Sarah’s Creek, weather day

Had hoped to leave today, but the high winds out of the south and the forecast wave height convince us to wait another day. Ken and Donna are working today. Linda and I worked on the boat until early afternoon and then we went for a dinghy ride up and down Sarah’s Creek. Donna and Ken had us over for dinner with one of their children's friend who has a marine engineering degree and works on various Ocean and Great Lakes ships, very interesting young man.

Vermont Sailors

Sarah’s Creek, Up the mast again

Me and the "little" woman down below on my safety line

This mornings project is to install our new wind gauge to replace the old one that had stopped functioning about a week ago. I have been putting this project off for a couple days, waiting for a nice calm location. The new gauge works just fine. Hopefully, this is my last trip up the mast on this cruise.

















 

Ken next to their boat

Ken and Donna's, Catalina 350 "Reveille"

We all head out to lunch at Bubba’s a local seafood place. After, we go to an interesting, very large antique consignment store. We make one last stop at Lowes and I pick up a number of items for the boat.

 
When we return to the Nitchie’s Linda’s pills have arrived. After we get back to the boat I tackle my last project on our visit adding a “Hydro-fin” to the outboard. This “Fin” mounts under the prop to protect it and to also protect it from damaging anything else. It also helps to keep the dinghy on plane.

Donna and Ken come to our boat for drinks and then after sunset we hop in our dinghy and motor over to York River Yacht Haven for dinner, at their  new restaurant. Linda and I had been to Sarah’s Creek 5 years ago, on our first trip south. The Marina, under the previous owners was not well run and nothing was open. Now there is a lot more activity and a very good restaurant. 

York River Yacht Haven on the far left, our dinner destination.

Sarah’s Creek, Seaford Yacht Club

First thing I do after we wake up is washdown the boat with fresh water and get the decks and canvas un-salted. We then head out to breakfast with Ken and Donna. After we get back Ken and I head to our boats to work on respective boat maintenance issues. Donna works with Linda on the same kitchen design software Donna used to design their new kitchen. She and Linda play around with a couple design ideas for our kitchen in Vermont. That evening we are their guests at the Seaford Yacht Club, where they are fairly new members, for dinner. Linda and I get to meet a lot of fun people, many of them are also their neighbors. We have a very enjoyable evening.

Seaford Yacht Club, dinner meeting

Sarah’s Creek, Hayes, VA

Our destination today is Sarah’s Creek, Hayes, VA to visit with our ex-Vermont friends Ken & Donna Nitchie who moved last year to Hayes, near Yorktown. They sailed their boat to Sarah’s Creek from Vermont. Their neighborhood has a dock for members of their community. Ken & Donna have a slip available for us to use.

Pounding down the Chesapeake

We leave Fishing Bay Yacht Club around 8:30 and head over to Deltaville Marina for fuel and a pumpout. Meet Neil & Carol Titcomb from Branford, CT on the first time south on their sailboat “Interlude”. Their destination is Vero Beach, Fl.

Once we leave Fishing Bay, we have the wind on our nose. Waves and wind continues to build through the day. By afternoon we are pounding pretty hard through short period waves. 


The bow goes down into one wave and then the water on the front deck gets flung into the air going up the next wave before the water can run off the deck. This pretty much covers the whole boat with salt spray. We finally head up the York River, but don’t get a lot of relieve from the waves. Finally we turn up into the very calm and protected Sarah’s Creek. Ken and Donna are there to catch our dock lines.

 

Linda putting out the dock lines

Ken and Donna, our Sarah's Creek welcoming committee

Ken and Donna have us over for dinner and laundry at their home. After dinner they have a meeting to attend to and Linda does laundry and I open packages for various boat items that we had mailed to them. I have a number of projects to work on. The most important one is replacing the wind gauge on the top of our mast. My pills did arrive, Linda’s did not.

Fishing Bay Yacht Club

A short day to Fishing Bay Yacht Club. 

Our first Pelican sighting

 
This is one of our favorite stops. On our first trip we met past FBYC commodore, George Burke and his wife Lyons over on the east shore at Chrisfield, in their Catalina 36. They invited us to stay on the guest docks at FBYC and we have been visiting north and south since. We did not see them on our last visit to FBYC, but this time we find George and his friend Dave trying to diagnose an electrical problem on the new boat a Sabre 42 that they bought a couple years ago. 

 

Dave with George

George and Lyons 42 foot Sabre "Reveille"

Linda and I have an enjoyable visit with George and Dave. FBYC lost power for a couple days after Michael blew through. Power was restored just before we arrive. Linda and I have rather stimulating showers since the water has not heated up yet. Other than that they survived Michael without any damage.

View from the Guest T-Dock

Mill Creek

Much cooler today. With the wind blowing 15-18 mph out of the north we are motorsailing at a pretty good pace. First day we are wearing our foul weather gear for wind, not rain. Quite a contrast from the last week of barefoot sailing and sweating.

Originally planned on a relatively short day to Reedsville. Reedsville is home to a Menhaden fish processing plant. Famous for the smell which can be rather over whelming if you are down wind from it. Reedsville has a few restaurants and a museum, but when we start to smell rotten fish miles away we change our minds and head to one of our favorite protected anchorages, Mill Creek. We hid out there on our first trip south after one of the roughest days sailing ever, for us. Only problem getting there is dodging fish traps, miles off shore. I have to dodge one that I did not notice soon enough in the rough conditions. 

 

Fish traps on a calm day

There are only a couple other boats in Mill Creek, very peaceful. We have hot chocolate with amaretto to warm up. The sun comes out and we are quite comfortable behind our canvas and clear vinyl, protected from the cool breeze in Mill Creek.

Solomons, Michaels arrives

By mid-night we are dancing all over the place heeling with each swing. Linda finds it too noisy to sleep in the front birth. I keep looking outside to check on things. The violent swings loosens the traveler a couple times which I have to tighten. I have left our dodger and Bimini up because it is facing the wind, being able to swing on a mooring. On a dock I would have taken all the canvas off. Finally around 1:00 AM the rain stops and we just have the wind 35-40 mph with gusts over 50 mph, which gradually drops down to 15-20 mph by morning. I finally go to sleep around 4:00 AM. We sleep in to 9:00 AM. After breakfast I put the boat back to cruising configuration and put the dinghy and motor down. Then I tackle the exciting tasks of defrosting the refrigerator and lubing our, getting hard to flush head. We go ashore and head to “Boomerangs” for some excellent dry rub ribs and come back to the “Dry Dock” for coffee and dessert and have a short visit with Dan and Tina. They are heading south with an ICW Rally, a group of boaters that we will try to avoid, but I am sure we will see them in Florida and the Bahamas. Head back to the boat and prepare to head out in the morning.