06/05/2009, Deltaville Boatyard, Virginia
Still on the Hard in Deltaville
Friday, June 05, 2009 - 11 PM
Well it's June and we're still on the hard. We got back to the boat last Friday, May 29 and have worked on the boat every day since then. We spent 3 fun days re-doing the teak on the cap rail and rub rail. Patti used On&Off to remove the brown mustache we've had since doing the ditch from Beaufort, NC to Norfolk. I swapped the anchor chain end for end to get a few more years life out of that 200 foot piece of chain. Various other sundry jobs have filled our days. Working and living on the boat on the hard means many trips every day up and down a ten foot ladder to get from the boat to the ground. By the end of the day we are ready to quit, of course being that tired means we sleep good so there are some positives. And checking off completed jobs on the Things-To-Do-List brings a good feeling.
But, even though we've made a serious dent in the List, we won't be going in the water for awhile. On Sunday we leave the boat again, still stored on the hard, to take care of some family business that has come up. We wanted to be in Maine on July 1 this summer and in Nova Scotia on August 1. Now, we will be lucky if we are in the water and out of the Chesapeake Bay by July 10. We'll just play it the way it lays. If we get great weather windows we'll make tracks North in a hurry. Otherwise, we'll just back up and re-group.
Today's photo is of the work project "Wayward Wind".
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Ready to go on the Hard - April 09
Sunday, April 26, 2009 - 9 AM
Deltaville, VA
Water temperature 68 F
We pulled into Deltaville Marina Friday afternoon and immediately called Enterprise for a pickup. Enterprise doesn't want you to take their cars very far from home so on Saturday we drove the Enterprise car to Richmond to pick up an Avis car and then dropped the Enterprise car in Gloucester, VA on the way back. Sometimes it gets a bit complicated getting set up for a one month road trip.
We are working on closing the boat down for about a one month land trip. When we return to the boat we have some maintenance to do before we put her back in the water. By then hopefully it will have warmed up a bit and we'll start heading north again.
While we are land based and somewhere with a good Internet connection, I'll try to put pictures from this year's Bahamian Cruise on the blog. Other than that, blog entries will be few and far between until we're sailing again in June.
Today's picture is a North Carolina morning coming up the Pungo-Alligator Canal.
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04/24/2009, Severn River off of Mobjack Bay, VA
Heading up the Chesapeake Bay II Friday, April 24, 2009 - 9 AM Severn River off of Mobjack Bay, VA Water temperature 60 F
Patti had a little excitement coming out of Norfolk yesterday. She was staying to the far right side of the channel and as she was going by the bow of a large freighter docked there, she noticed the bow was getting closer and closer to her. Once she got passed the bow she could see a pair of tug boats on the starboard side working the freighter out of her berth. From the port side of the freighter there was no signs of activity and no black smoke from the stack on the freighter. There were no blasts of the ships horn announcing movement and no radio calls; just a slow, silent movement forward. It wasn't a dangerous moment, just very surprising.
A little while later as we were going by the Norfolk Navy Base docks the Coasties came on the radio with a long general type, nothing specific, announcement about how if you get too close to a Navy ship you are in big trouble. There were a pair of Coastie boats in front of us holding station by a pier but we had been following another sailboat about a quarter mile in front of us and I figured if we just went where the other sailboat had gone, we'd be OK. Wrong. The situation had changed since the other sailboat had gone by. What the Coasties should have said was "There is a submarine preparing to leave the dock and all vessels need to move to the west side of the channel." The Coastie boat came towards us in an aggressive manner so I called them on the radio and asked them what they wanted me to do. They answered in plain English, "Move to the west side of the channel". I said "Roger". I restrained myself from telling them if they had made a plain English announcement in the first place I would have already been on the west side of the channel. Later as the submarine passed us as it headed out the channel, I could see Sailors with M-16's standing on the sail. I have never seen that before.
When we came out of Hampton Roads and into the Chesapeake Bay yesterday the winds were further north than expected and about 15 K. We already had the main up and we unrolled the jenny. All was going fine until we got out of the lee of the land and then we were hit with a wind gust that was down right exciting. When the gust hit it put the rail way into the water and dinghy sailing training kicked in. Free the sheets and head up, now! That got the adrenalin going. We ended up with one reef in the main and the staysail as a workable sail plan for the conditions. Our speed would drop to 3 K and then shoot up to 6 K when a gust hit. We sailed along like that for a couple hours and watched the Navy Blue Angels perform about five miles away. I'm assuming this must be their home base and they were doing their normal show as a practice routine. It didn't matter to us if it was a practice routine or an Air Show with thousands of spectators watching, it was all the same to us. As far as we were concerned, they were putting the show on just for us and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
As the afternoon went by the wind kept moving more to our nose and we finally gave it up and rolled up the staysail and cranked up the diesel. For the first time in a long time we ended up motoring into the wind. To add to our joy, we had over a one K current going against us and with the diesel working hard, we were doing 3.5 K SOG. Miles go by very slowly at that speed. Once we got past the mouth of the York River, the current dropped some and our speed got up to 4 K.
We are anchored in the NW branch of the Severn River off of Mobjack Bay. This is not the Severn River in Annapolis, MD. When we came in here after 9 hours on the water we were very pleased to find our planned anchorage was out of the 25 K wind and 2 - 3 foot waves we had been experiencing all afternoon. We are in a little cove with protection the NW to the NE which was perfect for the forecast winds. It's a quiet, still, cold morning and it's time to get this show on the road. Should be a downwind run today and not too far to go.
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