The News from Newport News

30, Ode to Joy—from my mooring on the Lafayette River in Norfolk, hoping to take a closer look at what makes Newport News compelling, especially by water. Newport News, a linear city that’s at least 20 miles long but only two to four miles wide for most of that length, parades slowly by as I pick up a gentle northerly breeze, put Middle Ground Light astern, slip past the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel and enter the James. To my dismay, there’s no ideal place for a cruising sailor to tie up—not in the Small Boat Harbor that is home to a commercial fishing fleet (more on that later), not downtown, not along the beach, and certainly not along the industrial waterfront. I feel like I’ll have to keep going to Williamsburg or Jamestown. But I won’t give up yet; there is a way to see this town. I keep moving. At the coal pier, the ship Energy Enterprise out of New Orleans, and a