Day 36 – N 37° 15.856’ W 76° 01.108’ Cape Charles Town Harbor

Fiery sunset at Cape Charles

When the weather changes around here, it puts on a marvelous display to announce it!  Saturday, after we had returned to Cape Charles Town Harbor, we enjoyed a mid-70s afternoon washing the salt spray off Kite, and settling back in to marina life.  That evening the wind calmed down (as forecast, but much later in the day) and we were treated to one of the most fiery sunsets I have ever seen.  It was further enhanced by its reflections off the glassy water’s surface.

I guess the fire burned out though.  Sunday started out a cold 46°F and didn’t warm up much, reaching a high of 54°F with strong NE wind – we were happy to be in a protected harbor.  We sat outside for 30 minutes in the morning “Skype-ing” with Laura, Rob and Zack.  Back at Kite we warmed up and planned our next destinations.  After lunch Peter performed regular engine maintenance - changing the engine oil and filters.  A pool of oil had collected below the engine and he traced the leak to the new oil pressure switch he had installed during our stay in St. Simons Island.  Tightening it up didn’t work, because the leak was in the switch itself.  He’ll try on Monday to get a new one at the local hardware store, or at least get a plug for the hole until he can replace the pressure switch later.  We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the sun in an area on board Kite that was sheltered from the wind but exposed to the sun.  Lyn prepared a salad for lunch consisting of mango, avocado and black beans, plus a little of her secret dressing.  Dinner was rice with chicken, grapes and almonds mixed in, and she made homemade apple crisp for dessert after dinner.  Still eating like royalty!

Our next destination is going to be Onancock, MD (uh-NAN-cock) on the eastern side of the Bay.  If the weather forecast holds, we will leave Wednesday morning to travel the 40+ nautical miles up the Bay from Cape Charles.  After that, our tentative plan is to visit Crisfield, MD and then on to Solomons on the west side of the Bay.  Of course that is all subject to change for numerous reasons, but that is what it looks like now.

Crab boat headed out to work

Monday:  Peter woke up at 06:00, just in time to see the crab fishing fleet departing.  It was a chilly 44°F and the wind was just a gentle breeze at that hour.  Still, that is very cold to be heading out into the choppy waters where the wind would surely increase and create 5-foot waves in the process.  Those fishermen work hard for their living. 

Inside Watson's Hardware

After a nice warm breakfast, we walked over to town so Lyn could check with the Medical Center about getting a routine blood test done and the results sent to her doctor, and Peter could visit the hardware store to see if they had an oil pressure switch (or at least the right size plug) for the engine.  Lyn struck out with the Medical Center – they wouldn’t do it, and Peter failed to get the pressure switch, but did get the right size plug.  The hardware store looked like it was from 50 years ago – narrow aisles, old inventory, subdued lighting and a few chairs by a wood burning stove for  just chatting with the owner.  It was the kind of place you didn’t browse in, because it was not organized enough for that.  Instead you asked the employees for help and were taken directly to a selection of items that you requested, if they had any in stock.

When we got back to Kite, Peter plugged the oil pressure switch opening, ran the engine for a while to check for leaks, cleaned up the puddle of oil under the engine, and jury rigged a connection for the wires so that the alarm would not drive us crazy whenever we were motoring.  Now Kite is good for another 100 hours of engine running until the next maintenance interval.  Hopefully, since we are in the Bay we will be doing more sailing and have less time on the engine than in the last month.

There was no sunning in the cockpit today.  It was raining lightly most of the early afternoon and the cold wind is still howling.  We took a walk to the Post Office about a half-mile away, to take care of some business and fortunately the rain was very light during our time outside.  Most of the crab fishermen had returned by the time we got back to Kite, only a few stragglers were still coming into the harbor.

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.

Day 32 – N 37° 15.886’ W 76° 01.105’ Cape Charles, VA

Peter manipulating robotic arm

What a wonderful day ashore in Norfolk yesterday, visiting the Nauticus museum which also features the battleship Wisconsin and the Naval Museum. The museum was very interactive. Peter “drove” a virtual tug pushing a barge, and we both tried our hand at working the robotic arm of a deep submersible vehicle. There was a submarine periscope that we could manipulate and see the marina in the harbor where Kite was docked. Visitors could walk freely about the decks of the battleship Wisconsin and also view some of its interior spaces. We enjoyed Nauticus so much we spent the whole day there except for going out for a great lunch at a fun diner called D’Egg in downtown Norfolk. This morning we were ready to move on and take advantage of the southerly winds. 

Lyn looking through periscope

Looking ahead at the weather, we needed to find someplace very secure because the weather forecast for Friday and Saturday includes t’storms and high winds.   We looked at some anchorages on the western side of the Bay, in Mobjack Bay, that we could get to in 6 to 8 hours.  The extended weather forecast did not seem much improved, so we were looking at the possibility of an extended stay, or trying to relocate on Saturday afternoon, after the morning rains stopped.  All we could find was to cross the Bay and go into Cape Charles harbor, which featured an inexpensive town dock and places to walk or ride our bikes to see the sights.  Then we thought about it and decided to just go straight to Cape Charles and spend some time there seeing the town, and forget about Mobjack Bay, which would have been a secluded anchorage, but not much to do for 2 days.  It turned out to be about 5 miles closer than Mobjack Bay, when Peter plotted it out on the chartplotter.  So that settled it – Cape Charles was our next destination and we would spend a few days there.

Peter "driving" tugboat

We woke up with the sun (which gets up at 06:30 over here in the east) and had a leisurely breakfast and departed a little after 08:00.  As we motored out of Norfolk harbor area, we saw a sailboat slowly sailing downwind out of the harbor area.  We were motoring, so we overtook it, and to our surprise – it was Burt, the man who had run aground for 4 days in the Neuse river and, after being rescued, was brought to the commercial fishing docks where we were tied up in Hobucken, NC.  He’d apparently gotten his boat repaired, but he told us as we passed him, that his engine wasn’t working.  Poor Burt.  But he was headed for New Jersey, and was nearly there so I guess he figured he could make it under sail power.

Lyn on the bow of Wisconsin

We got to the top of Norfolk harbor, and headed east into the Bay.  We had enough wind by this time to put up our sails and shut off the engine.  Ahh – the peace and quiet of wind propulsion!  The wind was light for the first half hour, and we barely made 4 knots, but we knew it would freshen as we got into the open waters of the Bay, as it did.  We were headed northeast, across the Bay to the eastern shore, and the wind was from the southeast, a perfect direction for fast sailing.  As it strengthened our speed increased, until we are making nearly 7 knots.  We sailed for more than 3 ½ hours like this, and then we had to stop because the entry channel for Cape Charles was near.  We arrived at the dock in Cape Charles before 14:00, less than 6 hours after we departed.  Peter calculated our average speed to be 5.6 knots, and most of it under sail alone.  A perfect day!

When we arrived, we had to go register at the dock office, and it turns out that this dock is used mostly by crab fishermen.  They were pulling up to an unloading area in their boats, and off loading their bushel baskets of crabs, which were being loaded directly into the backs of trucks for immediate delivery to restaurants and seafood stores.  We saw one boat unload 24 bushels of crabs, and there were at least 20 boats that either had unloaded or were waiting to do so.  Four or five trucks were lined up to receive their bounty.  These watermen talk funny, too.  They have a strange, unique accent that we haven’t figured out yet, a little like Scottish, but not the same.  We commented to the marina staff how skillfully they maneuvered their boats, and they said we should come back in August when they have a contest to see how fast they can get from the unloading dock to a specific slip, then backed into it and tied up.  They said the record was something like 25 seconds!

Lyn prepared a nice evening meal of striped bass (in honor of Burt?), rice and grapes topped off with the rest of the French cabernet sauvignon, and we ate it in the cockpit as the sun was setting.  The wind subsided and all was right with our little world.

Day 30 – N 36° 50.486’ W 76° 17.934’ Portsmouth, VA

If we could make it to the Gilmerton Bridge before it closed to boat traffic from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., then we could make it to Tidewater Yacht Marina, our intended destination at mile marker zero of the ICW and the doorway to the Chesapeake Bay!  Of course that would mean another “0’dark thirty” departure, but it would also mean seeing another beautiful sunrise. There are eight opening bridges and one lock in the final 20 miles of the ICW as you head north! Three of them are railroad bridges listed as “usually open” and the others are all on a schedule: some every half hour, others every hour.  Our friend, Fred Drummond, on the sailboat “Royal Serf” has made this trip many times and he laid out the timetable for us the day before as we waited an extra day in Coinjock, NC to catch favorable winds from the south.  We were on a mission to maintain at least 6 knots for the 30 miles to the first bridge.

Sunrise over Currituck Sound

As the sun rose, we were starting to cross Currituck Sound, the last of those many wide, but shallow, sounds in the Carolinas where the wind kicks up steep waves.  The wind strengthened, but it was behind us from the south, so the sailboats (there were 3 of us now) all put up head sails and we had a beautiful swift crossing of the sound.  So far, so good. By frequently trimming our sails to maintain our speed through the narrow, winding rivers, we arrived at North Landing, the first of the opening bridges, one hour ahead of schedule giving us some margin for the possibility of RR bridges being closed.  Fred’s timetable continued working perfectly.  We made it to the lock for the noon opening, a full hour ahead of our “last chance” time.

Three boats under sail in Currituck Sound

The Great Bridge Bridge (that’s not a typo) is synchronized with the Great Bridge Lock. It was well coordinated. Northbound boats go through the bridge on the hour and motor right into the open lock.  There was more than enough room for the three boats and the dock hands helped us all tie up.  In 20 minutes the gates on the other end opened and we motored out where southbound boats were waiting for their turn to enter the lock. We made it to the Gilmerton Bridge and caught the next-to-last opening before the 3-hour restricted period.  Any one of the railroad bridges could have thwarted our success, but none did.  We waited for only one train, but it was after the Gilmerton Bridge, so we had the time. Whew! On the return trip we plan to take an alternative to that section of the ICW. The Great Dismal Swamp, despite its name, is said to be scenic and teeming with wildlife and we will take the time to enjoy it.  We stayed on the “fast” route this time to take advantage of the forecast for south winds and we were eager to get to the Chesapeake now that it was so close. A sign in the lock told us we had come 732 miles from Jacksonville, FL. By Peter’s log, we have actually traveled 789.6 miles since departing our marina in Jacksonville.

In the canal lock, holding lines as the water drains out.

The Norfolk/Portsmouth area is a jolting change from the remoteness of the outer banks.  Towering naval and commercial ships line the river and noisy activity abounds.  We said goodbye to Royal Serf on the radio. Fred continued on toward his home in Virginia Beach – although we may cross paths in the bay this summer.  We motored into the Tidewater Yacht Marina and were greeted by a dockhand who had a package of our forwarded mail with him. We were tied up by 3:00 pm. The next day will be a day on shore exploring Norfolk. 

We have arrived at the Chesapeake Bay!  In celebration, we opened a nice bottle of French wine for dinner and toasted our success.