Raven at Yorktown.

 

We had a windy and sometimes stormy trip from New Bern to Yorktown. The trip took awhile, because several times we had to hunker down and wait for the weather to pass. The best plan turned out to be get up early, travel until about 2 pm, and then put down the hook and wait for the afternoon thunderstorm. Unlike Texas, the thunderstorms here actually cool off the weather, so I like ‘em.

Leaving Norfolk, once we cleared the ship channels (multiple, full of really, really big ships) we managed a four hour sail before the wind dropped to the single digits. Our first attempt to anchor in a creek off the Poquoson River was kind of exciting, as the chart showed plenty of water and there wasn’t. Surprise! The clue was the sticks helpful people had stuck in the mud to warn folks that their charts were off… On Raven there was a flurry of reverse and churn and hard to port, and then we popped out again into the current. Try number two was on the Poquoson River itself, further out in the channel than we wanted, but good enough. We got rocked a bit by enthusiastic boaters coming down the main channel of the Poquoson, but then the thunderstorm showed up, drenched everyone, and the traffic died right down.

Another good day sail brought us around the point and up the York River to our current stop, a marina on the north side of the river, right across from Yorktown. Having been buffeted by the weather for two weeks, we were happy to stop, especially enjoying a local cold front that sent the temperatures down to the low 80s, with a crisp blue sky overhead. Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

A long day trip to New Bern in a rental to get our car let us have easy transportation, and we have spent our time visiting the nearby historical sights. 

Entrance to the museum at Jamestown.

Full of living history exhibits, the museums at Yorktown and Jamestown have taught us a bit about how people lived in the 1600s (Jamestown) and the 1700s (Yorktown). I’m very happy I live now. My belief is that people who are nostalgic for the olden days didn’t live in them. One particularly scary exhibit was the army doctor’s field hospital in the Revolutionary War camp. Wow. The treatments, cures, and instruments were the stuff of nightmares. You should have seen what he used to do a root canal. Without anesthetic of any kind. Then there were the stories of the women who came to Jamestown in the 1600s, dealing with disease, starvation, privation, and laws so strict that one woman was beaten so severely she miscarried. This for misusing thread. Not kidding.

Inside the re-created church at Jam, complete with very hard pews.

Ships at Jamestown. That bowsprit in the center of the picture is about 20 feet long.

Drum and fife corps at Yorktown. Drums were used to signal the soldiers in the field, relaying orders.

Yorktown

Army camp "living history" at the American Revolutionary War Museum in Yorktown. Tents slept six soldiers; one each day had the responsibility to cook for the tent.

KP, Revolutionary War style. The design of this camp kitchen was original to the Romans. If it ain't broke...

What's for dinner, circa 1783. That would be beans, hard tack, salted meat.

Working farm at Yorktown.

The terms for the surrender of the British forces at Yorktown were decided in this house, the Moore House, a grand old mansion overlooking the river.

This past Fourth of July weekend brought the expected crowds to what has to be Ground Zero for the Revolutionary War. I thought the fireworks were tepid, framed as they were by roiling storm clouds and sheet lightening. The overall effect was ominous and quite appropriate for this time in our history. (IMO, it’s my blog).

So...we’re kind of paused. As we were warned, it’s hot here in the summer! Not sure what we will do next. Some days, making iced tea is all we’re up for. Stay tuned.

Sunrise is still the best time of day!

Belhaven and waiting for weather

June 5, 2019

Raven is lopping in the harbor at Belhaven, NC as gusty winds and sloppy waves knock her about. It’s our second day here, stuck in harbor because we get cranky motoring into standing waves.

Days 2 and 3 of this trip were spent napping at anchor in South River. It’s so beautiful there, with just a few houses and a gravel quarry of sorts to one side of the river and endless trees on the other. After our first exciting 24 hours on this trip and the wild ride down the Neuse, we were content to watch thunderstorms rumble by on the big river and nap in the breeze funneling down the front hatchway.

A few houses on one side of South River.

On the other side...nothing (but one ghost town and a nice old spooky cemetery and lots and lots of bugs).

Restless by day 4, we upped anchor and headed north, across the Neuse. Winds of 12 and 13 knots invited us to raise the sails and enjoy the morning, which we did, but then the winds honked up to 18-20 and blew from the wrong direction and it got to be work, so we decided to motor. The wind howled right down our nose and we bucked our way across the river into three-foot standing waves that caused Raven to rear like a horse, slam down with a thud and stop, about once every five minutes. Not a calming ride, it was like dragging ourselves hand over hand at 2 knots for four hours until we were finally able to change direction and everything smoothed out. After a calm anchorage at Eastham Creek, we motored along the ICW and slid into the harbor here at Belhaven early afternoon yesterday, just in time for the wind to crank up and knock us around. NOAA forecast more of the same (20-25 knots) for the next couple of days, so we have decided to stay put.

We weren't the only ones who stopped into the harbor.

The reefing lines that David so laboriously installed in Pensacola have been nothing but a nuisance, dangling over the deck and over the bimini and trying to strangle us. Out on the river, as David was bringing in the jib, the darned thing tangled itself around the jib sheet in an actual knot. So one of his first chores was to take out two of the three reefing lines and stow them away in a locker. Some improvements aren’t.

In the morning quiet, David assembled the dinghy and we puttered into the town dock. We have plenty of supplies, but the fresh vegetables were getting pretty low and neither of us likes canned, so we went in search of a grocery. The only one here is over a mile from the dock, so we opted for the charming public library and some free wi-fi instead. They had “friends of the library” books for sale, so I had a nice browse and found several that looked good.

Beautiful downtown Belhaven. Could use some investment if you want to open a business in a lovely place.

Upon hearing that we were afoot and wanting to go to Food Lion, Shirley the Librarian (almost as good as Marian the Librarian in The Music Man) got on the phone and got us permission to use a golf cart. She then took a break and drove us down to the cart, about a quarter mile away! The friendliness and helpfulness of people we meet along the way never ceases to amaze and delight me. David fired up the cart, and we toddled off to the grocery store in the fresh air at about 15 mph. Once stocked up at the store, David dropped me and our bags at the dock, returned the cart, and walked back. By that time, the wind had swelled and the water was good and choppy. We bucked and sloshed our way back to the boat and were glad to reach the relative stability of planet Raven.

Lovely little waterfront town. Down this street is where you go to snag a golf cart.

Our three hours ashore consisted of accomplishing two errands, meeting three lovely ladies at the library, enjoying a three-mile round trip in a golf cart, and taking one moderately choppy and one really lumpy ride across the anchorage in the dinghy. It’s always a surprise at how long things take on a boat, but then we always have some sort of minor adventure, so who cares?

June 6

More waiting for weather. The wind has finally clocked around to a different direction, so we have stopped hobby-horsing. It’s supposed to be calm tomorrow, so we intend to set off early for a long (30+ mile) day. It turned hot today for the first time since we left New Bern. David has hooked up the wind scoop (imagine a kite flying from the forward hatch, acting as a wind funnel to send the breeze down into the cabin) to cool us off. We are wearing the absolute minimum of clothes and are grateful for the breeze and the shade of the cabin. A couple of shandies helped, as well. :) (To the uninitiated, “shandies” are a mixture of beer and ginger beer, served cold.)

Today’s accomplishments were making chicken salad, having a bath, and washing my hair. It’s great to feel clean and powdered and to have stuffed my wilted clothing into the laundry duffel. Baths on the boat are, by necessity, brief, using about 4 cups of water when I clean head to toe. When I was a kid, we called this sort of abbreviated wash “spit baths” because of the limited water. I spent a hot summer at our farm when I was about 12, and when the well went dry, we hauled water from the pond to flush the toilet and for baths used a tiny amount of water in a basin, filled from the big jug we bought in town. So spit baths are not new to me! I wash my hair in river water, rinsing with vinegar, and it comes out well and doesn’t use up anything from the tanks. David hooks up the wash down hose on deck and has a “shower” with the river water. This arrangement works great until it starts getting cold, at which point we tend to hunt for hot showers ashore!

Day One

Our anchorage at South River, looking back toward the Neuse. So quiet! One of our favorite places.

June 1, 2019

Dear Lord, what a year. We have travelled extensively by car and by plane (from New Bern to Texas, from New Bern to England, from England to Germany, from New Bern to Tennessee). We have been at the dock for far, far too long. We have wrestled with medical issues, doctors’ appointments, and endless trips to Walmart. We have been plagued the last month with hordes of weird, non-biting mosquitoes that die on deck by the thousands (hundreds of thousands) and by the spiders that have grown fat and far, far too large by eating only some of the mosquitoes. The weather has been cold for too long, and is now hot. Really hot. 98. No wind. Hot. Time to leave. Past time. A break in the heat forecast for Friday, May 31. That’s the date for pulling out.

Amid the usual last minute this, that, and the other, Raven finally left the dock at 9:15 a.m. Friends on the dock helped guide her out of the slip in a light wind (Raven loves to be contrary when backing – with their help, we actually went forward down the fairway). The sun sparkled on the water, the warm breeze sighed over the deck, and the sky shone blue and clear. We rumbled along under power for about 45 minutes and then hoisted sail. It’s a lovely moment when the sails catch and the growl of the motor is replaced by the swish of the wind and the swirl of the water along the hull.

Spotty wind swelled to ten or eleven knots and then died off to five or six knots, swelling and ebbing as we coasted down the Neuse River. Raven sails well with ten knots or more; in the lulls we just drifted along watching the bubbles in the water go by. Not in a hurry, we just lay back and watched the shoreline slide by (at 2.5 knots, it slid by very, very slowly).

The entertainment consisted of periodically sighting and squashing our stowaway spiders. I am the sort of person who captures spiders that wander into my dwelling and deposits them outside. After all, they perform a valuable service. But our plague of mosquitoes had fed the spider population until it was completely out of control. We must have had 100 spiders when we left the dock and their webs were everywhere, encrusted with uneaten mosquitoes. Spiders pirouetted from the rigging, swung down in our faces on their webs from the bimini, fell out of the sails, galloped across the deck, and tried more than once to cuddle down our necks. Enough already. Splat. Their bodies and the bodies of literally thousands of dead mosquitoes that carpeted Raven’s decks made us determined to hose down the deck with the washdown pump as soon as we were safe at anchor. As it turned out, that wasn’t necessary.

At the helm, I noticed the sky going awfully dark and took off my sunglasses. Sure enough, in front of us were a lot of gray curtains of rain falling in the distance. A look at the radar showed the showers (and a few alarming thuds of thunder) moving off to starboard, so I held course and hoped we’d skirt the worst of it. The weather cell was moving starboard, but also curving around toward us. David made the call to haul in the sails, due to fears of heavy gusts of wind. Under power, we chugged forward into some rain and winds of 15-22 knots. Not bad, all in all.

Then I looked behind me. Bad move. A very dark horizon loomed behind us and it was no great calculation to realize that with winds of 18 knots, it was going to catch us. It did!

Oops.

David shrugged into his waterproof jacket and I surrendered the wheel to him to go find my own. By the time I climbed back into the cockpit, the rain was lashing the boat sideways, the winds roared around us at a steady 30 knots, and the river was in 3-4’ chop. Basically, it blew like stink, drenched us to the bone, and hurled us across waves you expect to see in the ocean. Raven, of course, was completely unfazed (it helped that David was at the helm, guiding her through the water), shouldering aside the water and ignoring the 40 knot gusts that tried to push her off course.

The storm bludgeoned by fairly swiftly (an hour?) and, weirdly, David and I had a great time. Not for one moment were we scared, which probably goes to show our synapses are not all firing. Neither of us thought to put on our foulies, even though we had plenty of time between the time we saw the storm coming and the time it hit. Neither of us thought about life jackets until about 30 minutes into it, when I thought, “Oh, I guess I should put on a life jacket.”

I thought about the first thunderstorm we encountered 12 years ago, on our first trip, and how absolutely petrified I was, just rigid with fear. I guess I’m an old salt now. Emphasis on old.

We dropped the hook in South River about 5 p.m. The storm had rumbled off toward Pamlico Sound, on the other side of the Neuse from us, so anchoring was easy and mostly dry. I shucked off all my clothes in the cockpit, as I had no desire to dribble around below leaving puddles. We were both tired, especially David after an hour of manhandling the boat, so we just sort of lay around glassy-eyed.

I went to bed about seven, I think, and conked out shortly thereafter.

BAM! I shot out of the v-berth like a scalded cat. Lightening was crashing everywhere around us, illuminating the dark cabin like a strobe. Flash, blinding flash, CRASH, flash, BOOM. The thunderstorm was right on top of us. David stood, peering out the portholes, as the lightening pulsed through the sky above and around us. I huddled on the settee, counting seconds to see how far away the lightening was (5 miles? 3 miles? Too close!). As it began to move away, we just sat, stunned. Sleep was not an option, so we shared a cup of tea and gaped at each other. Weather in a house is just weather. Weather at anchor is an event.

As David said, grinning, “Day One.”