RISING TIDE’S Summer Trips, 2013

Before leaving for Martha's Vineyard, Ken brought the "girls" (from left to right, Tammy, Jamie, Eri) of our family to Brown's Island in Marblehead.

Gay Head cliffs in Martha's Vineyard (notice the red sand in the water)

Nina (with the water), Harry, Tom, Sally, Jean, Ken waiting for the bus on the Vineyard

My favorite picture, in Aquinnah looking down from a steep hill, to the shoreline and the crystal clear water about 100 yards from us

Tyler and Joel with ice creams and purchases getting ready to board the ferry for the mainland

I made stuffed quahogs from the ones Tyler gathered in Cape Poque

Our Hull boating friends (Harry, Sally, Jean and Tom) got us motivated to head out to Martha’s Vineyard in July. They are on the boats BREWSTER and EDGECOMB, and got a head-start on us. The pictures they were sending were of the great numbers of fish they were catching in Vineyard Sound! Ken wasn’t about to let a little rough weather divert him from our goal, to anchor in Lake Tashmoo outside of Vineyard Haven. After one night in Onset on the way, we ducked into Hadley’s Harbor for lunch when the weather blew up. Ken is usually very happy to stay in Hadley’s for multiple days, but after lunch he determined that the wind had lessened and we were off for Tashmoo, only about another 90 minutes when the current in Wood’s Hole and Vineyard Sound is cooperating.

The Hull boaters were still using up their fish bounty so shared it with us that night. The next day we all headed for the farmer’s market and Blueberry Festival on the island. We sat in the shade and each had a bowl of blueberry cobbler. I should comment that the weather in the Vineyard, and everywhere in the Northeast, had been, and continued to be, sweltering hot. It didn’t matter if we were on an island or on a boat. Most people coped by standing in the water, covered up to waist-deep or more, and sheltering with a broad-brimmed hat or by finding good shade and a breeze. But it still was HOT! It turned out that the buses that run all over the Vineyard are another somewhat cooler way to go. They are not air-conditioned, but with the windows open and the bus moving, the fresh air was welcome. We took buses around the island the day of the Blueberry Festival and almost every day after that.

Other activities we got involved in were hiking in Felix Neck Sanctuary (the women) and more fishing (the men). I made chowder from the last of the fish caught earlier in the week and distributed a container of it to each boat. We walked to Vineyard Haven and dinghied to the beach at the opening from the Lake to Vineyard Sound. After the Hull boaters moved on, we contacted Bill and Marilyn Adams, friends from Cohasset, and had dinner with them at their Edgartown house. Later in the week we had a chance to see Bill and Marilyn again at a boathouse/guest house with dock that they watch for their friends. It was one of the coolest afternoons of the week, sitting near the water, in the shade, talking (although in the sun it was still in the mid-90s).

Our nephew Tyler Wilson, who just graduated from a university in Washington State, was in the area after completing a month-long solo bike trip from Toronto to Durham, NH. Our niece in Durham drove him down to Massachusetts and he connected up with my brother Joel and the two of them came out to the Vineyard on an early ferry one day. By this time we had moved our boat to Lagoon Pond, on the other side of Vineyard Haven, and we met the ferry and had breakfast at the Black Dog Bakery. Our plans for the day included a boat trip to Cape Pogue, outside of Edgartown, some shopping in Vineyard Haven, and dinner for all of us at the Offshore Ale brewery in Oaks Bluff. Pretty much a perfect Vineyard day! Joel and Tyler departed on a ferry at about 8 pm, and Tyler was on a plane back home to Oregon two days later.

After 10 days on Martha’s Vineyard we left to start heading home. We stopped in Pocasset, and anchored off of Bassett Island and our friends Barry and Susan from Mattapoisett joined us in their boat. We had one additional night in Pocasset and had dinner at the Chart Room. On our last night we jogged (in our boat) over to Marion and my brother Jon and his wife Debbie drove over, picked up pizza from the Wave and we all ate in RISING TIDE’s cockpit. Jon and I went to Rochester for “game night” with our mom that night. The heat and humidity finally abated as we headed back to Cohasset.

Houseboat in an otherwise vacant end of Perry's Creek on Vinalhaven Island

Rainbow over Goat Island Light at Cape Porpoise (the rainbow seemed to go right into the water in front of our boat) 

RISING TIDE at anchor in Perry's Creek

We played with the self-timer on our camera until we got a picture that was aimed right and had us both smiling!

We met this person on Islesboro, and he was gathering wild berries and flowers to sell to local restaurants. Lincolnville is in the background.

At Crocker Park in Marblehead, I noticed that Ken and Justin had complementary t-shirts.

About 10 days later, with awesome weather predicted, we left for Maine, with a stop first in Marblehead. We always like to take a walk in Marblehead, then while dinghing back we found Ken’s brother Pete and sister-in-law Barb on a Nordic Tug they were visiting in the harbor. We joined the group for a boat tour and cocktail hour.

We bought groceries the next morning in Old Town before we left, as Crosby’s Market is close to the dock. We did a full day of motoring and got to Cape Porpoise (part of Kennebunkport) after 8 hours. The next day we stopped in Portland for an appointment to see a Zodiac rep (our dinghy has a warranty issue) and then continued on to our friends’ mooring area in Falmouth. We had a nice boat-meal with them on RISING TIDE. That night the temps sunk to the 50s. We scrambled to find some more blankets!

The next day we were surprised to find our friends Lynda and Frank on their boat when we pulled into Tenant’s Harbor. They had time for an hour of catching up and we agreed to see them later in the trip. Our next destination was a planned meet-up with Ken’s high school friend Scott who is traveling by boat with Linda on their first cruise to Maine.  We spent two nights in Perry’s Creek, part of Vinalhaven Island. I always dig some mussels while in Maine, and Perry’s Creek has tons of them. But since Scott and Linda are not mussel-eaters, we had a pot-luck dinner of veggies, grilled pork, and a rice dish. Our second day in Perry’s Creek was wet, our first rain of either of our boat trips this summer. It wasn’t too bad so I took a hike on the Fox Rocks Trail and picked some berries (huckleberries?). That night we had our steamed mussels, and the last of our fried green tomatoes from home. Another Marblehead highschool friend is in the Creek, Barry, on a classic Crocker-designed wooden cutter.

We had one more wet day so spent it traveling to Rockland and getting ready for a fun day at the Boats, Homes and Harbors Show there. Show day was dry and beautiful, and we enjoyed the exhibits. We got to talk for quite a while with Phil Bennett (a co-worker of mine when I worked at Hood Sailmakers in the late 70s) and his wife Dorothy. Phil was on the Hinckley boat at the show. Then later that day we got picked up by more Marblehead highschool friends, Judie and Andy, and taken to their house in Lincolnville for dinner.

Their daughter Emily was there and their two dogs, one a new growing puppy. Andy sent us home with some beer from his brewery, of course.

We followed up Rockland with a few days on anchor at Islesboro Island and a side trip to Belfast. There were opportunities for walking and bike-riding on Islesboro, and we also spent lots of time bird-watching and watching the comings and goings of cruising boats and ferries. In Belfast we shopped at the Coop there and met up with Andy, Judie and Emily again for a dinner out.

When it was time to start heading home we made sure to pass by Eastern Egg Rock in Muscongus Bay and we were rewarded by seeing a dozen puffins, not on the Rock but swimming in the water. On this trip we have seen puffins twice, both times near the Rock, and this is the first year we have ever found them, after visiting this re-settlement area for probably 15 years. We also stopped in Damariscotta, about 13 miles from our coastal route, up the Damariscotta River. There’s a nice village here, lots of thriving shops, and it was a good meeting place for us to have dinner out with Lynda and Frank (who we had only gotten a quick visit with earlier in this trip).

To finish up our cruise, we called my niece Cathy who lives in S. Portland and she was able to meet up with us, along with Brandon and toddler Henry for dinner on our boat in Cape Porpoise. It was a beautiful day, one of the best, and we all had a good time. There were just two more stops, in Gloucester (we hadn’t been ashore here for years so had fun revisiting some favorite spots while we took a long walk) and Marblehead, and then we were back at our home mooring in Cohasset.

Recharging our Batteries with Some Boats and Beaches

Pictures: Dinner Key in Coconut Grove, in front of the marina and anchorages; banyan-lined avenue to the Hobe Sound Beach; decorations at Sawgrass Mills Mall near Weston; one of the gardens at Vizcaya in Coconut Grove; view from boardwalk in Murrell's inlet; Jacksonville waterfront on the St. John's River; Ken relaxing on our private patio in South Daytona Beach where we spent one night (beach on the other side of the blue umbrellas); walking our bikes over the ICW in Hobe Sound; one of the sharks caught during the Blacktip Challenge on Hobe Sound Beach

Our drive down the eastern seaboard in mid-January successfully got us away from cold weather and blizzards. It brought us to several delightful stays where we could go on long beach walks, explore marinas, and meet up with some cruising friends from earlier travels.  

We broke up our trip by stopping first at Surfside Beach, South Carolina. We spent a week there and did get the edge of a northern cold front for the middle of the week, but the beginning and end were warm. We entertained ourselves by going to a vineyard and taking the tour with the owner (in the off-season you get individual attention), walked several times along the “marsh walk” in Murrell’s Inlet where you can watch waterbirds, workboats coming and going, and find a good pub or two, and also we walked the beach at Surfside, only a 15 minute bicycle ride from our resort. At the end of the week, on our way down to Georgia, we stopped in Charleston and met up with Cohasset friends Susan and Jamie Ross. We coincidently were all in the city on the same day so went out to lunch with them and with their son (and his girlfriend) who lives there.

In Brunswick, Georgia we looked up Peggy and Jack, friends we first met in the Bahamas. It is fun to follow them, as they are now on their third (or fourth?) adventure since selling their sailboat, each time with a different power boat. On this visit they now have a Mainship 34 like ours, and are staying in a nice marina for a few months, but who knows what we will find next time we see them!

In Florida we finally got to a brewpub (River City Brewing) we’ve had on our radar for a while, in Jacksonville. It had been off the direct route of the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) quite a way when we went by in our boat several times. We got there for lunch on a beautiful early afternoon and really enjoyed the upscale feel, good food and brews and good prices.

Our next stop was in Hobe Sound, a town near Jupiter that we are familiar with since the ICW goes through there. We had a studio apartment in a private home for five days, arranged through “AirBnB”.  This area was easy to walk through, had a great bike ride along a banyan-lined road to the beach, and the beach was always full of fishermen, beachcombers, and curious visitors like us. We met a group of young men who were taking part in a blacktip shark “challenge” which involved catching, measuring, tagging and releasing the sharks, with the biggest catch of the weekend getting a prize. They gave us a good show on two consecutive days catching large sharks from the beach. Guess this isn’t such a great place for swimming!

We had a great time visiting with Susan and Barry Perkins who have a winter place nearby on Hutchinson Island. And we also spent time with Chris and Kevin Buckley in Rio, near Jensen Beach. Kevin took us for a sail on APRES SKI, their Hunter 34. We had two home-cooked meals with these four friends, who are all cruisers we know from our earlier boat trips south.

Our last week was spent in Weston, west of Ft. Lauderdale. It is a timeshare-trade resort with a large pool and nice accommodations. We had another perfect weather week, and mostly hung out at the pool, reading and sunning. We took part in Aquafit classes and used the hot tub several times. If it sounds like typical senior citizen activities, it is! But very relaxing! We also had two days trips, one to Dinner Key at Coconut Grove where we had spent a few weeks on our boat last winter, the other to Dania Beach (south of Ft. Lauderdale) and Harbortown Marina, also boat stops from last year.  In Coconut Grove we took the tour of Vizcaya, a very large estate with beautiful grounds and an interesting 1915-era mansion.

Our time was up on February 10, and we had spent our vacation budget, so we started back for Massachusetts, although the news was not good on the homefront. A blizzard hit Duxbury and all of the area on February 8-9, and our son Justin reported that our power was out and our road not yet plowed.  We continued to get reports on our drive north, and since there was no improvement by February 12 we stopped in Connecticut, in Groton, for one more night rather than continue the last 110 miles to home. This area had a lot of snow too, but the Groton Inn was a great place to stay, with it’s own restaurant and large rooms. We had our Valentine’s dinner here and when we got to our house the next day things had pretty much returned to normal (thanks, Justin, for all the shoveling you did!).

LOTS OF DAYS ON THE WATER, SUMMER 2012

Pictures: This is Duxbury at low tide on the day we stopped there on the way to the Cape-- one reason we still keep our boat in Cohasset!; Tom, Heidi, Sally, Jean, Ken and Harry after our "fishing tournament" in Vineyard Sound; several of us had musical instruments -- Heidi (banjo), Jean (mountain dulcimer), Harry (guitar), Tom (guitar); Nina can delicately step into the kayak for a trip to shore or a ride around the harbor with Sally; our grand-nephew Henry and his mom Cathy in Maine; one of the fairy houses near Perry's Creek -- look closely at all the details; Heidi is looking for the least sandy mussels, also in Perry's Creek; Harry and Ken on the Cliff Island north-facing beach with Brewster and Rising Tide behind them on a very blue day!

When the hot weather hit early and often, we packed up and left Duxbury on RISING TIDE for two weeks in the Cape and Islands area, then two weeks in Maine (we had a break in-between).  Our boat is low maintenance, doesn’t need much prep work to get going, and doesn’t even need particularly good weather. All it asks for is a full tank of diesel. We have been fueling up on Wednesdays when a tanker truck comes to the harbormaster’s dock in Cohasset. This service is primarily for the lobster boats, but we can get in line when they are done.

On July 6 we left to transit the Cape Cod Canal. It’s pretty close to us on the South Shore. You just want to time your passage for when the current is with you. We had taken a quick boat trip north, to Hull and then Marblehead for the 4^th of July. We have already seen fireworks several times this week, and before the week is over we will have had about 6 nights of fireworks! Our first destination south of the Canal is Marion; we always stop here at least once on a trip to the Cape. As we passed the Converse Point property formerly owned by my Aunt, and before that my Grandparents, we see with binoculars that a big pile of excavated sand has replaced the family cottage. Sad.

For the rest of the first week we will join with two boats from Hull, EDGECOMB and BREWSTER. Most of the time we spend anchored in Lake Tashmoo on Martha’s Vineyard. From here you can walk to Vineyard Haven and also to one of the roads west of town and from there it’s only a bus ride to other parts of the Island. Days pass pleasantly with Tom, Jean, Harry and Sally as we go fishing, exploring (at the Vineyard Playhouse Ampitheater-in-the-Woods they are rehearsing a Shakespeare play and some kind of Gregorian chant reaches you as you hike through the area), and visiting (we finally have a long morning’s chat with Ed and Cathy on FREYJA after seeing them briefly once in the Bahamas and then another time, again briefly, on Cuttyhunk). The highlight of the week is the fish banquet after our do-or-die fishing “tournament” aboard BREWSTER. We got lucky and caught about 10 keeper fish. Ken and Harry cleaned them and at dinner that night we all got to try the four different types of fish caught.

After leaving our fishing friends, we anchored outside of Edgartown for a night, and met up with John Campbell, his friend Mike and his brother David for dinner (plus we saw Bill and Marilyn Adams after dinner). Then we headed for Osterville on the Cape. We used to spend some time here almost every summer at the annual Cat Boat Assoc. Rendezvous, but this is probably the first time we’ve been back in 20 years. The next day we went into Waquoit Bay, which we had avoided when we had a sailboat. We enjoyed watching the professional quahoggers, checking out the State Park here (access only by boat), discovering a bocci game being played on the beach.  For our last day on the Cape we anchored in Pocasset, just south of the Canal, and had dinner at the Chart Room with our son Justin (he rode down by motorcycle to join us) and with Tom and Jean who have ended up here as well.

Our Maine trip started on August 3 with a side trip to Provincetown for the Hull Yacht Club Cruise and Lobster Lunch. We were invited by the same Tom, Jean, Harry and Sally that were our traveling companions in July. The lunch on the beach was great; we ordered two lobsters apiece and pigged out, plus there were lots of side dishes brought by the attendees (about 30 boats). We discovered that you can walk from Long Pt., where we were anchored, along the beach, then a mile-long dike, and then through the West End to P-Town center in less than an hour.  Or it’s about a mile by dinghy.

After two nights in P-Town we left in company with BREWSTER for the Isles of Shoals, at the N.H./Maine border. We passed through Stellwagon Bank which is known for its great fishing and for sighting whales. We saw one large fin whale and a few smaller whales, plus we stopped to examine a large, bloated leatherback turtle (4 or 5 feet long) floating dead about 8 miles south of Isles of Shoals.

We had a variety pack of weather while in Maine—lots of sun, some afternoon thundershowers for about 6 days in a row, some morning fog (not always clearing by noon) for about 4 days. Some of our stops were: Cliff Island in Casco Bay, Witch Island near South Bristol, Tenant’s Harbor, Rockland, Perry’s Creek on Vinalhaven Island, Belfast and Camden. Sally and Harry have a well-behaved Chesapeake Retriever named Nina.  Because Nina gets to go ashore quite often, we were encouraged to go ashore and walk more than usual. Our best walk was a trail up to Fox Rocks off of Perry Creek. Even though we had drizzle and fog that day it was a lot of fun, and we got to see several fairy houses along the trail, evidently inspired by local fairies (and made by local residents and visitors).

We had a chance to gather mussels at a few of our stops and had shared dinners the nights that we cooked them. We found we had missed the blueberry season or the animals and birds had gotten to them first, but we could buy wild blueberries in the local stores. We also made a point to get lobsters to cook on board as the price this summer is very low. It has something to do with a glut of lobsters and with processing plants in Canada not taking the overflow from Maine this year.

We met Maine friends for dinner: the Cassidys from Union we saw in Rockland, the Hazens from Lincolnville we got together with in Camden. We were first-time visitors to Belfast and wanted to catch the brewery/restaurant at Marshall Wharf but we arrived on their day off. However Belfast is a great town with lots to see and do within a short walk of the docks, including a large food co-op with bakery/café. We rented a float for both our boats from First Street Shipyard and enjoyed the amenities of showers and laundry there.

Sally, Harry and Nina left for home two days before we did, to attend a weekend wedding. On our way back home we stopped at Port Clyde, got fuel, and shopped at the General Store, an authentic on-the-pier local gathering place. We had two more nights in small harbors, then stopped in South Portland to get our niece Cathy, her husband Brandon, and baby Henry onboard for lunch and an afternoon cruise around Great Diamond Island and some others nearby.  That night we anchored off of Cousin’s Island near Falmouth and the next morning we visited with our friends the MacLeods at their dock at Prince’s Point—they brought breakfast!

Our last two nights and days were spent back in the Isles of Shoals and then at our mooring in Marblehead, passing through the Annisquam Canal on Cape Ann on our way to Marblehead. We saw the last of our seals and harbor porpoises on the way to Isles of Shoals, and started to see Northern gannets north of Cape Ann (you only see these large birds at sea, not on land, and only when they are migrating, to and from Canada). 

We got back to Cohasset early on August 20. RISING TIDE behaved very well on these trips and except for Ken having to change a water pump impellor in Maine, did not require much attention. We had used our kayak quite often on both trips but not our bicycles, so in Cohasset we got them out and took a long ride around town and out to Forest Ave. by our old house. We had missed Nina and our daily walks on these past few days. No new boat trips are in our future; we are traveling in September by plane, out to the west coast for two weddings and some tourist destinations in the Seattle area, Corvallis (Oregon) and San Francisco. We will pass on taking the long Intracoastal Waterway route to Florida in the winter and will probably drive down for a few weeks. Ken has signed RISING TIDE up for a haul-out in Duxbury, probably in late October.

Back to Normal?

 

Pictures: 

You can see this carousel from the water when you go down the East River, New York City; another NYC surprise is a tram that you can see if you look carefully at bridge in this picture, about half-way along, the Roosevelt Island Tram; Bonnie and a friend at the Milford Yacht Club; a schooner charter out for a sunset sail in Newport (when they tacked they passed us within 15 ft. of our cockpit!); the beautiful deep waters off of Castle Inn, leaving Newport; Heidi and Ken safely home and having Mother's Day lunch at Pete's house in Braintree.

Normal for us on our cruise was conserving water, cooking fuel, and electricity. We have a 43 gallon water tank and three spare containers of water, about 16 gallons more. Our cooking fuel is alcohol and has to be hauled aboard along with everything else, so we are careful with not choosing food that has to be cooked too long. We use quite a few battery-operated lights and a radio that cranks, in addition to our boat’s wired-in lighting and radio/CD player.  Our solar panels work extremely well to charge our boat battery, but of course not when it’s raining so we have to have back-ups. The boat battery and hot water heater both get charged when we are running our engine but then when we don’t go anywhere we can run both down.

Getting home we are adjusting to the land-based normal. No more hauling the anchor each morning before getting under way. No more closely checking the weather for three days out and planning our itinerary accordingly. Our Skipper Bob guide to anchoring sites can go away for a while, after helping us find some great places to spend the night and sending us in the right direction ashore to find groceries and hardware stores. We are back to the big-screen TV, the thermostat to control our house heat, mail getting delivered to our door, cars to take us to run errands. It all seems very weird!

RISING TIDE brought us safely back to Duxbury last Monday, May 7, though the Cape Cod Canal against the current, but we found it pretty easy going by staying near to the edge where the current was less. We had four days of traveling after leaving northern New Jersey. We pushed it the last day because rain was predicted to come in for several days, and it did! Those last four days were perfectly beautiful, and the wind was not a factor, so we had “smooth sailing”. We went from NJ through New York City, a wonderful route on the East River, with hardly any other boat traffic, to City Island, NY. The next day we stopped in Milford, CT. After that we had a long day to Newport, RI, but were glad to get there as it’s a protected harbor with more going on than most at this time of year. And from there to Duxbury.

At the City Island anchorage we were reunited with friends Kitty and Scot on TAMURE. We hadn’t seen them since last fall when we left Atlantic Highlands, NJ to go south slowly on the ICW and they left to sail outside in long hops to Charleston, SC. They eventually continued on to the Bahamas and returned to Atlantic Highlands on May 4 on the morning after we got to Atlantic Highlands. They had the same plan for that day as us, to transit the East River in mid-afternoon to catch the favorable current in the dangerous part, Hell Gate. We enjoyed getting together with them that night for several hours, comparing notes about the winter travels and about plans for the future. Their next stop, the next day, was home in Rowayton, CT.

Our stop in Milford, CT was scheduled as a chance to show the former owner, Bonnie, what improvements we have made to RISING TIDE. We got guest dockage at Bonnie’s yacht club, and also got to attend a Cinco de Mayo party there with her and her friends. Since we have stayed in touch and tried to connect with Bonnie in Florida (our schedules conflicted) it was great to make it work this time.

Our very last day of our cruise was last Friday, May 11 when we moved RISING TIDE to Cohasset, which is a 12 mile car ride but a 25 mile boat trip due to the long trip out of Duxbury and Plymouth Harbors. It’s difficult to sum up the seven months we spent cruising and exploring the East Coast, Florida Keys, and part of the Florida Gulf Coast; but we are definitely glad for the opportunity and we now have memories of innumerable towns and cities in this area along with lots of wildlife and many great people that we met.

PS Check out the website, below, for a young British man who is rowing from Miami to New York right now! It is a fund-raiser for Alzheimer's Disease. We didn't meet him as he was a few weeks behind us, but he has been making great progress on his trip.
http://www.iamfinechallenge.org/wp/

Chesapeake Bay and New Jersey Shore

Pictures: Kids at an "old-fashioned"authentic soda fountain in Rock Hall, MD; a mallard pair in Annapolis; we were headed to the red-roofed building, part of a maritime museum, in Solomon's Island, MD (we had to go around!); returning to our dinghy after a grocery-shopping walk in Manansquan, NJ; sunset view from our anchorage near Atlantic City (the boat on the right is a cruiser from Maine)

Usually having to see a dentist is not the highlight of your day. But in Deltaville, VA, just before we were to head north, Heidi had an issue with a orthodontic retainer and needed it re-cemented.  Very luckily a dentist was located nearby who could do this, even though it was his day off. He and his wife live on a plantation looking out over the Rappahanock River and he only works in Deltaville for one day normally, with 3 other days in Richmond. Dr. Suyes cheerfully completed the repair in a “cottage” office on his property and then he and his wife sat and talked with me for another half hour. This in a town that probably doesn’t have more than a thousand residents, on a Friday afternoon, and with transportation based on bicycles. We all found we had a lot in common and enjoyed hearing about each other’s travels.  

Since leaving Deltaville we have been putting some miles in. The weather has been mostly chilly and grey, and we’ve had our share of rain, although it has come mostly at night. We know we are a little too early in the season to fully enjoy the Chesapeake and NJ shore, but we are hoping to get home by mid May.

The route we have taken, staying inside of the bays, following canals, and behind the Jersey beach towns has put us in touch with many of the birds that are mating and nesting at this time of year. It has been interesting to watch nests being built by osprey, an excess of male mallards being shunned by female mallards that have already paired, and egrets showing off their beautiful mating feathers. We also have seen an abundance of butterflies, most likely red admirals.

There are few other cruisers. Some of the other boaters we stay in touch with are still in Florida or the Bahamas. We did get in the middle of crew practice for a high school near Atlantic City. There were about a dozen rowing shells with about 8 coaches in their own boats buzzing around one 5 mile stretch. The rowers had to stop to avoid us and we had to zig zag to avoid them. Also in this stretch were 4 bridges that we had to get opened as they were too low for us to go under.

We spent an extra day in Solomon’s Island, Maryland and two extra days in Annapolis. Both places have museums, good restaurants, and good resources for boaters. We met another cruising sailboat in Annapolis, from Texas, that is completing the Great Loop, heading next up the Hudson and to the Great Lakes.  The other towns we visited for a short time were Rock Hall, MD,  Delaware City, DE, and Manasquan NJ (a lot like Scituate, MA).

We expect to transit through New York City’s East River later today, after we fuel up in Atlantic Highlands N,J and wait to catch the favorable current through the tricky area called Hell’s Gate just after Manhattan. If all goes well the next blog post will be from Duxbury or Cohasset, MA!

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.