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. 

Low Country Surprises

Pictures: The view from Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine, walking across back to the city, with Flagler building towers in the distance; Heidi and her third and last brother to visit us, Jon; Ken with BBQ and bloody mary in Charleston at one of the after-parties for a big road race, the Bridge Run; Tiger Lily and her grandma goofing off; the only picture I dared to take at Apollo Beach and one of the easiest nature photos -- a crab; we passed under these trams today in the ICW near Myrtle Beach, carrying golfers back and forth.

We have been out of Florida for ten days, quickly passing through Georgia and slowing down a little for South Carolina. The weather continues to hold in a good pattern, usually in the low 80s and sunny, although we have had two scorcher days that got up to 89 degrees in the boat and neither day had much of a breeze. The fishing could have been better – we put a big push on to catch SOMETHING before our bait went bad and the result was one lonely catfish and one feisty crab! I think we’ve given up on catching and will concentrate on ordering fish when we dine out or when we find a fish market.

Ironically we are in the most fished area on the east coast, it would seem. We have seen surfcasters, shallow water trollers, boats propelled by poles in the flats, canoe and kayak fisherpeople, large charter boat fishing crews, people fishing from wharves,  and every other type in between. Right now as we travel north we are not seeing many other cruisers but the fishing boats are everywhere.

Before we left Florida we were visited in Fernandina Beach (the last town in Florida) by Heidi’s brother Jon and his wife Debbie. They were on their way to Orlando for a vacation.  Then we got to see another person from home, a young man who is in medical school in Charleston, SC. Tom Ross is half-way through his 4 year program there and joined us for an evening as we caught up on our family and his family news. We spent the past few days in the company of another boat, RACHEL, whose crew right now is Julie, Mark and granddaughter Tiger Lily. It was fun to have an eight-year-old around. RACHEL is a Tayana like the one we used to have, and we met her first three years ago coming back from the Bahamas.

Our first surprise was actually back in Florida. We visited Apollo Beach, part of the Canaveral National Seashore. It is in a remote spot but was near our anchorage.  Its remoteness must account for the fact that once you walk on the beach 30 yards past the parking lot none of the bathers were wearing any clothes! Nor were they dressed in the other direction; we tried.

The next special event took place in the evening, in Tom’s Point Creek, just before Charleston. We were the only boat anchored there, and there were only two houses we could see, both quite a way from our place in the creek. Another isolated spot. We were trying to avoid the large number of no-see-ums that had invaded our cabin and were sitting in the dark cockpit listening to the night sounds. The baying of hounds started a way off, then got closer and then Ken spotted flashlights that gradually moved up toward where we were anchored. We never saw any people or dogs but exactly even with our boat the lights stopped moving and were now shining up in the trees and the barking increased. We were watching a coon hunt. It did end with the coon being shot, so I guess it was successful for the dogs’ owners but a little disappointing from our prospective. Then all the noise died down and the show was over.

Yesterday we stopped at Thoroughfare Creek about 25 miles south of Myrtle Beach, SC thanks to a tip from RACHEL. They were also stopping there and said if we got there first to anchor by the dunes! We have not seen any river bank dunes on this part of the trip; almost everywhere in Georgia and South Carolina our constant companions have been mud banks, oyster-shell banks, marshes or tall pines. Although this creek is about 20 miles from the nearest inlet out to the ocean and 5 miles as the crow flies, the dunes were big and led to a fresh water pond after a run down the backside. You could see dunes in all directions, partly covered with vegetation. We swan in fresh water, a treat, and found out the island – Sandy Island – is the only undeveloped island left in South Carolina. It has been inhabited by generations of slaves’ descendants (left there after Emancipation caused plantations to close), there is no bridge connecting it to the mainland, and it is one of the “Gullah” communities of the Lowcountry.  Down here Gullah means there has been a separate culture and language maintained throughout the years due to the isolation of the community. We did not meet any of the residents but after we were back from swimming and exploring we watched a single black man walking around on the dune and then sitting in the sand for a while looking out toward our boats and the other bank of the creek.

That’s about it except for mentioning all the wildlife in this stretch. Eagles, stingrays, freshwater turtles, wood storks, ospreys nesting, and porpoises. We are still going barefoot a lot of the time.  And we are looking forward to the North Carolina stretch of the ICW starting tomorrow.