will probably spend two days getting there, but we want to be tucked in there by the weekend, since SailFlow says there will be sustained 30 mph winds and four foot waves on Saturday and Sunday, and we do not want to be caught out in those conditions!