My boat is parked across from the Coast Guard Training Station, and down the river from the Naval Weapons Depot. So I don’t have to head all the way into Hampton Roads to find restricted water. One night, heading back after a race, we heard a navy boat hail a fishing boat. It seemed to take awhile for them to reach the boat. They navy personnel informed the fishing boat that it was within restricted waters and needed to turn around. The boat said it was trying to get to the Coleman Bridge. The navy boat told them that they weren’t allowed to sail in that area and that they had to turn around. The fishing boat kept going. Next we hear, the fisherman is screaming about the fact he’s been fired upon. The naval vessel said that it was a warning shot across the bow, but that the next would be ‘with deadly force’, or some other phrase right out of late night television. Apparently, the fishing boat decided to turn around.

Next part of the broadcast we hear the vessel informing someone how many 50mm rounds they had fired.

Now, this was, at most, a mile from where we were. If they’d been shooting something that big, we’d have heard it, I would guess. We never heard anything. So was it just an exercise? Probably so, especially since we were still tuned to ch 72 after the race; we hadn’t switched back to ch 16, the hailing channel. But we were sure holding our breaths while we were listening!