For me, one of the highlights of our cruise in 2015 was the gentle, scenic Great Dismal Swamp, and when we left North Carolina and entered Virginia we still had hours of it ahead of us. But I’m one that loves protected waters, and as they say, there is sometimes a lull before a storm. In my case it was peace before another heart-thumping adventure.
We came out of the canal into busy waterways, especially when we got to Norfolk. We waved at A-dock in the marina in Portsmouth where we had spent three weeks in 2007, and after finding a wastewater pump out station, we settled into a slip in Norfolk for two days. No sightseeing because the American Great Loop Association was finishing a rendezvous and we had a chance to learn about upcoming places we would see, and meet other loopers.
The day it was time to move on I woke up to fog and a lump in my stomach. I knew the boat was solid, Mark knew what he was doing, the chart plotter worked so why this anxiety?
I know ingrained personality traits sometimes get in the way of common sense. I’m a worrier—always have been, always will be. My Mexican grandmother used to call me “scandalosa.” In our family, it loosely translated to mean someone who worries about everything.
Sometimes it’s a good trait to have. It’s not always good when you’re living on a boat, moving from place to place. Too much blind faith is involved—too many aspects can’t be controlled—and common worry can quickly escalate into anxiety.
Norfolk is a busy port. Warships, patrol boats, container ships, tugs with barges, and pleasure craft were everywhere. Visibility was limited, but not shut down. Then we entered the Chesapeake and the fog closed in and my nerve endings curled into knots.
It’s positively eerie to float through the fog in the daylight and not be able to see shoreline or buoys or even other boats. Radar blips told us where boats were and Sea Bear was big enough to show up on other boats’ radar screens. Out in the bay heading north we followed procedure and sounded our horn one blast every two minutes. Someone else out there did the same. The only ship that contacted us, telling us to stay near the edge of the channel was from a big guy entering the harbor…very big…an aircraft carrier.
When the sun broke through late in the afternoon, I could feel the tension draining from my shoulders. The wind came up and blew out the fog just before we found our anchorage in a river off a small bay. Being able to see where we were going was much better than following a red line on a tiny computer screen.
But the next morning the fog was back. I was out of chocolate, my usual panacea for anxiety, so I took deep breaths and worked a crossword puzzle and made sure Mark has a cold beer ready when we arrived in Deltaville, our next stop. A tropical storm south of us was kicking up the wind and chop and we needed to be tucked up in a marina for a day or two. That turned into four days, but that’s another story.
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