We crossed Hampton roads this morning, open to the ocean and turbulent. We swung by Norfolk and its naval docks. War ships hang in there, in a zone surrounded by markers and reinforced by helicopters and boats with flashing lights. We are keeping snug to the red rigth markers at the side of the deep channel, as opposite them as we can. Flashing lights on cars are no good, and we guess the same rule applies to boats. I wonder, “How deep is the channel?” Dickie looks at his depth meter that prefers the “off” position to the “on” and we still can’t figure out why, “60 feet.” He muses, “A bit much for even such big ships. Hmm… might be for submarines…” Sparkle in his eyes, “Hey, there might be a submarine below us right now!” Of course, we milk the subject a while—what if we got a message on the radio as we did from a tug boat 2 days ago, “sailboat Peregrine, you are 20 feet from us, and need to move to starboard,” and we’d look around seeing nothing until a huge dark form would emerge from the depth bla bla bla.

The black, hard-shelled war ships with their antennas look much like insects, and when you think about it, insects from all the animal kingdom are the most threatening to us city folks. In Atlanta—for example—our tigers and lions are safely put away in cages (and we might well manicure their claws into useless weapons), while mosquitoes approach us at their will. And although we are on constant guard, many of them manage to draw our blood and leave us with a killer virus.  This is an exciting trip.