A glorious sailing day (here, sailing past Point No-Point Lighthouse), had us arriving in the St Mary's River in time for some rainy days
We had a couple days of really heavy rain after we got there. It was so gloomy that our solar array could only put out about half as much power as we used during the day. This is normally when our lazy wind turbine has a chance to contribute, but alas, we had no wind either.
Thus, I was very pleased when the third morning dawned bright and clear, allowing our panels to pump out maximum wattage. We wiped the rain off the kayak, pumped it up, and then spent a few hours giving it the side-eye to see if it was going to do something we didn't like.
After four hours or so, the chambers were all holding pressure and the seams looked like they were holding. With a shrug, we looked at each other and thought, "What's the worst thing that can happen?" Then we put the kayak in the water and headed up the St. Mary's River, determined to get as far as we could.
This is when having a kayak is great. It paddles faster than the dinghy, we can both face forwards, and we only need the water beneath us to be four inches deep. As we paddled miles upstream, the banks closed in on each other until we were gliding up a cool, shady tunnel of green. After ducking under several fallen trees, we finally encountered one we couldn't get past. We were just a few hundred meters from the town of Great Mills.
This mix of plane/helicopter (a Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey) was a regular sighting from the boat. But we spent much of our good weather time paddling up the St Mary's River
We were keen to get out and take a walk to have a look, but the banks were either heavily overgrown or clearly someone's back yard. Eventually, we had to give up the idea of landing and turned around to head for home. We made a point of staying on the opposite bank from our upstream leg so that, at the end, we have circumnavigated Tippity Wichity AGAIN. I think that makes number five.
After lifting the kayak aboard, I noticed a bulge in a third location of one of the compartments, where it looked like another seam was about to fail. It seems we must have reached the expiration date of whatever glue they used to build it.
Looking for a change of scenery, we moved the next day to Horseshoe Bend, where we could get access to shore via the St. Mary's University docks.
St. Mary's was the original capital of the Maryland Colony in the 1600s, before it was later moved to Annapolis. Now the site is divided between the Historic City and the University.
Historic City is a bit misleading. After the capital was moved, the area was subsequently used as farmland. There is no current settlement, so what remains is a large archeological site, plus a few replica buildings for the present living museum. They also have a recently completed replica of The Dove, one of the two boats sent from England to begin the settlement.
After paying our entry fee, we entered the site and found it very thinly populated. We did see other visitors here and there, but we were all definitely outnumbered by staff in period costume. Everywhere we went, Maryanne and I had a private tour/lesson in each particular feature of the museum. We got a private tour of he Dove. We got a private printing demonstration. We got a private tour of the tobacco plantation and all of its associated buildings. The head docent even drove us around the site a bit to show us some out of the way things on the basis that he needed to test out a repair on his cantankerous golf cart. As we were walking toward the University at closing time, he picked us up again to save us some distance. As we drove by some of the re-enactors, they waved and yelled, "Hey, Kyle and Maryanne!"
Like I said. It was pretty empty.
Exploring the Historic City of St Mary's, and the university grounds
We were getting a bit peckish by then. Going on a tip from the Sailing School Manager, we walked through the campus to the student canteen. Again, we had that strange feeling of being in a movie where the other people disappear, but all of the stuff is left behind - the lights still work, the sprinklers keep coming on to water the grass.
The campus looks like it was built to accommodate at least a few thousand students, but in all of our wandering around, I doubt if we saw more than twenty-five. Maryanne guessed that maybe, particularly after Covid, the students were all studying remotely or doing off-campus projects. Maybe, but it was definitely a weekday and school was definitely well back in session, yet the alumni seemed to be outnumbered by the gardening staff. St. Mary's University boasts about having the highest teacher/student ratio of any university in the U.S. I would have assumed that meant they had more than three professors.
The most activity we saw all day was when we went back to the dinghy for the row to Begonia. At the sailing club, about half a dozen members who had just pulled their boats out of the water were hanging around afterwards to have a little swim and do some dockside cavorting. That nightlife ended when it was still light out.
Before the daylight crowds returned the next morning, we hoisted the anchor and started the seven hour motor to Mill Creek. Some of the forecasts said we might have enough wind to sail for part of the day. Those forecasts turned out to be wrong. We never had enough wind to fill the sails, much less use them to push us anywhere. Subsequent days would have required more hours of tacking upwind than daylight, or motoring more slowly because of the extra drag from headwinds. Since I didn't feel like waiting around another week for the next bout of tailwinds, I decided to treat the day as practice for the Intracoastal Waterway, where motoring all day is the norm.
Chesapeake Bay has more Mill Creeks than you can shake a stick at. It has been said that one could cruise around in Chesapeake Bay and anchor in a different Mill Creek each night. In this case, we were talking about "our" Mill Creek, near Ingram Bay at the mouth of the Great Wicomico River.
To be honest, I'm not sure why we are so attached to this particular Mill Creek. There are lots and lots pretty, tranquil, secluded places in Chesapeake Bay that are probably just as nice.
On our very first pass through the bay, twenty-two years ago, we arrived after dark, with only a handheld paper chart to guide us. Unable to correlate the few lighted navigation marks with what we were seeing on our chart, we elected to anchor in the shallows outside the entrance instead. It wasn't until our vacation cruise the following year that we finally made it inside. It was so peaceful and photogenic that it became one of the places we HAD to stop every time we went by.
We even spent our first night there when we delivered Footprint home from the factory. We arrived at midnight in thick fog during the new moon, then found our usual spot using the radar. We did the whole thing without the engine, even backing down on the anchor under sail.
Now, in the days of crowd-sourced cruising apps that link to the maps on your phone, I noticed that almost all of the comments about the area make some mention or other of the great winery they visited while they were there. I was embarrassed to admit that despite all of the time we had spent here, I had never known about it. Our plan was to rectify that mistake now.
Jacey Vineyards actually has seven docks on a small, hidden side-cove within the creek. Most of them look like they belong to private homes, but two of them have small signs, complete with a map with directions to the tasting room.
We arrived there to find two other small groups. Both seemed to be regulars, as they each addressed the staff by first name and seemed to be at home wandering behind the bar or into the kitchen. One of the guys at the next table came over and introduced himself as Bob Jacey, the owner. We noticed his friends were alternately referring to him as either "Bob" or "Doc". It turns out he is an eye surgeon as well.
Over our tasting, Dr. Bob explained that he had just bought the property the last time we were here. It then took another three years for the vines to start producing. That made me feel a lot better for not having known about it before.
Anyway, the wines are coming along nicely. Bob admits that the Virginia climate is somewhat challenging compared to, say, California, but most of their selections were pretty tasty. Plus, the staff could not have been nicer.
When we were finished with our afternoon there, we were preparing to walk back to our dinghy, when Dr. Bob insisted on driving us around the property for a full tour. He then made a point of telling us that if we ever wanted to come ashore and stretch our legs, we were more than welcome, even when they are closed.
Slashing afternoon thunderstorms kept us closer to Begonia the next day, but we did enjoy pottering around in one of our favorite spots.
A nice afternoon spent at Jacey Vinyard/Windery, in Mill Creek
Our next anchorage was only eight miles away, in the Eastern Arm of the Corrotoman River. To get there, we had to sail forty miles, going down the bay and then up the Rappahannock River into the Corrotoman.
An early start to the Rappahannock River (and under another bridge)
We didn't do any adventuring during our time at anchor off the Rappahannock in the Corrotoman River
Along the way, we got to do a bit of everything. We started close-hauled with reefed sails and finished by ghosting along with the spinnaker. We set anchor near an interesting house that had a Viking longship in a lift on their dock and a giant, telescoping HAM radio antenna poking through the trees.
There wasn't much in the way of public shore access around. When I had originally planned the stop, I figured we could make do for daily exercise with a lot of kayaking. With our kayak in its current state, combined with the general drizzly gloominess of the weather, we ended up nixing that idea on the basis that a long swim home seemed like less of a realistic option than it would be on a hot, sunny day with plenty of traffic. This effectively made the Corrotoman an unnecessary stop. Sure, it is pretty, but lots of places in the Chesapeake are pretty, and we wouldn't have had to go twenty miles out of our way to get to them.
Then I remembered that sailing to places for the enjoyment of doing so, and then looking at them once there, is the type of thing some people do for recreation. Perhaps I need to just calm down a little…
Eager for some big city excitement, we retraced our steps back down the Rappahannock to Jackson Creek, near Deltaville, Virginia. We didn't actually follow our track exactly, as the winds that blew us up the river were still coming from the same direction. This gave us a chance to tack from one shore to the other to get a better look at the stuff on both banks. We also got to do a little fancy maneuvering to get under the bridge.
Deltaville is a sleepy little town surrounded by a lot of marinas. This is due to its many inlets that each have close access to the Rappahannock on one side and Chesapeake Bay on the other. When we first bought Begonia, we spent a hot, miserable summer there doing her first refit. Deltaville doesn't feel exactly like home, but we do feel like we have more than our usual level of familiarity with the place, so there was a bit of a homecoming feel when we pulled in.
We stayed aboard the first day for two reasons: First was that the outer edge of Hurricane Helene (now a Tropical Storm) was going to be coming through, and the weather was not going to be great. Second was that we wanted to be aboard in case we started dragging or swinging too close to our neighbors in the crowded anchorage.
The storm arrived later in the afternoon than the forecast, which make us kick ourselves for not going ashore in the mild weather beforehand. When the wind did finally start building, conditions deteriorated quickly enough that we ended up being glad we weren't trying to row ashore or hoist the dinghy in it.
We only saw gusts into the high twenties (knots). We had a slight chop coming from the open bay, as the sandbar at the entrance didn't block the waves completely.
As the center of the storm passed, slightly to the south of us, the wind began to back. Jackson Creek is oriented approximately northwest to southeast, with anchored boats strung fore and aft in that direction. As the wind moved behind the land to our port, the trees and buildings on that side blocked it somewhat and we started to swing to starboard. This was a bit unnerving as we were now aligned perpendicular to the inlet, with only a couple boat lengths between our stern and the docks of the homes on that side. It was the consideration of this distance that put the upper limit on how much chain we deployed when we set the anchor.
Then the rain arrived and quickly built to such a torrent that we could not see ahead clearly through the sheet of water running down our wraparound cabin windows. At least we were getting a much needed rinse.
It got dark, and as the wind continued to shift, Begonia took a little trip to the other, southeastern end of her swinging circle. That left us pulling in the opposite direction from when we had set it. The boat that had been ahead of us then was now close behind, presumably because we had put out as much chain as we dared and had thus covered more ground going from one extreme of our circle to the other. For a while, we were worried that we were dragging, being so much closer to the other boat. Standing in the cockpit and ducking under the rain blowing over the cabin, I was able to see that we were aligned with the extended line of the big dock at the adjacent marina and were not moving.
As the wind continued to make its way around the compass, we ended up with the marina right behind us, before eventually swinging back to our original orientation. The rain increased one last time and then stopped. The wind did the same as it aligned with the bay. I took a walk around the deck to have a look around.
Everything looked pretty much the same as when we had arrived, except that it was dark. There was a big ketch about four boat lengths ahead and a Dutch-flagged sloop about five boat lengths behind. With the wind now blowing at about five knots, we turned our instruments off and sat down to dinner and a movie. Drama over.
As is my habit, just before going to bed, took a mental inventory of the status of Begonia's systems and then I popped outside to have one last look at our orientation and those of the others in the anchorage.
The first thing I saw was that the ketch was now northwest of us, to our stern. My first thought was that we had somehow dragged (forward?). The Dutch boat, however, was in the same relative position. It wasn't us that was dragging. It was the ketch.
While Maryanne and I had been inside with our eyes facing to port, the ketch had surely dragged past, right behind our heads and within arm's length of our starboard rail. It was now heading directly for the Dutch boat.
Oh, dear. Our dinghy was stowed in the davits and our electric outboard was stowed inside, underneath our defunct kayak. That way we could make a quick getaway if things started going badly for us. There was no way we would be able to deploy it in time, and even if we did, we wouldn't be able to attach a line and row the ketch away with it.
The Dutch boat had their dinghy in the water and it had a gasoline outboard. Our next best plan was to stay in the cockpit, in the event the ketch's dragging anchor snags ours and pulls it free, and try to get the Dutch boat's attention.
We were probably too far away for our horn to be of any use, so I directed our best spotlight at their portholes, trying to be as persistent, random and annoying as possible, so they would know it wasn't just passing headlights from a car on the adjacent road.
After a couple of minutes, Vincent popped his head out. Whew! I directed the beam away from his eyes and to the ketch just ahead of him so that he could see what was happening.
He sprung into action, jumping into his dinghy, and then using it as a tug to push the ketch away from his boat. The winds had picked up again. Between fighting the wind, the weight of the ketch and whatever was going on with its anchor, he wasn't having much success.
Since Vincent was now within shouting distance. Maryanne called over, suggesting he pick me up so I can help. Within a few seconds, he and I were tied up to the ketch and were both scrambling aboard. I flipped switches and mashed buttons in the cockpit, while Vincent went below and did the same inside. Eventually, the engine started. Neither one of us was quite sure how. There were two levers for me to play with. The throttle was easy to figure out, but the other one didn't seem to do anything. We went into the cabin and got the engine cover off, where we could see that none of our actions seemed to connecting the prop shaft with the engine.
The good news was that the dragging seemed to have stopped, at least temporarily, buying us some time. Vincent got the radio working, which made it a lot easier for the three boats to communicate. Kim, Vincent's partner, actually knew the Ketch's owner. She dialed him. Maryanne called the marina's emergency after-hours number. Eventually, Kim got through. She then called us to say the owner was on the way, would Vincent go collect him at the marina? Vincent asked me if I could stay behind, just in case. He said he was going to run back to his boat on the way to get a shirt because he was freezing. It wasn't until then that I noticed he had been doing all of this while wearing only his underwear.
While he was gone, I had another look at the engine compartment to see of there was some lever I could throw on the transmission itself, like we have on Begonia, but I couldn't find anything. All I could do was listen to the engine and prepare to help fend if it comes to that.
It didn't. Vincent, the owner and another man arrived. When I explained to the owner that I hadn't been able to get it into gear, he responded by saying, "Ah, I bet you were trying to do this." He shoved the gear lever forward. "What you need to do is this." Then he pulled it back and put some weight on it. I had tried the last one , but without the weight in the hopes that I might be able to at least back the ketch out of the way sideways.
With the propeller now turning in forward, The owner sent his friend forward to retrieve the anchor, while I gave steering directions and Vincent relayed through the noise between us. With little way on and strong winds, the boat seemed a little difficult to control. There were a few tense moments when all three of us were yelling, "Right! Right! RIGHT!!" To keep him from plowing into the catamaran ahead. Maryanne shined her light on Begonia's stern to try to emphasize the proximity. She was just about to put up an arm to fend the ketch's bow away when the owner gave it some welly and steered us away. The anchor was now up.
Hey, Maryanne! We were a bit too far away for a high five.
After finding a new spot that the rest of us agreed was sufficiently far from either Begonia or the Dutch boat, the ketch's owner dropped anchor and then, satisfied that it was holding, said we were all good to leave. He seemed pretty unconcerned about the whole incident. He thanked us for our impromptu, underwear-clad, dark-and-stormy night rescue of his boat as if we had just held the door open for him at the Quickie Mart. Based on the condition of his ketch, which seems to be in a pretty advanced state of neglect and disrepair, I can kind of understand his lack of worry about it, but he almost hit Maryanne's and my home, which contains everything we own - twice. If the tables were turned, I can't imagine we wouldn't be a lot more apologetic. Perhaps he was still in shock.
Of course, we all would have helped, even if he ended up being hostile about us trespassing on his boat to do so, but it does feel a little hollow being waved off after such an effort.
As Vincent was returning us to our respective pick-up spots, the ketch owner's friend remarked that, right at the end of the storm, just before the ketch started dragging, he had seen a tornado form "over that catamaran" from shore. I didn't look straight up at the time, but I'm sure the funnel cloud was just in line with us from his perspective. Regardless, when it did touch down as a tornado, it was over a mile away in the open bay.
In the bright daylight of the next day, when we were all dressed in different clothes, I recognized the ketch's owner at the dinghy dock and pointed him out to Maryanne. She introduced herself as the woman on Begonia the night before. She got a, "Thanks. Have a nice day", and then he headed for his boat. Hmm…
Anyway, one of the things I had been looking forward to in Deltaville was some nice pizza. When we did our initial refit, there was a pizza place called Stan Strings there that was amazing! They have since been, ahem, shut down by the government. As we were coming down the coast, even as far away as Nova Scotia, we have been meeting other cruisers who have been to Deltaville. None of them knew about Stan Strings, but all insisted the Deltaville pizza vacuum has since been filled by another, way above average place. I have been looking forward to finding out myself for hundreds of miles.
The new place is called DeltaPie. I don't know if the owners have any affiliation with Stan Strings, but its pizzas are very good and they have lots of cool microbrews as well to help wash them down. I'd say it was worth making the stop.
We had a day of boring chores, and then Maryanne persuaded the marina to lend us a couple of bikes so we could see the old (relocated) Stingray Point Lighthouse and the Deltaville Maritime Museum.
This last one ended up being a real gem. It's on beautiful grounds and has a few interesting artifacts. The best part, though was the small boat building shed. There, we encountered a guy, whose name I must admit I have forgotten. He took us through the whole process of building a Chesapeake Bay Deadrise. Then he gave us an earful, telling us all about the Deltaville peninsula's history, further expanding into world history all of the way back to the Jamestown, Virginia Settlement. Then he went off on a whole bunch of other subjects, tying them all back to where we were today. As he continued his stories, he gave us a private tour of the museum's Buy Boat, whose floor is made of ten-inch logs, threading its history into the mix. When we finally parted, we both practically wanted to hug the guy goodbye. We had learned more history, and enjoyed it to boot, in one afternoon than in years at school. We guessed that he must be a retired teacher. Nope, he said. His day job is nursing.
Well, Deltaville ended up being a pretty interesting stop.
We enjoyed our exploring ashore at Deltaville
Tippity Wichity Anchorage >> On google maps
St Mary's Collage Anchorage >> On google maps
Ingram Bay, Mill Creek Anchorage >> On google maps
Corrotoman River (off the Rappanhannock River) Anchorage >> On google maps
Jackson Creek, Deltaville Anchorage >> On google maps
