36:51.1N 76:17.8W

Thurs, Fri, Sat & Sun – 26^th , 27^th, 28^th & 29^th Sept

On Thursday morning we picked up our anchor (without incident) and headed out of the little anchorage and back into the Elizabeth River. It was only about 10 miles upstream to Norfolk, but the journey was made a little more interesting by the fact that we were passing through the largest naval yard in the world.

The right hand bank was a near continuous array of warships either under repair or construction and we were to find huge floating docks containing fully commissioned aircraft carriers in Norfolk itself.

Greta and Gary had evidently been following our progress on AIS over the internet, so they were all ready to help us with our lines as we pulled into the slips outside their condo. They made us feel so very welcome again and offered to help us in way that they were able. Gary had just had a new hip (3 weeks ago) so his offer to drive was turned down!

On Friday morning we saw The Southern Cross come up the river and drop anchor in the anchorage across the river at Portsmouth.  We had never met Peter and Catherine before, but had spoken to them a number of times as they are stalwarts of the Magellan SSB net that runs every morning at 0900 hours. So we invited them over for a drink later and it was fun catching up with them finally. They are from Australia and are in the 6^th (or 7^th ) year of their circumnavigation and for some strange reason choose to follow our blog from time to time.  During the afternoon Sarah and I decided to stretch our legs a little and walked along the river front and then into the city ending up by some strange quirk of fate at the shopping mall. Amongst other places, we popped into the Apple store and found Theresa still working there and so we had a good catch up with her too.

On Saturday Sarah set about washing down and then polishing Serafina and after a very busy day she was pleased to be able to stop when Peter and Catherine reappeared at tea time for another chat. They headed off down the ICW on the Sunday morning although they did caution us that they might be back yet as they were not entirely confident that their mast was going to get under the bridge.

On Sunday Sarah completed the polishing of the hull and her hard work has paid off yet again with Serafina looking as good as ever.

Our plan is to stay here in Norfolk for a few more days, taking in a film, the shopping and art galleries and for me the big military museum of which the battleship Wisconsin is a central feature.