Back to Wearing Shoes

Pictures: Only one gate would open to release us at the lock at Deep Creek in the Dismal Swamp, Virginia, but RISING TIDE got out easily (picture taken by Marilyn Beemer); the floor of The Taproom in Hampton -- a restaurant with lots of beer on draft and great seafood; kids from a fourth grade in Asheville, NC watching classmates on a NASA rocket simulator at the Virginia Air and Space Museum; Erwin Beemer, from SOLITUDE, Ken and a museum volunteer check out a Wright skiff at the Deltaville Maritime Museum; wild dogwood blossoms near the visitor center on the Dismal Swamp Canal.

North Carolina brought with it cold weather and very few traveling cruisers in April. We often would see less than six other boats all day (not counting local fishing boats) and we would be anchoring by ourselves. Maybe the smart boaters are back in the Bahamas and Florida still. There are also many long distance travelers who are opting for finding a marina in the south and leaving their boat there for the summer. There is a big storage yard in Indiantown, Florida and we have also heard that Ft. Pierce, FL and Jacksonville/St. Johns River are popular for less expensive off-season storage.  The boats are usually tied-down to eyebolts in the yard to protect from hurricane winds.

Our last warm day was in Wrightsville Beach, NC where they have a great walking loop that goes from the beach and up and down two sides of a pretty marsh. A week later we were in Hampton, VA after enduring wind, rain and solitude. We wore our long pants, winter hats, lots of sweaters, and socks with our shoes all through the towns of Belhaven, Oriental, and the Dismal Swamp. Two of those days we spent in a small basin in the U.S.Marine’s Camp Lejeune. We watched helicopter take-off and landing training which involved low approach routes directly overhead. We also had a rainy afternoon of Mexican Train dominos, dominated by the sharp play of Ken.

In Hampton we went to two museums: the Historical Museum featuring Revolutionary War and Civil War displays, and the Virginia Air and Space Museum. They are both excellent and we learned a lot. We also had some great hands-on experiences at VASM, including making paper airplanes and launching them into a modified wind tunnel. Little kids could play with a functioning shortened baggage conveyer with briefcase-sized luggage. There were lots of aircraft and the building has a beautiful soaring ceiling shaped like two wings.

There are many good restaurants in Hampton, most on the main street near the public pier. It is called Queen St. and some of the buildings and the street go way back to the founding of the city in 1610. There is a university in the city that is predominately African-American and was founded around 1880.

We are now in Deltaville, just north of Hampton, and are hauled out for routine maintenance like painting the bottom of the boat and the cockpit floor. It has warmed up and we have explored a bit of the nearby creeks in our dinghy and the kayak has gotten some use. The boatyard we are in, Deltaville Boatyard, is just one of about 6 or 7 large boatyards and marinas that we have seen in this small town. It must be the position in the south of Chesapeake Bay and its location as a peninsula with two rivers running past that bring so many boats here. There are boats from Switzerland, Oregon, California, Maine, England and many other places.

Being in the mood for history this week we toured the Deltaville Maritime Museum a few days ago with a couple from Michigan who we had met recently. We could walk to the museum from the boatyard and it featured a small building but lots of yard space for restored small local boats, a reproduction of explorer John Smith’s shallop (which would have been deployed from Smith’s larger boat) and a restored “buy boat” for the oyster trade at a dock on the grounds. The Michigan couple has since left, continuing on their Great Loop trip from their home port on Lake Michigan down several rivers and lakes to Mobile, AL and then around the Gulf of Mexico and Florida, then up to the Hudson River, some of the Great Lakes and back home. Now that is a lot of miles!

We get launched back into the water today, soon to be in New England if the weather cooperates.