Meeting people

First posted January 22, 2023

Some cities are festooned with draw bridges. Portsmouth/Norfolk/Newport News is one such. Several of them, especially the railroad bridges are plagued with breakdowns. When that happens, traffic on the ICW stops . We had delays two years ago here as we sailed The Purple Gallinule north. And now with Athena, trouble again. Worse, we're stuck between two broken bridges for two hours and can go neither north nor south. Friends of ours opted to skip it all and sail all the way outside of Cape Hatteras, several days, to avoid the delays. I think that if you were a bridge mechanic you could have permanent employment here. 

Chesapeake City VA. We're stuck waiting for a half inch of ice to melt. Sharp shards of ice will scrape the bottom paint off your waterline. Like many towns and cities along the nation's waterways, Chesapeake offers a free dock for boaters. Restaurants, grocery stores and hardware stores benefit. Here there's also a city park and historical museum. 

Townspeople come down to their park to walk dogs or just hang out. We got to talking with a woman, who seemed to enjoy having a sympathetic ear from strangers. It seems her adult son had become involved with opiates, and had returned home to live. Unemployed and unmotivated, he's become a frustration for his mother. When he needs some pocket money, he borrows the family car and drives for DoorDash, but doesn't contribute to the upkeep of said vehicle. His mom wants to be more strict with him, but her husband has a more lenient attitude. We take a walk with her through the forest along the canal, talking about addiction, sailing, and the meaning of life. She wants adventure. Instead she had to go home and prepare meat and potatoes for the family. We wished her the best. 

We also meet other cruisers along the way. Some on sailboats, others on power boats. It's an interesting life, where you meet people, then depart. The internet makes it easier to keep in touch, but of course a poor substitute. We deal with it. 

In Oriental we meet with another sailing friend, who we've sailed with on occasion. But she has broken up with her partner, and doesn't have someone to help with the boat. So she's accepted a position as dockmaster to re-fill the bank account and maybe someday re-untie the docklines. 

In Jacksonville we're tied up on the free dock adjacent to downtown with all its highrise banking buildings. In the evening Chuck stops by to chat. He envies us and would love to quit the rat race, buy a boat and sail away. But he's broken up with his girlfriend, and grapples with alcoholism as he drinks his beer.

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