May 14 - May 24 #7

Finally made it to Ashley’s Harbor after waiting for the small craft advisory to end. There is no definition of what a small craft is, “it is issued when winds have reached, or are expected to reach within 12 hours, a speed marginally less than gale force”. Good enough for me to stay put, and the Captain listens to the Admiral, sometimes.

This is Ashley's Harbor & Kate's sister house. Watermen dredging oysters out front, they seeded them a couple of years ago and they are still pulling them in

Ashley’s Harbor is where Kate’s sister Joanna lives with her husband Taz and their three kids . We pulled up to the dock right in front of their house where Kate and Mike were waiting. it is a beautiful home in a beautiful place and they made us feel most welcome.

The next morning we headed up the Bay to Solomon Island, still on the western side, where we met up with Mike’s daughter Hallie, a seventh grade teacher in Baltimore, and her girl friend Jean, visiting from Montreal, who works to engage students at McGill in community action. So great see these fabulous young people taking on the world with good work. They give us great reason to be hopeful.

Kate, Mike, Hallie & Jean

Also, Kate found a Taylor guitar at a antique/consignment/gallery store and an received an early birthday present from Mike, and we have been treated to a happy guitarist doing happy noodling ever since.

Next morning we continued up the Patuxent River and then turned up St Leonard Creek
 to a lovely anchorage where we happily kayaked about, went swimming  (some of us) and dingyied and kayaked over to Vera’s (an experience) for dinner.

Wild Rhododendron from the kayak

Joel flagrantly disobeying one of the rules at Vera's- baseball hats with brims forward only

After a pleasant stay at the Point Lookout Marina

Still morning at Point Lookout Marina, fisherman heading out to the Bay

we headed over to the Eastern Shore. We cut through Smith Island,

Smith Island. Brown Pelicans nest here

Smith Island, their graceful crab boats are like our lobster boats

which, along with Tangier is one of the last remaining old time Eastern Shore fishing communities, where you can hear an accent like no other. The economy is much like our Down East, fighting to survive like a lot of little Maine Islands and coastal communities. As far as I can see a big part of their tourist traffic and that of the mainland “city” of Crisfield comes from Road Scholar ( formerly Elderhostel) trips. There are 7 six day trips scheduled the spring & fall.

Climate change note: Smith Island is doomed. According to Wikipedia, “The Island has been shrinking in size for centuries, due to a combination of its low elevation and storm erosion. In the last 150 years, Smith Island has lost over 3,300 acres of wetlands due to erosion and post-glacial subsidence …To prevent the island from being lost to erosion, restoration efforts will be on
going for the next 50 year..."

This restoration effort strikes me as quixotic at best, or duplicitous at worst.  There is no way the state of Maryland and the US Congress are going to authorize the 20 million the Army Corp has budgeted for restoration. There are fewer than 300 people who live on the island and submersion is inevitable.  What are we going to do about climate change? And when are we going to do it? Vacillation between the hope generated by our wonderful young people, and despair about the enormity of the changes coming.

On the Eastern Shore we traveled from the economically challenged Chrisfield (used to be second only to Baltimore in population)

In Chrisfield, what remains, crab is king, and delicious

Onancock Wharf, Eastern Shore

to the lovely and unpretentious  community of Onancock  where we had a day of heavy rain, and then a sparkling reprieve, and, as always, good restaurant eating. 

Mike folds up the kayak and Joel cleans the grill, our last dinner together

Back across to the western shore and Ashley’s Cove where we said a sad goodbye to Kate & Mike, and Joanna and Taz.

On our own once more as we make our way north and then up the Potomac to meet Julie DeSherbinin on the 30th in Washington DC.

Blog #6 May 6 - May 13, 2015

From Beaufort to Oriental where we stayed at the town free dock, they are most accommodating for cruisers here.  Quiet and laid back, friendly, nothing fancy. I went to my first Yoga class, very welcome, good instructor.

Oriental has a dragon thing going on, they are everywhere, but you have to look

I try yoga on the boat, but this was a real treat. sign says Sailing Capiatl of NC

First rough weather day. Although the sun was shining, the winds were definitely above predicted, around 30 knots, as we headed up the Neuse River - more of a sound really. My first sea sick day! Fortunately we were in a canal after a few hours where all was calm, and when we came into Pamlico Sound the winds had come down and it wasn’t too bad.

We were happy to arrive at the cozy and homely Belhaven Marina, warmly welcomed by Brenda and Les. Joel had access to Les’s workshop and was finally able to fix a windless that was causing concern.

Most marina bathrooms don't look like Belhaven's. Towels and a scale!

Belhaven is a pleasant town, with a lot of poverty. But they are working on it. We ate dinner at a very high end and delicious restaurant, next to the ACE hardware store and a lot of empty store fronts. We ate with a very nice British couple from the boat behind us, who live in Scotland, keep the boat on the US east coast where they spend a few weeks each year, when they aren’t living in their house in South Africa or France.

Next day through miles of desolate and beautiful swamp land to the Alligator River Marina. An anally mowed and cleaned place ( dogs here- NO dogs here), 18 miles from the nearest town.

You can just see our boat behind the gas station

We didn't see any


The next we crossed the Albermarle Sound, which has quite a reputation for choppy seas, but we lucked out on that bit. Where we had had our adventure was at the Marina. I had rather cavalierly chosen the Pelican Marina in Elizabeth City to have some mail sent to, so in spite of the angled piers posts and rough and wobbly docks, and very short finger piers, and considerable chop coming in from the bay, we pulled in. The marina owner helped us, but as he was also running the store he couldn’t stick around for the considerable adjustments that were required, nor was he to be found Sunday morning when we left, our biggest challenge yet!. We never could get close enough to the pier to get off on it, and had to go over the bow sprite, a challenge for most, and especially the PD impaired. And a rocky rollie night on board.

Elizabeth City- another interesting mix of decay and hope. A really splendid museum  of the Albemarle, high end apartments being developed downtown, and lots of empty store fronts.

We were happy to enter the beginning of the Dismal swamp area, wandering river, calm and serene.  We were afraid we were going to miss the 11:00 AM lock opening at South Mills because our leaving had taken so long, but we just made it, last boat behind four sailboats, up the narrow and straight Dismal Swamp Canal. It’s the oldest continually operating canal in the Americas.

Mustard field right off the canal

These are the boats in front of the Visitors Center, we are the one in back. This is the canal, for many miles

So glad Joel can fix bikes as well as boats! They take a beating on the bow

We all stopped at the free dock at the Dismal Swamp Visitors Center for the night. This is a traffic rest spot for people on the highway, so they use the restrooms and come down to look, longingly, at the canal and the boats. One gentleman, a decade or two further along, with a wistful smile “we waited too long…”

I am glad we didn’t wait!

There is a great state park and lovely biking and hiking along the canal, we biked. Cocktails on Snow Goose with a couple of the other boats, great fun, Brits and Canadians, and  Bahamian cruisers returning New Bedford.

Left the Dismal Swamp the next day in a gentle rain. A few miles past the Deep Creek Lock ( The lock keeper, gregarious and with a passion for the swamp and its history) we are back on the Elizabeth River heading into Norfolk and it looks like this.

entering Norfolk

We pulled into the Rebel Marina, north Norfolk,  on the recommendation of Mike Herz, and so glad we did. Warmly greeted by David, the owner, and invited to their weekly Monday night pot luck dinner ( theme was ”breakfast”). Very communal atmosphere, nice open kitchen and deck space many live aboards. No sign of warships, but plenty of helicopters in training into the night.

Took off to Cape Charles, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake despite the fact we are trying to meet up with Kate and Mike on the Western Shore. We are still going north, toward them. Cape Charles was booming from the 18880’s until the 1950’s,  railroad came here and loaded freight and people on boats to Norfolk, but highways put an end to that and it now is in ascendence with tourism.

Great beach, nice houses that don’t look our of reach.

Where the rails used to meet the boats, Cape Charles

This flower shop opened last week, owner used to keep her boat in Rockland

Cape Charles public beach, with a nod to Robert Indiana

We are waiting for small craft advisory warning to go away and then we will tack across the bay to find Mike and Kate

Blog Post #4 April 26 to May 5

This one is short and sweet on words since I have used all my brain power thinking about a series of provocative questions my great niece Lauren posed to me. Lauren is a high school junior in Charlotte SC, and she was given an oral history assignment. She decided she was interested in the social protest movement of the 60’s, which lead her to me. My first reaction was, this means I am really old, and my second reaction was, how nice, and what a great opportunity for reflection.  So that’s another story.

While in Georgetown we took a cab to Brookgreen Gardens which is one of the loveliest public gardens I have been to. A New York philanthropist bought the Brookgreen plantation and three other adjoining plantations for a song in the thirties and immediately began building gardens and collecting sculpture and opening it to the public.

My garden sprite

 


                                                  

 

 Joel exchanges contacts and tips with Bernard Baruch, confidante & economic advisor to six presidents. Who also said "there's only one thing wrong with the younger generation, some of us don't belong to it anymore."

The gardens also have a "zoo" of wild and domestic animals, and a butterfly house

Joel "the fishing is always great, its the catching that varies "Davis, in Bull Creek.

Our anchorage in Bull Creek was especially lovely and serene, a great place for a birthday evening, #66!

Sweet Grass basket from Gullah community, birthday present

You can just see Figure Eight Bridge in the back.The kindly bridge operator directed us to this lovely anchorage after we failed to find the entrance to the one we were looking for

Least favorite overnight was Little River, a secure spot, but surrounded by wall to wall condominiums and one highly over rated restaurant. We biked around a very large golf course housing development for some exercise, but were happy to leave early. No pictures.

Southport was lovely. The highlight was a weather talk at the marina by a retired navy meteorologist who gave us the up to to date on weather and on shoaling reports ahead of us. The ICW is pretty treacherous with new shoaling cropping  up all the time. The feds only dredge where there is commercial traffic, and states are responsible for the rest, and state budgets being what they are, not much gets done.

Southport Marina NC

Survived thunderstorms while underway, it wasn’t fun, but we gained confidence in how the boat handles in those conditions, and it wasn’t too bad.

We have spent the last few days in Beaufort NC, bottom end of the Great Banks. Our marina is right in the middle of town, and yet we look across at the Rachel Carson Reserve where we can watch the feral horses grazing. We dinged across a couple of times to explore, great birding. The estuaries feel more like New England now.

We arrived just in time for the Wooden Boat show, which includes a boat building competition, build the boat in three hours, and then row it. This has been one of our favorite stops so far, and the competition has been stiff.

This is the no power tools team

Note Wooden Boat logo on apron. This is for the boat building contest.

You  can just see the row boats racing. Taken from atop our boat, Beaufort NC.

Random wedding picture taken on Snow Goose at Joel's invitation

Feral horse on Rachel Carson Preserve. They keep the population in check by delivering birth control  via darts.

Signing off, best to all
Sarah & Joel