Thursday, May 11, 2017

Downtown Hampton Public Piers - at a dock

Great Bridge Lock - Lots of us going north today, about 8 boats in all (not all pictured)
Our original intention was to spend the night at the free docks opposite Atlantic Yacht Basin but when we got there it was full. Well, it was only full because the boats did not make good use of the facedock. They were spaced far apart but not far enough for more boats. If they had been organized like the spacing at Coinjock, there would have been room for three more boats.

Along the way north from Coinjock there were multiple shoaling warnings on Active Captain but it turned out that if you just followed the center of the channel as shown on your chartplotter you were fine in 11 ft of water. It seemed as if you ought to be closer to the greens but they are shown to be about 250 ft off the channel. If you wander over in that direction you will go aground (one sailboat did today). Just follow the channel as shown on your chartplotter, you won't have a problem.

The finders are only 1/2 length but the price is right.
So we passed by the free dock and headed for the $35/night docks at Top Rack Marina which is not really a marina, just a bunch of docks and only four of them have power. Once there we reviewed the weather report and saw Friday was not going to be a good day with lots of rain and some thunderstorms in the outlook. So we soldiered on to Hampton to arrive a day earlier than we had planned at Downtown Hampton Public Piers but we are snug here until the weather gets better.

We have a car rented for the weekend, Enterprise's $10/day special so we'll provision and see the sights.

2 comments:

Mary said...

Hampton has surprisingly good restaurants a short walk from the city dock, just two blocks over on Queen's Street.
The Air and Space Museum will occasionally have first run movies that are great to watch in the IMAX theater. Enjoy !
Thank you for all the updates and looking forward to my third edition of your cruising guide.

Bob423 said...

Mary, their "restaurant row" is hard to beat. We've eaten in several of the restaurants. Our favorite is the Taphouse. Not exactly fine dining but a lot of fun. The Air and Space museum is great and is geared towards kids. We took Sarah by there when she was with us.

I'm planning a massive update with many new features for the third edition. If you have suggestions for improvements, please send them along.