May 1st - Annapolis

We carefully leave Queenstown Creek and cross the Chesapeake Bay, heading for Annapolis. We get there with little trouble, but there is no wind and we do not get to sail at all. We go to Port Annapolis Marina, which is on the south side of the Back Creek. It is extremely difficult to get into our slip. We mistakenly go past our slip and the space is only about 10 feet longer than the boat. I need to make a U-turn in 10-knot winds. We make it though. We make arrangements for a rental car to go back to New Jersey to take care of our mail and banking. We get a chance to update this web site for the first time since we have been out. We use a phone in the bath house to call a local AT&T Worldnet number. 

We take our dinghy into Annapolis. We visit a few Public Houses and re-visit Castlebay Pub. When we were here last year, we gave them our yacht club burgee. It was great to see the Liberty Yacht Club flag a-flyin' in there

May 2nd

We get a car from Enterprise and drive the 4 hours up to Jersey City. We get a ton of mail and then go to cash some checks at our bank. We go to Jennifer's parents, who graciously provide us with a great Pepper Steak meal and let us stay over night. In addition, I get to watch the Knicks (who stink by the way) and eat unlimited popcorn and beer. Ahhh! Life is good. 

May 3rd - Selby Bay

We get up at five and boogey on back to Annapolis. It is a tiring drive but it is over! 

While we were returning the car, I spot "Chessie Racing" in the marina next door. It was one of the Whitbread Around-the-World race contenders so I sneak a picture. 

We do some laundry, and then head to South River just further south in the Chesapeake Bay. As we leave Annapolis we spot a race with about 20 36-foot sailboats. Our course carries us almost through the race course and we get a great picture when they turn downwind and raise their spinnakers.

We had some good sailing ourselves, traveling 11 Nautical Miles where we anchor out in Selby Bay.

May 4th - Solomon's Island

We leave Selby Bay and head to Solomon's Island, which is 48 miles further south on the Patuxent River. We sail a lot on the way, even though most of it is very slow with many tacks. We pass Thomas Point Shoal lighthouse, which is the only remaining screw-pile lighthouse still in place on the Chesapeake.

 We anchor in Mill Creek near Solomon's. There is an interesting tugboat from Halifax called Theodore Too that we have been following.

It is very hot, but we somehow find the energy to dinghy into Zhaniser's Marina and run about 30 minutes. With sailing and running we are very already dehydrated, so we had no choice but to go to the Tiki Bar and another bar to finish the job. It looks like our mast headlight that we use for an anchor light is not working, so we plan to visit the top tomorrow.

May 5th

We are very tired with sailing, running, and drinking so we spend a layover day at Solomon's. We have a TopClimber that we have never used. It is very calm and we do not have any plans, so it seems like the perfect time to try it. We do not have a long enough, low-stretch line, so we cannot make it to the top. John goes up as far as he can, which is almost to the top spreader. Jennifer goes up to but only about ten feet.

This only further tires us out, so we just lay about all day. We do find the energy to celebrate Cinco de Mayo in our own way with frozen margaritas. 

May 6th

We are getting ready to leave Solomon's, by first taking the very heavy motor off the dinghy and putting it back into its traveling position on the stern rail when we notice the marine police escorting a dinghy back to the anchorage. Last year when we anchored here, we had the opportunity to be escorted back to our boat by the marine police because we did not have our NJ license numbers on the dinghy. We also didn't have the registration card with us. It appears that our neighbors are having a similar opportunity. Although we had registered the dinghy in NJ, we had been told that all that was needed in terms of identification was the letters TT followed by the boat name. We now have the numbers painted on the dinghy and always carry a bag with the registration, a whistle, and an anchor in it. We also always wear our life jackets. So mariners beware, be sure to follow correct dinghy procedure in Solomon's. 

We make a short 8-mile trip up the Patuxent River to St. Leonard's Creek. The sailing is great with 15-20 knot winds. We sail with a full headsail and reefed main and we blow by just about everybody on the river. We also sail up the creek with just a reefed mainsail. It is beautiful here with lots of trees, dozens of swans, and very little development. We go to a restaurant/marina that advertises in the cruising guide for dinner. It is decorated as if it is a Polynesian island. It has a large, wooden, Fiji head and some palm trees outside. It is jammed with other Polynesian stuff inside, like a dugout canoe, Fiji war swords, Indian masks, and giant sea turtle shells. The place is owned by an elderly woman, who is named Vera. After we eat, we have a drink in the piano bar and Vera brings around a tray of h'or doerves to everyone in the bar. What a place! 

May 7th - Reedville

We sail to Reedville, which is on the mainland of Virginia. We pass right next to a target zone for Navy jets. As we leave a target zone control boat streams out towards us with it's lights flashing. It just goes by us and never calls us on the radio. After we are five miles further south, we here a loud explosion that shakes the whole boat and sounds right next to us. Oddly enough, after the explosion we begin hearing lots of radio calls from the target zone control boats telling local boats to immediately leave the target zone area because they will be testing with live ordinance. 

This is the farthest south we have ever sailed in our boat. Along the way we see an interesting schooner.

After dinner, we take the dinghy to shore looking for a Cyber Café with the hope of updating our web page. We walk and walk and walk. John assumes that he is lost because we cannot find the town. There is one restaurant but it is closed; in fact it only opens 14 hours a week. Not only can we not find the town, but there seem to be no people around. No one is out working or playing in their yard; no lights are on in any of the houses. It's very spooky. When we get back to the boat, we consult the map and find out that we were not lost, that is the town. John was very relieved that his navigating reputation stayed in tact. The Cyber Café must have gone out of business because we were right where it should have been. Who knows when we will be able to update the web site.

May 8th Onancock on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake

As we leave Reedville, I run the boat aground by carelessly cutting to close on a shallow point. Fortunately, the bottom is soft mud and I am able to reverse out with the engine. The entire creek is very shallow but we decide to go to Cockrells Seafood anyway. We buy some crab cakes and a shoft-shell crab that we eat for lunch and some scallops that we have later in the evening for dinner. 

Our sail is almost directly east, across the bay, to Onancock, which is on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The first interesting thing that we notice is that even though the creek is small and we are seven miles up the creek, there are large barges delivering gravel and dirt. Since there are no quarries on the Eastern Shore, this is the only means of getting the raw materials for building and maintaining roads. 

We have visited my father and stepmother in Onancock a number of years ago. That time it was by car of course. Our hope is that we'll be able to get together with them while we are here. There is a town dock that is very reasonably priced ($33) so we decide to stay two days. 

We walk around town and look at the mostly closed stores and restaurants and the beautiful architecture of many of the houses. Like most of these small towns, everybody in a car gives you a small wave. This ain't New York City! 

When we return to our boat, a small flotilla of three charter boats has arrived. They are three Beneteau 381's out of Deltaville, VA. There are about five people aboard each boat. They come from a yacht club in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. We tell them our story of cruising for a year and I think we make them all jealous. 

Later a couple from the Washington DC area come in. They are Bill, who is originally from Rhode Island, or as he likes to say "Row Dieland", and Kate, who originates from Kentucky.

May 9th - Layover in Onancock

In the morning we get a run in with Bill and Kate, which is really nice. We swap sailing stories as we tour the town. After we finish up the run, Jennifer and I drag our butts up to the grocery store, which is about two miles each way. We have our large rolling cart with us so we do major re-provisioning including a case of Diet Coke. 

For lunch we go Danielle's Pizzeria and have our first delicious pizza in a long time. The cook is named Armando and he is a local character. "Everybody knows Armando!" He is from Argentina originally and has been in the US since the early 70's. He tells us of his early days traveling about in a van as a leather craftsman. He fondly remembers sleeping in the van under a bridge in Key Biscayne. He owns the restaurant across the street as well, which has quite a good reputation, but he only opens it when he feels like it, which is just on the weekends now. 

We go to the Kerr House, which is a Federal mansion and a local museum. It is being restored lovingly, room-by-room. Many people have worked to collect appropriate room furnishings. The paint, paneling, molding and decorative plaster are being studied and many have been restored to their original beauty. The shocking part is the recent discovery that many of the rooms were colored in brilliant colors. Also there is a great deal of faux wood paneling and marble adornments. The amazing thing to us though is that the museum's docent is from Basking Ridge and retired from AT&T. Also, the woman in the gift shop is from Long Branch. While touring the basement of the building, we see an archaeological effort to repair hundreds of pottery plates from thousands of discarded and broken pieces. 

When we get back to the boat we get a call from my father and Bobbie. They are able to meet us and we go out to dinner at Bizzotto's. It is a modern cuisine restaurant with a touch of Spain. We have wonderful dinners in one of the few open restaurants. Afterwards Dad and Bobbi take us to a sports bar called LJ's. We have some beers and watch the Sixers beat Toronto in the basketball playoffs. The New Jersey Devils also beat Toronto in the hockey playoffs. 

May 10th - Occohannock Creek on the Eastern Shore

We head about 15 miles further south to the Occohannock Creek still on the Eastern Shore. Notice that with 7 miles on the Onancock Creek and 3 miles up the Occohannock Creek, we end up with a 25 mile, 5 hour day. The entrance to the Occohannock is positively scary. We have to go way south past the entrance and wind in in seemingly all directions. There is a half-mile stretch where it is not clear what the depth is on the chart and it reads 5 feet on our depth sounder the entire way. We make it in without incident to a calm and peaceful anchorage with another beautiful sunset. 

As we travel, there are numerous chores that we need to do to keep the boat running and clean. Jennifer begins what we expect to be an innocuous task that grows into a nightmare. She begins cleaning the power cable. It is 50' long and is covered with black gunk that marks up the decks that Jennifer had cleaned as her previous chore. It ultimately takes three days to complete the task. 

May 11th - School Neck Point on the Severn River in Mobjack Bay

Once again we cross the bay back to the mainland. We sail to Mobjack Bay. It is amazing. It is one of the many side bays of the Chesapeake Bay and yet it is bigger than most bays in NJ. The trip over is great. We have 18-knot winds, which is a little heavy, so reef down the size of our main sail. It is one of our few days where we sail the entire time, 8 and a half hours. It is a beat, which means that we are sailing very close to the wind. This means lots of tacking, lots of pounding into the water, and lots of work for us. We get into the bay and anchor at School Neck Point because it is an easy entry. We feel we deserve a break after winding, shallow waters of Onancock and Occohannock. Again though we anchor in pretty shallow water (7'), which we are slowly getting used to. 

May 12th - Back Creek On York River

Even with a long day of sailing yesterday, we decide to keep moving but only 13 miles further south to the York River. Once again, we anchor in shallow water (6'). There are a million crab pots in the tiny back creek, so it takes us two tries to settle in without being right on top of some waterman's place of business. We dinghy ashore to Back Creek Park with the hope of finding a great place to run. We are disapppointed that after only 1/2 a mile, the park is done and we are running on a busy, narrow road with no shoulder. It is also very hot and we are quickly exhausted. We finish up about 30 minutes of running and return to the boat. 

We go for our first swim of the year. It is cold, even though I am wearing a spring wetsuit. We are in and out of the water in seconds. We get to use our SunShower for the first time, which is a big plastic bag filled with water, with a clear top and a black bottom. It holds about 5 gallons. You lay it in the sun and it gets hot. It was so hot that I found it uncomfortable. It was a refreshing cockpit shower nonetheless. 

As the day winds down a quick afternoon storm kicks up. We close all the hatches, take down our "laundry", and head below. The wind kicks up to 30 knots and our anchor starts dragging! I can tell as I look out the window that we are much further down the creek that we should be. With a bad feeling in our stomachs, we both rush on deck. The instruments say that we are in five feet of water when minutes ago we were in seven feet. Suddenly the depth meter shows 4.8 and we hit bottom at 4.5. We are 4 inches from grounding and we are moving. I start the engine and Jennifer grabs her rain gear. She raises the anchor with the winch as I guide the boat to safer water. There is rain and now thunder and lighting and the wind has peaked. The anchor is fouled with a giant ball of sea grass, which probably caused us to not hold well. There is also a crab trap float tangled up in our anchor, which means that we are probably dragging a trap along the bottom as well. Miraculously, the float comes loose and Jennifer clears the sea grass from the anchor. We get back into deeper water, reset the anchor, let out a lot of chain. And everything turns out OK. It was our first serious challenge during this trip and we seem to pass the test. 

We return below, have a few beers, a delightful dinner, and listen to Garrison Keilor's Prairie Home Companion on the radio. Surprisingly, he is broadcasting from Norfolk, which is just 25 miles south of us. He talks about the sights in Norfoilk and we look forward to our journey to there. 

May 13th- Waterside at Norfolk Virginia

We leave the York River and begin our journey to Norfolk. The wind is really blowing, sometimes hitting 30 knots. Fortunately, we are going down wind. We motor almost the entire day with 4-foot seas behind us that cause quite a bit of rolling. During the day, there is a boat whose motor stalled and they contacted the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard requested that they anchor until they arrive. As they anchor with an open mike, we hear our first expletives on the emergency channel (VHF 16). 

As the day goes on the wind grows less and less and the waters subside. We enter Hampton Roads, which is the water entrance to Hampton, Newport News and Norfolk. We motor right next to dozens of military ships including aircraft carriers and submarines. There is a lot of large boat, commercial traffic. In the picture below, you can see Jennifer "happily" motoring in a narrow channel, alongside of a ship that we could not even fit in one picture. 

We go to a marina right in downtown Norfolk called Waterside. It has floating docks with water, electricity, and real showers. There are malls nearby, as well as Jack Quinn's Irish pub, Harry's Bar-B-Q, and a NY Deli where we watch the Sixers beat the Raptors again. We eat dinner at a food-court that is pretty yucky. The most exciting find is a Kinko's, where we will be able to update our web page.

May 14th - Norfolk Layover

John gets up early and does laundry in the marina bathhouse, which is really in the Waterside mall. Since we are at a dock, we can run. Running is a great way to explore the town and we need to find the supermarket. We run to Ghent and find a great supermarket but it doesn't have any Diet Coke, which is my beverage of choice. We run by several great museums but the one that we most want to go to, the Chrysler Museum is closed on Monday and Tuesday. The USS Wisconsin is also closed on Monday. All of Norfolk is closed on Monday. We do get to see the Taiwanese Pavilion. As you can see, it's very striking.

We run along the Cannonball Trail and read all the historical signposts, at least these are not closed on Monday. The British shelled Norfolk during the Revolution and there is a cannonball in St Paul's Church. The arrow points to the cannonball in the picture above. 

The church cemetery has many pre-Revolutionary graves including this tombstone mounted on the wall. Its inscription reads - "Here Lyes the Body of William Harris who Departed this life 8th day 0f March 1687/8 - Lived 35 years." The skull and crossbones on the bottom is really cool. We also learn that the Merrimack (aka the Virginia) and the Monitor had the historic battle of the Ironclads during the Civil War in Hampton Roads, which is what they call the approach to Norfolk.

There is a large dry dock in Norfolk that can raise even the largest container ships. There is a large military boat in one of the lifts and a tanker in another when we arrive. During the day another container ship is brought in and amazingly turned around by tugs that guide it into a third lift. There is a picture of Finn at the Waterside dock. Notice the tanker in the dry dock in the background.

We still have not replenished our Diet Coke supply. This is becoming a crisis, so we go on a Diet Coke quest. We walk all over the downtown district and finally get a very expensive 12 pack at a "convenience" store. This is not enough, so we get a phone book from the dock master and look for Eckerd Drug Stores and K-Marts. None are close by. We decide to go back to the supermarket to get other supplies. We take Norfolk Electric Transit (NET), which is a free electric bus, as far out as we can. We walk the rest of the way and are fortunate to find reasonably priced Diet Coke in an Exxon station on the way. Whew! That was close. The supermarket is called Harris Teeters and to get all those "big" savings we join yet another supermarket club. This is our third club of the trip. 

Everywhere you go in Norfolk there are fiberglass mermaids decorated by local artists. Many towns have done this sort of thing, New York had cows, Providence had Mr. Potato Head, and Cincinnati had pigs. Each one is unique, but John likes them all. He keeps saying, "I really like that one." As you can see, he really likes this one.

John makes a great Tilapia dinner on the boat. We go to Kinko's right up the block and successfully update our web page, read our mail, and find other stuff on the Internet. Afterwards, we go to Jillian's, an electronic night club very much like Dave and Busters. We play Skeeball, which even God enjoys. They have several video games including a fire fighting simulation. The coolest game is video bowling. There is a ceiling-to-floor screen and a pedestal with a full size bowling ball that you spin to control the bowling ball on the screen. The traditional ten-frame game is played in various scenes. We bowl in a forest where you have to jump streams and avoid tree roots. Another group bowls in San Francisco, where they must avoid cable cars and gain and lose speed on the hills. We have a good time and I get my highest bowling score ever. We cash in our tickets for some comic books, a Frisbee, and other trinkets. 

This is the busiest day we have had on our trip. 

May 15th - Norfolk Layover

Before we leave, we decide to visit the USS Wisconsin at 10 AM. It is a full-sized battleship that is the same class as the USS New Jersey in Camden. The museum is called Nauticus and outside there is the largest anchor we have ever seen. As you can see above, Jennifer thinks that anchoring is the best part of sailing.

The displays in Nauticus are about the marine environment, local naval history and of course the battleship. There are also exhibits by NOAA, who does all of the charts that we use for navigating. The most interesting exhibit was something called the Design Chamber. It is an interaction between the audience, an actor and a movie. The audience hears opposing design needs from the movie and then the actor, as the lead of the design team, asks our opinion on design choices, since we are the design team. We choose length, armament, armoring, etc., by voting on buttons at each seat. When we finish a design, the actor goes before the board. The board is a movie and it criticizes our design. Eventually, we get the design right and, guess what; it is the same as the USS Wisconsin. It reminded us a lot of being at work.

We visit the boat. It is really impressive. It has already been retired, reactivated, retired, reactivated, and retired. There is a picture that shows the view of the boat from the front.

Another photo shows the windlasses that let out or raise the anchors. Jennifer loves the windlass on our boat and these are quite impressive.The next photo shows the big 16" guns on USS Wisconsin. Notice how small the people sitting below are. 

After the museum, we are too exhausted to move on, so we spend another day at Norfolk. We take a ferry across the river to another town called Portsmouth. While there, we check a local marina for facilities and price. We go to dinner at a cool sports bar called Roger Brown's Bar and Grill. Roger Brown is an NFL Hall-of-Famer, who came from Portsmouth. He played for the Detroit Lions. His bar is set up with stadium layer seating and four large-screen TV's. Each booth has individual channel selections and volume control, so we watch the Jersey Devils lose and switch occasionally over to hear NBA news on ESPN. There is also a trivia game, called NTN, where you select answers on a wireless box and compete nationally. 

We take the ferry back to Waterside Marina at Norfolk and call it a night.