It's WINDSday | May 1, 2024

Celebrating the Power of Wind, Clean Energy and a Green Environment

A Dominion Energy contractor will soon begin erecting monopiles in the Atlantic, the next step in the creation of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. 

On top of those will be these transition pieces that are 30 meters high, 8 meters in diameter, and weigh about 550 tons each. The first shipment of six, manufactured by CS WIND Offshore, left Aalborg, Denmark, on April 24, bound for Portsmouth Marine Terminal.

According to offshorewind.biz, they should arrive here around mid-May. DEME Offshore will install them 27 miles out to sea. In all, there will be 176 wind turbines in the lease area, meaning that many monopiles and transition pieces. Look for their continued delivery over a tunnel near you.  

We are not manufacturing major equipment for the CVOW project in Hampton Roads, at least not yet, but our local maritime contractors are on it for anything that needs repair, modification, or fabrication.

“For the next few years, there will be at least fifty vessels operating out of our port that are unique to the offshore wind industry,” says Vance Hull, Director of Business Development for longstanding Colonna’s Shipyard in Norfolk. They will include crew transfer, survey and service operations vessels, fisheries monitoring, oceangoing tug and security boats, monopile and turbine installation ships, as well as ones laying cable and removing ordinance. 

 Vance Hull presides over a meeting of the VMA's Offshore Wind Committee

Colonna already has some in its yard on the Elizabeth River, and Hull says, “Our Steel America and Weld America divisions have provided specialized welding, machining, and other services, too.” 

Hull, a Maury High and Hampden-Sydney College grad, grew up in the dredging business and has been at Colonna’s since 1999. He chairs the Virginia Maritime Association’s Offshore Wind Committee, a robust group of service providers, 75 or so of whom attend meetings in person or online to hear updates from Dominion Energy, Avangrid, the Coast Guard, and others, including stakeholders from Europe.

“The international companies are ahead of us in terms of supply chain, although now that freight is landing in the US, they have work for local subcontractors, and we have plenty of who are up to the task.”

Besides ship repair execs, committee members include equipment operators, contractors, engineers, shippers, dredgers, freight forwarders/brokers, educators, tug operators, ship agents, bankers, lawyers, insurers, terminal operators, harbor pilots, and government agencies.

“We educate one another and facilitate resources,” says Hull. “An industry of this magnitude comes along rarely. This one is akin to the start of the space program.” To see whether your company fits in, start at www.vamaritime.com.

This little flower is a Dutchman’s Britches. And like all the plants here at Wild Works of Whimsy on rural Benefit Road in Chesapeake, it’s native to our area. And that’s a good thing for pollinators, going from flower to flower and keeping the genes, so to speak, in the family.

So says the owner of Wild Works, Ohioan Trista Imrich, who was a service warfare officer in the Navy, joining right after 9-11.

“That tragedy happened during my senior year in high school,” prompting her to enlist. After six years in uniform, including three tours on the Ike and Arleigh Burke, she earned a master’s in environmental science.

That led to six years working for Lynnhaven River Now, a horticulture certificate from TCC, a strong interest in landscape design, and now Wild Works of Whimsy, where she grows hundreds of native plants bearing colorful names like Blue Ice Bluestar, Joe-Pye Weed, Red Cokeberry, and Carolina Allspice. 

“I actually helped write the book ‘Native Plants in Southeast Virginia,’” all of which provide food and shelter for native animal species, are easy to grow, reduce pollution, improve water quality, sustain watersheds, and require less fertilizer.  

Visit www.wildworksofwhimsy.com to view the book, get directions to Trista’s native garden, and enlist her help in establishing one yourself. The birds and bees will love you. 

It’s a known fact, or widely held belief, that New York bagels are best because of New York water. “It’s true,” says Shannon Lilley, the only known bagel baker in Virginia that mixes “manufactured” Empire State H2O into its dough to make plains, everythings, cinnamon raisins, and other varieties.

Shannon and her now ex-husband and former partner, a NYC native, went all in on New York water when they opened Brooklyn Bagels in Red Mill (VA Beach) in 2019. “We found a company up there (New York WaterMaker) that could replicate another city’s water using a multi-filtration system,” says Shannon. “In the case of New York, the secret is water from natural springs in the Catskill Mountains that flows into its reservoirs, giving what comes out of the tap a distinctive, crisp, and refreshing taste.”

She says it also makes the bagels bigger and the pastrami, slabs of which Shannon steams for 18 hours in her “New York water,” a huge hit on breakfast and lunch sandwiches. “Most people don’t realize how many New Yorkers live around here, visit nearby Sandbridge or the oceanfront in the summer, or are just locals who want a real New York bagel,” says the always harried Lilley, who grew up in Portsmouth (family owned the Merrimack Cafeteria on High Street) and Suffolk before relocating to nearby Lagomar.

“I am here from 6:30am until we close at 2pm six days a week, then often return late at night to do paperwork or catch up with my kitchen manager, Steven Fritz, on operations, including the next round of specialty bagels like broccoli and cheese.” Fortunately, Shannon’s two teenage sons are self-sufficient and often behind the counter themselves.

Brooklyn Bagels’ reputation has spread. It’s busy, particularly on the weekends, but there is plenty to do while you wait, like enjoy the New York-themed posters, pictures, and prose praising New York water. Customers even offer up their own paraphernalia to enhance the décor. 

For the menu and directions, visit brooklynbagels.online. And if you’re still not convinced it‘s the New York water, Shannon will let you sample theirs and ours, preferably with pastrami...on a bagel, of course.  

Brooklyn Bagels | 2201 Upton Drive, Suite 904 | Virginia Beach, VA 23454

757.689.4590 | info@brooklynbagels.online

Lynnhaven River Now’s annual Oyster Roast is this Saturday, and whether you intend to attend or not, you can bid now on a host of silent auction items, including vacations in Costa Rica and Jamaica, restaurant meals, boat trips, art, and more. 

CLICK HERE for the complete list and bid instructions.

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