After our second overnight passage we pulled into Willoughby Bay just inside the mouth of Norfolk Harbor as dawn was breaking.  We were exhausted so we passed out and slept for the morning and cleaned the boat / relaxed that evening.

The next day, the 20th, warm weather was finally back to stay for a while and we motored into past battleship/aircraft carrier row at midday under sunny skies.  Norfolk Naval Base is home to the Atlantic fleet and from the water, if you’re lucky, you can see the biggest and baddest examples, up close.

I’ve always been a bit of a naval nerd, and aircraft carriers were a fascination since I was a little kid, so I didn’t mind getting to see the USS Harry S. Truman and the USS Eisenhower from about a quarter mile off the bow & stern, respectively.  I read a bit about them online as we went past and it turns out the Ike had just pulled into port after a short deployment in costal waters to help test the new F-35 fighter jet, which is probably the biggest military boondoggle ever.  It’s costing us $400 billion to build, and it can’t out-fly the 30 year old jet it’s supposed to replace, the F-16.

While we were pulling past the two fleet carriers and a whole host of destroyers and missile cruisers, we were overflown a number of times by the naval base’s airborne defenders, E-2 Hawkeye radar planes, and P-4D Pelican dive bombers.

We motored into Norfolk’s inner harbor on the Elizabeth River and anchored right
across from the USS Wisconsin, a WWII battleship turned museum.  The next day we got to watch a Coast Guard training / demo – a helicopter lowered a sailor onto a tug, then pulled a “victim” back up to the helo in a basket – pretty cool to see up-close.

At this point, I’d been putting off engine maintenance on Gaia for quite some time and given that we had a whole bunch of motoring upcoming – Norfolk was the place to catch up.  So I spent a full day and a half going through the full set of frequent & infrequent engine maintenance items – a few of which I’d never done before.  The full list was:

• Clean entire engine and engine bay
• Clean v-drive and v-drive bay.
• Checked salt-water pump impeller, found we need a special tool to remove.
• Checked secondary fuel filter for fuel contamination (found none).
• Replaced air filter.
• Replaced transmission oil.
• Drained the anti-freeze coolant from the engine and removed/cleaned the heat exchanger.  Refilled with new coolant.
• Replaced sacrificial zinc.
• Changed oil & filter.
• Changed v-drive oil & cleaned salt-water chamber
• Tighten engine stuffing box (this the spot where the propeller shaft leaves the boat) and rudder stuffing box (the spot where the rudder shaft leaves the boat)

All in all I found no problems with the engine, but, while inspecting the newly replaced steering cables (done right before leaving) I caught what could have become a big problem – one of the pulleys in the steering system that I had replaced was coming loose and almost popped out, which would have meant the steering wheel would have suddenly stopped working!  It was an easy fix, but sure better to find in a safe harbor then when steering in a big ocean.

Taking a break from engine maintenance, we explored Portsmouth, which is right across the river from Norfolk, the town is rich in maritime history with old churches, gaslights and oddly enough a german beer garden – which of course we couldn’t pass up!

Up next, into the intra-coastal waterway we go!