An American warship near Norfolk, Virginia. (Photo by John Griswold.)
Chris invited me to help transit his new boat, Castaway, a thousand miles from Fort Pierce, Florida, to Havre de Grace, Maryland. We ran offshore for several days then took the Intracoastal Waterway north, on average. The coast was beautiful, varied, and often deserted.
But there were also mechanical and electrical breakdowns, horseflies in the backwaters, the stench of diesel, cabbage odor of blackwater tank, a burp of early seasickness. We moved at cutter speed and at a tedious dogpaddle. Emotionally, the trip revealed other people’s stories of both happiness and pain.
We spent Friday night and Saturday in Norfolk, Virginia, waiting for an available lift to pull the 30-ton boat from the water and let Chris check for bent propellers. Sunday morning we motored slowly down the Elizabeth River past the Norfolk Southern yard, the Virginia Port Authority, and the Naval Piers and across the mouth of the James River to Hampton, where we would stay the night, so we could be there when the boatyard opened.
Off the point of Hampton, Chris swerved into the departing sea channel to get a better look at an inbound warship. The destroyer gave several warning blasts on her horn; my captain said he did not know what that meant. We got closer. Another several blasts, and Chris finally turned a couple of degrees away. The destroyer was close enough for a parley, her crew on deck in anticipation of port call.
Later a friend said we were soooo close to being fired on, and I read that civilian vessels are meant to stay 100 yards from a warship if at idle speed and 500 yards if underway. I had never heard of an American warship blowing away an American yacht in a heavily-used American waterway, but I felt relieved there had not been an incident. In the old days Chris might have turned toward her, laughing under his Clark Gable moustache, and accelerated as a joke. But that was a different time, and he a (somewhat) different person. Among other things, he has been sober 15 years. I like him better now.
We ran a couple hundred yards up the Hampton River to Sunset Creek. The marina was next to where Blackbeard’s head had been put on a pike. We got more fuel and tied up stern-first in a difficult, narrow slip, then had dinner and relaxed.
How pleasant it was, I had learned as a novice boater, to sit on the fantail at dusk and drink coffee and discuss the world. A heron walked stately as a parson up the long dock past us to his favorite fishing spot, where there was a warm light like a lantern on the wood planks. The light attracted fish, and the bird stalked, froze, peered into the green water, then dove with a gentle plunk between two power boats tied in their slips. Life looked like a Japanese woodblock print.
I say I like to travel because it is another opportunity to see. Sometimes the universe says, See this, then, dear boy.
