Day 34 – N 37° 15.856’ W76° 01.108’ Cape Charles, VA

Yesterday was a fun day in Cape Charles.  We got out our folding bicycles and rode around the small town and out to it’s beach. Then we rode a mile further to see the other marina in Cape Charles.  This marina had about three times as many slips but only about three boats in it.  There were dozens of large condos and residences all looking brand new and all looking unoccupied.  We presumed this was all built with high expectations just prior to the collapse in the housing market.  The marina was in a nice, protected area and could be a fine place if the economy improves more.  We finished our rambling by returning to a shop in the town for ice cream cones.

That afternoon we again watched the boats come in with their crabs and then we decided it was time for us to have some fresh Chesapeake Bay crabs for dinner.  We went to the restaurant right next to the marina docks.  As born and raised Yankees, we know all about how to eat whole steamed lobsters, but this was our first time trying to pick the meat out of whole steamed crabs.  After the first crab for each of us we were getting pretty good at it. It was fun and very tasty. We bought a dozen, but could only eat 4 each.  So we took the remaining 5 (bakers dozen) back to Kite and Lyn picked the meat out of them in preparation for making crab cakes for today’s evening meal.  At one point, a man we had seen from of the crab fishing boats came by our table and thanked us for eating crabs and told us a little about how hard it was to make a living by fishing these days.

Wind blew this metal building apart.

Last night’s rough weather was supposed to give way to a pleasant afternoon with gentle breezes from the north.  Our plan, if the forecast was accurate, was to cross the Bay in the afternoon under motor and anchor for a few days in Fishing Bay, in the Deltaville, VA area.  If we left at noon and made an average speed of 5 knots, we would arrive at the anchorage by 18:00, well before sundown.  In the morning, we walked to a little convenience store to buy some Saltines, because Lyn’s recipe for crab cakes calls for that and we had none.  We walked across an open area that once served as a siding for the railroad, and noted that a metal enclosure over an antique train car, which we saw had started to collapse and was leaning against the train car yesterday, had completely torn apart in the storms last night, and the twisted sheet metal was 100 yards away near some flat cars two or three tracks off to the side.  We sustained some minor storm damage too – one of our dock lines chafed through and parted.  When we got up, and wanted to leave the boat for the bathrooms, it was too far from the dock to get off, but still secured to it with the several other lines.  Peter managed to pull us to the dock by reaching with a long boat hook to grab the line that parted and pull Kite back to the dock.

On the way back from the convenience store, it looked as if the forecast would hold up, so we prepared the Kite for sea and left the dock around 11:00.  Once we got out of the protected harbor area, the wind seemed to be about 12 knots from the north and the waves 2 to 3 feet, consistent with the forecast.  As we left the harbor channel into the Bay, and turned upwind toward our destination, the combination of opposing wind and waves slowed us down to about 3 knots.  So we decided to motor sail, which would also mean tacking since our course was directly into the wind, and the sails don’t work unless they are about 50° off the wind.  At that angle, we were taking the waves at a better angle too, so our speed increased to about 5 knots, but we would have to cover more distance due to the zig-zag path.  After about 30 minutes of this, the wind started getting much stronger and with that the waves much larger and our speed even slower.   Peter decided that it was too much, and we should return to Cape Charles and spend the next 3 to 4 days of bad weather there.  We were back at the dock before 13:00.  We re-registered for more days and asked about a weekly rate.  We were astonished that the weekly rate was only about 2.5 times the daily rate, so if we got a refund for our 2 days there, we would have an entire week for the price of one extra day!  So we signed up for the rest of the week at Cape Charles Town Harbor. 

The forecast calls for very strong winds from the northeast and 50% chance of rain every day for the next 3 days, Sun through Tue.  On Wed. the winds should become southerly, and we will plan to leave then if the conditions are like that at the time.  Now, we are starting to consider another destination besides Deltaville, since we will have all day to get there instead of just an afternoon.