Excitement is all we felt when we awoke this morning. Yes we were tied to the dock and ready to drop those lines, but wait not till I get that last morning shower! Carl went to get his last free cup of coffee and Bella her last run on shore for a while..Then the lines were dropped. We still had many bridges and one lock to go through before we reached Norfolk Va. The Great Bridge and the Great Bridge lock were the first to go through, easy cheesy..We had gone through many railroad bridges but this was the first time they were closed when we got there. Every other time we came to them they were always in the up position, not this morning.As you can see by the photos I took pictures in the down and half way up position. As far as we could see it was America at work. There were tugboats, barges and trains in all directions.We had to wait on  train bridges all day long.  We felt like we were in  the industrial north.The air got thicker and there was  huge ship traffic all around us. Thats when we arrived in the Norfolk area. Talk about a town built on the Navy! Navy ships as far as the eye could see. Ships being worked on an returned to their former shape, new ships, battle ships and we even saw a submarine( hard for you to see that in the pictures)  they were from coast to coast all through the last few miles of the ICW. They had a huge base that stretched from on side of town to the other. And on the water many smaller craft flew by with Naval personal aboard, from smaller landing craft to midsize vessels all traversing the waterway. And in the middle of all that there was a tourist boat to show off our Naval strong hold.. The Navy had a very strong presence here!!! However the small sailboats of the area still found a place to sail without getting in the way of those big ships. The only question I have is what the heck were those fairies from Hawaii doing there ? I'm pretty sure they had made a wrong turn somewhere in the Pacific..and landed in the Atlantic up the ICW. Perhaps they didn't notice the Panama Canal.. As  we rounded Lambert Point( that's right Rita I said Lambert, who knew you owned  large point of land with a dock) the Chesapeake Bay  was in site. That was when  we noticed we had a tugboat pulling a barge full of containers closing in behind us, so what does Carl do , he says here take the helm I have to look at the charts.. Are you kidding me...Leave me at the helm with that thing closing in are you crazy....Needless to say we slowed down and it effortlessly went around us... Big sigh...Finally we had made the bay. This is a huge did I say huge I meant humongous body of water, so Carl plotted our course and off we went.. We were motoring along as the wind was still coming from the north.. What is this some king of conspiracy!!! I know why we can't caught fish, its karma from owning a seafood house so long, but what's with the wind...We are heading on a course of 20* and Carl tells me to take the helm , Bella's was very nervous because the waves were more than what she was used to in the ICW, but normal for big water. I was paying more attention to her than our course and got us off course... Not good.. Lets just say I was reduced to deck hand for awhile.. Back on course and all was well.. We decided to anchor before it got to late. The Mobjack Bay  was the next large body of water we had to cross and there wouldn't be an anchorage for quite some time so we set a course to  area  off the port side for the night.This was a quite area with only  the local shrimp boats, boaters out fishing and wake boarders but still very nice. We sat in the cockpit an just enjoyed the beautiful anchorage, it didn't even get dark till about 9pm. Once the bugs came out we went in. Ready for a whole new chapter today...