Norfolk (Part 2) VA USA

We wanted to spend some time exploring Norfolk whilst we were in the city but we also had jobs on board that we needed to do.  Consequently, our plan for Halloween was to spend the morning working on BV and the afternoon at the Chrysler Museum of Art.  First up on the list of tasks was to check and remake the connections in the wind instrument’s cable run.  Since relaunching in October, periodically the wind instrument would read 99.9kts or would just shut down and then switch on again.  Clearly, there was a loose connection in the system which needed to be remade.  In addition, I wanted to make some changes to the wiring run as I have longer term plans to install an NMEA 2000 backbone to the instrument system.  This will, I think, help to stabilise several of the instruments’ displays and will also provide the basis of the instruments’ wiring loom when we come to have to replace some or all of our current instruments.

The wiring task, as they say, was a job well jobbed.  I found one very loose connection and a couple of other ones that needed remaking.  And I also managed to remove a small section of wiring to minutely reduce the snakes’ wedding hidden behind the headlining.  [Ed: 30cm removed, only another several tens of metres to go!]

Task number 2 was to check the rig tension.  We should have done this shortly after relaunching but hadn’t managed to do so and it was something we knew we needed to do before we hit bad weather and/or the open ocean.  It’s a tedious task because to make the adjustments to the rig we need to be able to access the bottlescrews at the base of the shrouds.  And for that we need to remove the boards that we’ve attached to the shrouds which we use to secure the jerry cans of diesel, the dive tanks and the petrol cans.  As ever, once all the gubbins had been removed, actually checking and, as necessary, retensioning the rig was really rather quick, particularly since the adjustments needed were relatively small.  Putting everything back on was another time-consuming and dull task which is why we hadn’t got around to checking the rig tension sooner.

We were so engrossed in the rig tension task that we didn’t notice, until Gary drew our attention to it, that Jennifer on Kailani could do with some help to rig additional lines.  By this stage the wind was blowing strongly from the south.  Kailani was moored side on to the wind and was now leaning heavily on the downwind piles of her slip (berth).  With only 13-year-old Sophie on board to provide additional muscle-power, Jennifer was unable to rig the lines needed to drag their 63ft heavy blue-water cruiser up against the wind.  Nicky and I happily provided the additional manpower required and Kailani’s power-winches did the rest of the job.  And with the forecast for the wind to go around to the northerly quadrant, we helped get extra lines on out to starboard as well.

By mid-afternoon we had finished our jobs and, on the recommendation of both Greta and Elsie (Ruby Tuesday), headed to the Chrysler Museum of Art.  Had we not had the gallery recommended we might well have returned to finish the McCarthy Memorial and missed it.  That, it turns out, would have been a great shame.

It’s an excellent art museum with all sorts of works from portraits to landscapes, sculpture, glass and metalwork.

Special exhibit on architecture featuring
Thomas Jefferson’s work.  This item shows the
 University of Virginia in Charlottesville, which
we visited in September with Bill and Lydia. 
Note Jefferson’s iconic wavy walls, which mean
that far fewer bricks are required to effect a
robust, free-standing structure

We’re not great art gallery aficionados but here we found lots to look at and enjoy rather than endure.  The only shame was that some of the galleries were closed for a Halloween ‘spooky tour’, which meant that most of the glasswork areas, for which the museum is particularly well-known, were not open.  One for next time – we’ll just have to return.

Halloween decorations abounded

We walked back to BV through residential roads that were all fully decorated for Halloween, meeting a few trick or treaters on the way.  It felt a little odd that it was still light at 1700 on 31 October but the clocks don’t go back here until the first weekend in November.  On our way to the dock we stopped off at Gary and Greta’s and enjoyed sundowners watching the sunset from their balcony and confirming a plan to help Gary with some jobs on their boat in a couple of days’ time.

View from Greta and Gary’s balcony

Norfolk, Virginia, USA