EARLY MORNING RAIN
May 14, 2012
Up at 0545 and there is no life showing in the marina at this hour. The winds are calm and there is a light rain falling. The water is mirror smooth. Talk about good sleeping weather. Bear and Scurv are into max relax mode.
We left Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore yesterday fairly early. The day promised to be a good sailing day due to wind direction and speed. Indeed it was. Our intended next stop was somewhere on the Western Shore after a fairly short sail. That turned out to be Deltaville, Virginia on the lower Rappahannock River where it meets the Chesapeake.
We left CC in a small flotilla. All of them knew where they were going which turned out to be generally to the same location. They got a significant start on us but we had hopes of catching at least one or two of them along the way. Didn’t happen. They were all larger sloops and the extra water line helped keep them ahead despite my sneaky attempts to catch them by paying closer attention to sail trim. Methinks they pretended to ignore us but since any two sailboats traveling roughly in the same direction will always be “racing” they knew we were “back there”. Boys and girls, yesterday was the first time in a long time we have actually gotten to sail. We did not feel a sense to “get r done”. Bear and Scurv lounged in the sun and I fiddled with course and sails. It was great. That was the second time in a week the old main sail has been up the mast. It needs way more exercise since those months of just sitting has made hoisting a bit more work. A few more hoists and the sail tracks will dump the dust and function as intended.
Although the Bay is wide, we had cell signals all the way and that gave us a chance to talk to family and friends on Mother’s Day. Bear sitting in the sun on a beam reach caught up on family stuff. Scurv managed about five hours of napping. It might be that he gets a little queasy underway in four to six feet breaking following seas. Once at the slip, he puts on his pillage and plunderer suit and resumes hunting and chewing mode.
We ducked into Deltaville and took a slip at Dozier’s Regatta Point marina. This is a nice marina and the staff is very friendly. These are the same folks that publish the Waterway Guide and the Skipper Bob stuff. I am guessing every sailor has used at least one of these publications. The marina was almost full of “Loopers”. They are the folks that do the Great Circle cruise and since Dozier is one of the sponsors with seminars and festivities, there seems to be a good following. Many of them will leave today on the great adventure. There are a couple of sailboats in the hunt and they have made arrangements to remove their masts so as to make the height restrictions along the way. Mast removal on purpose seems a lot of work as opposed to knocking it down. Enough said on that topic.
Seems Captain John Smith a few years back, say in the 17th century went about irritating a stingray near here. Said critter decided to give as good as he got and popped Capt Smith. Made him really sick and in fact almost killed him but for the assistance of some indigenous personnel (that would be the original Americans) who were yet to be irritated at the new comers. They whisked the good Captain away and applied some potion, reportedly mud from a nearby creek which put him back on his feet. I am not sure whether or not it was published in the USA Today or not but two landmarks have been named from the event: Stingray Point and Antipoison Creek (no joke). More later.