We have just completed the last leg of our journey that actually began when we left Turkey back in October and headed West across the Med, across the Atlantic, up through the Caribbean and Bahamas, across the Gulf Stream to Florida and then North mostly up the ICW to were we are now safely docked at Tidewater Yacht Marina in Portsmouth Virginia just across the river from Norfolk.  My last post “Skinny Dipping our Way to Florida” update on May 18th covered our travels from Florida up to South Carolina and this is now the final Update from there as we are now safely docked in Tidewater Yacht Marina in Portsmouth Virginia just across the river from Norfolk.  We arrived here on May 24th having covered just over 8200 nautical smiles since leaving Turkey and we will now hit the “Pause” button and stay here for the next few months.  But I’m getting ahead of myself so let’s go back and pick up where we left off in the last Update.

When I last left off in the “Skinny Dipping” post above, we were anchored in a bend on Bull Creek just off of the Waccama River in South Carolina where we were enjoying the serenity of that great spot we shared with the alligators and waited for three days while a storm front went through.

Our patience was rewarded with none of the wind or other effects from the storm reaching us in our little hideaway in Bull Creek and this map is my best attempt to show you our route and anchorages from there all the way up to our final spot at Tidewater Yacht Marina.  The many riverways, canals and Inter Coastal Waterway ICW we were on are too small to show up at this scale on the map so I’ve just put a Red marker for each anchorage along the way and then connected those Red dots with the White line you see here.
We first made our way from Bull Creek up to the small Mile Hammock Bay where we anchored for the night with a few other boats.  This spot is also right beside the somewhat infamous military Camp Lejeune but was a very peaceful anchorage for us.
Next stop we anchored in was just outside the very cute little town of Oriental where we went ashore to the local grocery store which kindly and conveniently offered a free shuttle service to bring us and our groceries back to the dinghy dock.  This whole section of our travels through North and South Carolina has been this kind of small and laid back towns that have been a real treat to enjoy their hospitality.
And as if that weren’t enough, Oriental also treated us to yet another fabulous sunset on this trip.
Captain Christine managed to catch this fun shot of that sunset in our SkyBridge windows.
For our next stop Christine found the tiny R.E. Mayo Seafood Company that offered us a night tied up to what was left of their dock.  We also took advantage to stock up on freshly caught shrimp and Cod.
Möbius continued to perform flawlessly and our eXtremely small wake was a very big plus as we motored past all the many docks in front of riverside homes and marinas along the way.  We are doing just over 9 knots in this photo so you can see how small the wake is.  We still slowed down when passing through “No Wake” zones but we got a lot of waves of appreciation from home owners and boat owners along the way.

Our travels through these inland waterways has also treated us to a fascinating variety of bridges and locks we need to pass through on our way.  The bridges are all quite different as well such as this “swing” bridge that rotates on a central foundation in the middle of the river. 
Some of these bridges have specific set opening times so we do our best to time our arrival to get there just before they open while others are “on demand” such as this one where we call the Bridge operator on the VHF radio when we are a few minutes out and ask for an opening.  And then through we go.
These lift bridges are perhaps the most common and vary a lot in size.  We missed the opening of this Great Lift Bridge and we had to wait two hours for it to open on our last day of the trip just before the lock at Great Bridge just inside the Virginia border.
The Great Bridge Lock (yes, a bit confusing as Great Bridge is the name of the town as well) is immediately after we passed through the Great Bridge opening and we had to wait for about another hour as the Alexander Duff tug and barge had first priority to go through the lock so we all had to wait for him to arrive and get into the lock.
We had passed him a few hours earlier but he got the last laugh as he now passed us to be first into the Great Bridge Lock.  Fortunately Möbius is very skinny at 5m/16ft beam so the lock attendants were easily able to have us pull in a long way up the Port/Left side of the barge and this allowed them to fit a few more ships behind us to pass through the locks in the same go.
This trip has also been fascinating with the huge variety of boats we have seen such as this good sized commercial fishing trawler.  If you think our paravane booms are big, click on this photo and check out these ones!  They use these booms for suspending their nets on either side but if you look closely you can see their paravane hanging off the end of the boom.
There was some nasty weather on its way so we decided to put in a bit longer last day and go all the way up to Tidewater before it got to us.
And Wow! what a difference in scenery and culture as we covered the last few miles after entering Virginia and found ourselves going through the large commercial industries and military shipyards surrounding Norfolk.
Turned out to be another very good decision as we pulled into Tidewater Yacht Marina in the late afternoon on May 24th with blue skies, sun and almost no wind and were soon able to side tie ourselves up to this long T-dock.
We stayed there for the past week and then two days ago the great staff at Tidewater had us move over to our new home dock. 
I’ve labelled both of these docks on the aerial photo above to give you a better idea of our new home for the next few months.
Christine has been exploring the fun town of Portsmouth and was able to find the Memorial Day parade for a bit of experience with the local culture.
She reported that the parade consisted mostly High School bands, gym clubs and the like so very much the feel of the small American town vibe which is part of the reason we chose Tidewater for our extended stay.
So this is our and Möbius’ new home for the next few months.
And that’s a wrap folks!  Both for this set of Updates and for our latest series of voyages for the past seven months.  We’ve successfully completed our plan to bring Möbius across the Atlantic and up the East Coast of the US to this area where we can now hit the Pause button for several months as planned and let the severely overworked Captain Christine hang up her Captain’s hat for awhile and FINALLY be able to restart her life as a best selling author and get her next few novels written and published.  I can’t begin to tell you what an immense set of responsibilities she has taken on to get us here so safely and comfortably and just how proud and grateful I am that she choses to be my Captain aboard Möbius and in my life.  Thank you my awemazing Bride!

This is also mission accomplished to put us closer to our Grandchildren and other family and friends as we have definitely been lamenting the lack of time with them.  As you may have read in the last few blog posts we have already been able to have our Grandson Liam with his parents come stay with us twice in the last two months and up next we have our two Granddaughters from California and their parents flying in on July 4th to stay aboard with us for a week or so.  Life doesn’t get much better than that!

I will continue to keep you updated here and I do have the promised Part II to the review of our experiences of these last 8200 NM of voyages on Möbius that I will get posted in the next few days so please stay tuned for those.

Just before I sign off and post this, I want to extend our most sincere appreciation and gratitude to all of you for taking the time to join us on all these adventures for however many months or years in many cases that you’ve been following along here via these blog posts.  Your presence has been a HUGE part of what has made these experiences so special and we can’t thank you enough for being there and taking the time to also add all your comments, questions and suggestions along the way.  We’re not yet sure where to from here but that’s what we have the next few months to figure out and will let you know as our ideas evolve and form.

-Wayne