Ben and Jeannette's 49th Wedding Anniversary in Broad Creek, Deltaville, now headed back down the Chesapeake

When we got up Friday morning, the Chesapeake was a totally different creature.  Where before she was pounding us with waves and wind, now she was calm with light winds.  Ben and Jeannette had spent the night with friends in the Norfolk area and were now driving up to check on their sailboat - a 30ft S2 named Mathilde.  After a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pastries, we headed around Stingray Point and into Broad Creek.  This is a VERY nice area with close to a dozen marinas all packed close together.  Ben met us at the dock at Walden Marina, where we got a transient slip for $30 for the night (that is insanely cheap, by the way).

There, Ben introduced us to his friend, Phil, who acted as chauffeur, giving us rides to see Mathilde and some great lunch at Cocomos.  They hid it well, but this was a special day for Ben and Jeannette - their 49th wedding anniversary!!!  After getting back to our boat, Ed and I went back to Mathilde by dinghy and did some work on the electronics and top-side cleaning as a present for them both.  I'm not sure how much good I did (I've never been a particularly good cleaner), but she definitely looked better! In the mean-time, Ed got their electrical system working, especially the battery charger and the AIR CONDITIONER!  Yes, their boat has a nice little set up with an AC unit sitting in the companion way hatch!  We are going to have to set up something like that on Second Wind, no doubt.

Official service company endorsement : Our Raymarine autopilot has been fussy, and after taking it apart, Ed discovered that the belt was old, brittle, and about to completely fall apart.  We looked on-line at several places, but wanted to check locally first.  I'm glad we did!  We used Ben's rental car to go over to Marine Electronics of Hartfield and met Kevin Fay there.  He had the belt waiting for us and then gave us a ton of valuable advice on getting the most out of the device, including care of the mechanical parts, as well as recalibrating the software.  Truly outstanding service and I will be contacting him in the future about the rest of the Raymarine system on-board Second Wind!  Thank you very much, Kevin!!!!

After fixing a leak in the floor of the dinghy, pumping out the holding tank, and topping off the water tanks, we are headed back down the Chesapeake.  We are thinking our destination is back to Willoughby Bay for the night, with the intention of entering the Dismal Swamp portion of the ICW shortly thereafter, maybe Monday morning.  We aren't entirely sure yet.  While we are anchored in Norfolk, I understand I have some family in the area that I haven't seen in a very long time, so we are going to see about contacting them.

Next update should be from the Norfolk area!

Didn't quite make it to Deltaville...

Well, that was a rough passage.  Steep, choppy waves and 20+ mph winds made for a taxing sail.  We decided to pull into Godfrey Bay, just south of Deltaville and ride out this nasty southeastern wind and waves.

The high points?  We were surrounded by a huge pod of dolphins, right next to the boat again.  I could almost reach over and touch them as the swam along beside us.  And after we anchored, we had a nice spaghetti dinner and now we are ready to crash for bed!

A nice time in Willoughby Bay, and heading up to Deltaville next

What kind of friend spends his afternoon driving you around Norfolk, helping you buy stuff for the journey, then at the grocery store buys you 6 big ribeye steaks, then COOKS them for you on the grill?  That would be the Jason Rusk-type of friend!  What a great blessing you are, my brother!

 We had a great meal, and wonderful fellowship.  We'll miss you, Rusk family, but we'll find a way to see you again soon!!!  Remember - Disney World = Not far from Dean & Rebecca's house!

A couple pictures at Willoughby Bay:

A wonderful spot, especially if you enjoy the sights and sounds of freedom!!!

Our time in Willoughby Bay is complete, now we are heading up the Chesapeake to Deltaville.  Ben and Jeannette have rented a car to go visit some friends from when they lived in this area.  They will be meeting us up in Deltaville, where their boat is parked.

We are anchored in Willoughby Bay, Norfolk, Virginia

We arrived here about 9:30am this morning and are very much enjoying the continuous military show.  All around us, we've got aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, all flavors of helicopters and airplanes, and even a rescue boat.  To a military history nut, this is just heaven!

The ride down here was easy last night, and we arrived in front of the Chesapeake Bay entrance at about 5:30am.  Going up the Bay, however, the wind turned onto our nose and the wind picked up substantially.  The Chesapeake has short, sharp waves that can be uncomfortable and these were no exceptions.  Fortunately, we didn't have far to go to our selected anchorage, though we did have to wait for the Aegis cruiser, USS Normandy, to pass by.  The fact that we have right-of-way as a sailboat didn't seem to carry much weight, hahahaha...  :)  In all seriousness, we slowed down and didn't go anywhere near the channel when the warship was passing through.

Here is the course we took:

The wind was directly off our stern most of the way and very weak, so we motored pretty much the whole way.  The seas were almost completely flat once again, which made for a fast passage.

The reason we chose this particular anchorage is that we'll get to spend some time with our dear friend, Jason Rusk, who is stationed somewhere around here.  We've already made contact with him - he doesn't have duty tomorrow, so we'll get to see him then!

Rebecca got some surprise birthday presents this morning, though Reece told her all about them yesterday afternoon!  Jeannette made a special breakfast, just for her, then they had fresh tuna steaks for a late afternoon dinner.  The steaks were a treat from some guys fileting fish at the Sunset Marina in Ocean City.  Later this evening, Rebecca, Reece and I took the dinghy over to the shore for some ice cream.  Not a bad birthday, I hope!

Kinda tired tonight, so we are shutting down soon.  More updates tomorrow!

Blog comments...

I was wondering why nobody was commenting on the blog posts.  It seems that the comments aren't working quite correctly.  We are changing some settings to see if I can get this working.  Please use this post to test comments.

Dolphins!

The highlight of the trip so far was the first day of our off-shore trip.  We saw some dolphins and a few came close for a view, but nothing prepared us for what we saw in the video Rebecca recorded!

We have arrived in Ocean City, Maryland

When we left Stonington Harbor on Friday morning, our destination was Block Island.  As we cleared the breakwater, however, we decided to skip Block and make directly for Cape May, New Jersey.  Going to Block would have probably trapped us there for a couple days, since we had a pretty small weather window.  We had plenty of fuel and favorable sea conditions, so we made the decision to go for it.  The sun was bright and the seas were eerily calm, and we made great time to the tip of Montauk at the end of Long Island, NY.  In fact, it was so good, we changed our minds and chose to make directly for Norfolk!  As the miles and hours passed, we began to settle into a rhythm.  Here are a few pictures from that first day:

Jeannette and Ed, letting Otto do the work

I put this here against my will.  Good grief, not my favorite picture

Reece goofing around

Jeannette chillin'

Ben enjoying the ride

Crew of Second Wind

Absolutely gorgeous day

Full sail

The highlight of the whole trip happened pretty late in the afternoon, but I'll have to show the video in a separate post (the upload to YouTube is taking a while).

Late the next day, we began to get concerned about the timing, both of our destination arrival and the weather.  At our current speed, we would be getting into the entrance of the Chesapeake early in the morning (good), but possibly low on fuel (bad).  If we chose to go into Cape May, we'd being entering in the middle of the night - not a good choice at all (an unfamiliar port at night can be risky).  Looking at the charts, we decided to head for Ocean City, Maryland, which is a good bit south of Cape May and good progress toward Norfolk.  Looking at our cruising guides, there are several good marinas and Ocean City is easy to get into.  Here is our course:

As it turns out, it was an excellent choice.  We are docked at Sunset Marina, where we've refueled, pumped out the head, refilled the water tanks, and washed off the boat.  Now we are resting, recuperating, and planning our next leg of the journey.

Some random thoughts and events from the trip:

• Night sailing is just awesome!  The sound of the wind and the water and the boom of the sails - it is fantastic.
• Navigating at night is nerve-wracking - lights disappear, bounce around, seem to come closer, then fade away.  Ed was looking at a ship and misread the lights and gave himself a good scare.  He figured it out pretty quick, but he was shaken for a few minutes. 
• Steering in the open ocean is very different than our usual sailing - there are no landmarks and you rely completely on your equipment, mainly the steering compass.  It takes a while to get used to this.
• There were many, many hours where there was literally *nothing* on the horizon - we were completely alone in the ocean.  A very unnerving feeling.
• We mostly avoided seasickness, though Reece surprised us with a couple sudden "I have a headache in my mouth"..../hurl moments.  Yuck.  The rest of us took some mild remedies, mostly precautionary.
• Sleeping when underway is quite different than at anchor - since the boat is heeling, the normal berths don't quite work right.  In our aft cabin, Rebecca and Reece ended up squished together on top of me, which was a problem because I had to keep getting up to help adjust sails or take the wheel for my watch.  Ben and Jeannette were supposed to be in the forward cabin, but they were frequently getting bounced to the ceiling when pounding through waves.  It all worked out, but we were quite tired when we reached port.
• Motor-sailing is great - we traveled 327 miles in 40.8 hours while consuming only 22.7 gallons of diesel!  Our overall average burn rate was 0.41 gallons per hour - very, very good.  Excluding the sail time, we averaged 0.66 gallons per hour at 2600 rpm and 0.56 gallons per hour at 1900 rpm.  Given the right conditions, we really could cross oceans!
• Eating during a multi-day passage is usually limited to snack food and sandwiches, but a hot pizza after two days a sea was a great treat!  We all agreed it was just what we needed after

Okay, I'd better wrap this post up here and let the others contribute their thoughts!