Spent a few days in Salt Ponds, Hampton, VA... waiting on our US Mail, weather was extremely windy and most important to visit with the great friends we have here in Hampton.

After 4 great days in Hampton we left the Salt Ponds at 0615.... forecast was for winds to pick up mid morning so we wanted to be clear of any open water before the winds. Got to see an awesome per dawn skyline over Chesapeake Bay as we exited Salt Ponds.

Seas were calm all the way into Norfolk and we had a tremendous boost in speed form the flood tide... 8.5 knots was the fastest I noticed but we were flying until we reached the Gilmerton Bridge when the VHF broadcast came across on channel 16... Southern Railroad Bridge will be closing monetarily... this railroad bridge is directly beside the Gilmerton Bridge and has 7ft of clearance when down... We waited 30 minutes
along with 6 other boats that had to wait.

Once back underway it totally messed up the timing for the Great Bridge Lock... it basically works on an hourly cycle with the Great Bridge Bridge... we needed to arrive by 0920 and we could come no where close to that... so we had to run at a slow pace to make the next cycle for us that would be at 1020... 5 knots for the next 5 nautical miles....

We were about 1 mile away from the lock when the across the VHF the lock announced... due to commercial traffic needing to lock through the next recreational locking for southbound traffic would be at 1120... so we had to wait at the lock for an hour while a dredge and supporting tugs locked through...

Finally at 1120 the lock opened for what was now about 15 boats that had piled up due to the bridge and lock delay. After the lock we only had about 1/4 mile to go where we docked for the night... the western bulkhead between the lock and the Great Bridge Bridge.

We were secure on the bulkhead at 1200. Our location for night N36°43.271', W076°14.473'. We traveled today for 5.75 hours covering 26.5 nautical miles averaging 4.6 knots.