All Dressed up and Nowhere to Go!

Finally!!  All that repair and replacement work is done.  Tess arrives back to the boat from Chicago.  Tanks are topped off.  We are ready to go.  Yes, thanks for asking, the trip to watch Jake “graduate boot camp” or as the navy calls it “Pass In Review” was great.  

Pass In Review

He looks so strong and ready for his adult life.  Hurricane Karen is slowing his departure for Pensacola, and like a new sailor he is chomping at the bit to get a move on to his next challenge.  Good luck, Sailor.  Thanks for letting me be part of the celebration!

Our Man in the Navy

Sunday, October 6.  Basic chores and prep work.  Tomorrow we start heading South again.  Or, as Tess would say, a day to catch our breath, have a little time with Katie and Kyle, and see what the weather report says ….

Monday, October 7.  What happened to the weather?  A week of benign weather has turned into a week of rain.  We are Marina-bound.  Stuck as a Front moves through.  Dinner and pinochle with Katie & Kyle is our only bright spot in the day.  Joe, our WW2 vet and resident marine expert on many things said to me (Tess) “what’s the worry, you’re cruisers…if you don’t get there today, you’ll get there tomorrow.  Looks like it should be okay by Friday”.  Oh, Joe, you silly man…..

Tuesday, October 8.  We’re off the dock at 0649 before the 0708 Sunrise and hoping to make Solomons Island before Sunset.  We do.  Anchored in Mill Creek by 1610.  But a cool to cold day with large following seas and big wind from behind all day.  Motorsailing with the Staysail in order to maintain the rhumb line.  But, Mill Creek is a calm and quiet and pretty spot.  

Sunset on Mill Creek, Solomons Island

The Captain glosses over the day a bit…the weather is crummy, but so much worse for those headed north.  We watch their bows heave up and out of the waves, then thrust deep into the trough.  Our ride was tolerable, but I envision Joe  sitting at the dock, patiently waiting out the weather… We saw our first pelican pair of this trip.  Tony’s favorite bird as a signal of tropical climate and sea-faring mates for life.  Despite the periodic sideways skate down a wave, we smile.  We are lucky.

Wednesday, October 9.  We know that friends in Port Washington, NY and in Rock Hall, MD are tied down by weather.  But we are now mid-Chesapeake and in a different part of this continuing Low Front.  Off anchor at 0753 into big wind on the Bay, but a comfortable downwind ride.  Seven plus knots as we decide to skip the Potomac and head to Reedville on the Great Wicomico.  More of the Front is expected by 1400, but we think we can beat it into the river.  We don’t.  The last two hours are spent in 30 plus knots gusting to 39.  Five foot waves and rain, rain, rain.  Visibility.  None.  As long as we head South, its manageable.  As we turn West into the river,…YIKES!  A real bashing as we crawl into the river and then directly North into the storm in order to reach Reedville.  Can’t see a thing.  Lots of water on deck.  Desperate; if not so close to done for the day.  We anchor across from the Menhaden Processing Plant in pounding rain.  Six or eight huge factory ships docked at the plant.  The distinctive Reedville smell is present for a mere nanosecond, confirming we are “there”.  To our relief, the plant is not cooking fish.  We can breathe.  And we can just sit here and get pushed around by the wind.  Lest you be getting mighty jealous of our trip thus far, know that we crawled into bed at about 6:00 pm (maybe earlier) to escape the cold & damp, and to just rest.  Although Tony was up probably hourly checking the anchor (especially as I ALWAYS think the boat is moving…I seem unable to distinguish a swing on the anchor from ‘moving’….tomato, tomahto), we slept otherwise quite comfortably for 13 or more hours!

Thursday, October 10.  Not going out in this stuff.  The weather has gotten worse.  A long, damp and boring day at anchor in Reedville.  But, re-read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor” about a Columbian naval sailor’s ten days adrift in the Caribbean.  Well written and gripping.  Written in 1955 when Garcia Marquez was a journalist in Bogotá.  Well before his Nobel prize days.  And then started (I told you it was long and boring day) Jack London’s “The Sea Wolf” (1904).  London was a real sailor and it shows.  Starting with a fog-bound San Francisco Bay ferry collision by page three and then aboard a seal hunting schooner bound for Japan by page six.  And London’s Captain Wolf Larsen is a pre-Ayn Rand materialist of the highest order.  Better spoken than John Galt.  Better written than Rand.  Let’s keep this book out of the hands of the Free Staters.  Though it might convince them all to head out to sea.  Waterworld, anyone?  For me, it was another 20 hours of Pillars of the Earth on audible, with Stugeron by my side and cooking the more Prep Intensive meals…tacos and ??? where’d my memory go????

Friday, October 11.  Great holding for two nights in the mud of Reedville.  But, two nights is more than we (he) can stand.  The weather looks better today than it will Saturday or Sunday.  A chance to make a break for it.  We do.  Anchor up at 0926 into what we now consider calm conditions.  We sail.  We motor.  We motorsail.  We skip Gwynn Island on the Rappahannock since rain and drizzle is like sunshine to us now.  Into Mobjack Bay and up the East River to Put In Creek.  

Entering the East River, Mobjack Bay on what is now considered a Sunny day.

A quiet, well protected anchorage about three miles from Mobjack Bay and six from the Chesapeake proper.  Worth the extra effort, because….

Saturday, October 12, 2013.  No point in moving today.  Next stop is the hustle and bustle of Norfolk.  Might as well lay back and enjoy the sunless sky and intermittent rain from here.  Managed to fix the errant B&G Wind Speed indicator this morning.  Should have read the book first and saved 60 minutes of what became a 90 minute job.  Or listened to Charlie’s advice and merely replaced the one connector needing replacement.  A 10 minute job.  But at least we now know that we have a consistent 9 to 12 knots, gusting to 19.  Apple pie in the oven.  It’s not all bad. 

Smells great, too!

Truthfully, in between all this, Tony was “in the office” daily, even in the cockpit as we rolled down the Bay toward Solomon’s writing documents for a client. The weather is confusing…not really cold, certainly not warm…damp through and through.  The front will eventually find its way out, and we will hopefully be walking in the sunshine through the fall foliage in Asheville this time next week!