Report from "Mile 0"

We are docked in downtown Portsmouth adjacent to Mile Zero of the ICW.  I'm not sure why it is Mile 0 since our ICW guide book starts with Albany on the Hudson River.  Be that as it may, we did the only lock on the ICW and the last request opening bridges today.  Tomorrow we head up the Chesapeake.

This is the sign at Great Bridge, VA.

Boats waiting for one of the last bridges before Norfolk.

We had to stop and almost pull out of the channel for this guy.

We made connections with my nephew Trey today.  He took a little time off work and walked over to meet us in front of the USS Wisconsin.  Trey has lived in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach are his entire life, and has never been to visit the Wisconsin.  If you're reading this Trey, we thought it was pretty interesting and worth the time.  The Wisconsin is a WWII battleship that saw service as recently as Desert Storm - not too shabby a record.  The main point of interest, other than the sheer size, it's nine 16 inch guns could fire shells which weighed as much as a VW beetle 23 miles!

My nephew Trey.  He says he's a lawyer but he didn't dress like Denny Crane.

For the Lake Erie boaters, these guns could take out Put-In-Bay from the
Toledo Harbor Light.

Sue is thinking if our windlass could handle these chain links we probably
 wouldn't have to worry about our anchor dragging. 

For the food critics we had dinner at a nice Chinese buffet, complete with authentic oriental ice cream for dessert.  Our cruising guide hadn't really said much about Portsmouth as a destination, so we were pleasantly surprised to see what a wonderful historic district the city has.  Block after block of nicely restored homes, very pretty gardens, and brick sidewalks made for a lovely after dinner walk.