We Are OFF! NY to Annapolis October 8 10 268 Miles

Our first problem was discovered when we had to use the dinghy to go to dinner on City Island because the Clubs launch service ends at 6 pm in the waning days of the season: it started right up but stopped in five seconds. So we paddled.  And the night of the seventh was unpleasantly rocky on the mooring due to strong SW winds kicking up big chop in Eastchester Bay, impeding sleep.

The passage was from 9:45 am on the eighth until 7:30 am on the tenth, 45.75 hours with a two hour "stop" to be discussed later, so 43.75 hours underway. The first of the two days (NYC and the Atlantic coast of New Jersey) was warmer than expected for the season, both day and night, with sunny clear skies and a big full moon; the second of the days (Delaware Bay, the C and D Canal and Chesapeake Bay) was raw and cloudy but not frigid and not rainy. This chart, created by Jims Spot device shows our route, except that it connects the dots every four hours or so and hence cuts off the corners and shows us crossing land. [Image to be added.]
We actually left, after mango pancakes, about an hour too early due to my impatience so we did not experience the favorable tide while we fought strong headwinds until near Hellsgate when the tide started flushing us out of NY Harbor. A tug with four barges (2 x 2) came up behind us near Hellsgate and called ILENE by name to advise that we would apparently be going through Hellsgate together and that his four barges would be swinging to port. I did a short 360 degree loop to let him pass and observed that his tow did indeed sweep far to his port side and "crab" through the most problematic tidal strait of the passage on a diagonal. We passed parallel to the FDR Drive with its snarled traffic on which I drive so often to get to the Club.

Here is the Freedom Tower to the left, currently New Yorks tallest structure, and a tower of the Brooklyn Bridge to the right, which held that title in the 1880s.

We put up sails, starting with double reefed main and small jib, after we passed Governors Island and we were on starboard tack all the way to Cape May, though we gradually shook out the reefs and changed back and forth to the genoa when passing through periods of apparent winds of 20-25 knots and periods where they were in the mid teens. The Verranzano Bridge, our ninth of the passage, was emotionally my last point in New York until around May, 2015.

Unlike the similar passage on Pandora about two weeks before, on which the wind was never forward of the beam, on this trip it was almost never aft of the beam, though rarely close hauled and predominantly about 60 degrees off the bow. 

Jim, who made the trip on both boats is a great man to have aboard. He is a fellow Cornellian, an engineer and very knowledgeable as a sailor though he wears his experts mantle lightly, without a trace of the arrogance that some experts have -- laid back and a pleasure to sail with. He agreed to my request to sleep the earlier part of each night and stand the later night watch.  During our first night I was "racing" a green light that started off our port bow. At times he would get ahead and by changing sails, at times, I would get ahead. Our speed varied from 3.5 to 8.1 knots depending on the wind. When very close I hailed the "sailboat with another sailboat on your port quarter", identified ILENE and thanked him "for keeping me awake last night". He reciprocated the thanks and identified himself as "Momo" a Valiant 40, here shown off  Wildwood,

bound for Florida with a planned stop for a day in Cape May harbor. I told him I hoped we would meet up with them in Florida or along the way. He is a very good sailor because ILENE is a faster boat but he kept up.

Jim took the watch for most of the passage up Delaware Bay, in which we avoided the worst of the adverse tide. Having rounded Cape May at about 9 a.m., using the inside passage a hundred yards off the beach, with main and engine but no headsail, Jim suggested a diagonal course, away from but toward the shipping channel at Miah Maull light, after which we stayed just outside the channel on its right side almost all the way up. A tug with barges ran near adjacent to us most of the way and we put up the headsail when possible to gain speed and sailed without engine, close reaching on port. Unfortunately, when the tug got ahead of us during lighter winds, we got long doses of his diesel fumes. About 5-10 miles before the Canal, when we are slightly ahead of him, I called on VHF and told him our plan to cut across his bow to get to the other side of the channel in anticipation of our left turn into the Canal and he replied "OK".

As we entered the canal Jim came up with the good idea to stop for a couple of hours to avoid the worst of the adverse tidal flow. We would tie up for free at a dock in the Summit North Marina on the north side of the Canal to have dinner in their excellent Aqua Sol Restaurant. And we shared a bottle of red and a nice assortment of appetizers while motoring in the canal. This is the same marina where ILENE spent a night on our last trip in June 2012 and where Pandora went in for fuel two weeks ago. But on our way in, going slowly, of course, we went aground. We used the preventer to swing the boom, with Jim sitting on its end, out to port, in an effort to tilt the boat and break us free. No luck, we were stuck hard. And we created this lead line, the old fashioned depth meter, out of a green divers weight, a wire wrap, a length of light line and red tape to mark where the wet part old the line ended.

Yep, we were stuck alright and it was mud, which you can see,  dried on the bottom of the weight. What to do? Wait for the tide to come in and float us off. I took the watch and two hours later, at about ten, I saw us drift, turned on the engine and woke Jim.  We motored to the inner end of the cul de sac, turned in the deep turning basin and headed out of there.  Then I slept for four hours until 2 a.m. while Jim took us out of the Canal and into the Bay.  I took the watch from 2 until 7:10 a.m., when GPS put us ten minutes from the red daymark guarding Back Bay harbor of Annapolis, where Jim lives with Ann and where we docked at Bert Jabins Marina -- where ILENE had stood on the hard during the winter of 2005 in which we bought her.
Ann came over to take us to breakfast at Grumps, an Annapolis breakfast institution, where no two coffee mugs ever match. But the Captain ordered another batch of pancakes and put Jim to work peeling mangos for the three of us.
Then how to best utilize the time before Lenes arrival at about 4 pm. Well the most critical task was fixing the outboard, the engine of our car. And it being Friday, when mechanics are at work, I searched and found Steve of A and B Yachtsmen, who disassembled the carburetor, cleaned the rust from it, and emptied our fuel tank and line. She runs again! We are across the dock from a beautiful Tayana 55, "Karina"

owned by Dr. Miles (both M.D. and a boat doctor) and Ann, who are leaders in the Caribbean 1500. Ann gave Ilene a lot of good advice about sailing with cats in 2010 and unfortunately their cat has gone to heaven. I introduced myself as a graduate of the 2010 run and he pretended to remember me and invited us to an Alumni reunion we attended that night.

Before that I washed Ilenes salt crust and New York grime and freshened our water supply, cleaned up the interior a bit and took a shower and a nap. Lene and Witty look happy to be here and we got a good nights sleep.

The adventure has begun!

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Rhode River to Cambridge and Three Lay Days in Cambridge October 13 17 38 7 Miles

First the passage: The wind was predicted at 5 knots, building to 15, in our face. Not pleasant, but manageable. It came from the predicted direction, a bit east of south, but at  20 to 25 knots and one has to add five to that to account for our boats speed into it!  And with Chesapeake Bay running generally north-south, the wind had time to work up large stiff waves of up to five feet. ILENE was pitching in these waves, some of them breaking over her bow, throwing spray back onto us. And with both these waves and the wind pushing us backwards, we were making only about four knots over the ground -- making for a long day to cover the 34 miles involved.

What to do. We changed course by 35 degrees, with the engine still working at its high speed for continuous use, 2500 rpms, and put out the small jib. Now less pitching, speed up to over six knots and a whole lot of heeling. The Saga owners network is having a discussion of the merits of adding  a ton of extra lead at the bottom of the keel (a sole under the keels foot as it were) and with Lene reporting this was on her "ten worst passages" list, I think the time has finally come to bite the financial bullet and do this -- next winter, when the boat is hauled. I thought of taking photos for you, or video, which could have shown the excitement, but decided to keep the salt water off the iPad, which was in a ziplock bag.

Turning a bit east, into the Choptank River, the wind was 60 to 80 degrees off the starboard bow and our speed was over seven knots with the throttle turned way down.  But this wide but shallow river twists and turns and when we came to a point where tacking in the channel would have been required we elected to furl the small sail and motor the rest of the way.  The trip took seven hours, from 11 to 6.

The landing at a dock in the Cambridge YC was very poor due to Captain Roger forgetting an important rule: always check the wind direction when attempting a landing at a dock. Maybe I was tired -- a reason but not an excuse. Anyway, the wind blew us onto the dock. We should have aimed further away from the dock, stopped and let the wind blow us to the Tee dock. Instead, with some way still on, we crashed our starboard quarter with the dinghy, hanging from its davits athwart the stern and protruding a few inches out past the side of the boat on each side, catching the dinks bow on one of the pilings that support the fixed height dock.  The painter, which is one of three lines used to snug the dinghy to the boat, parted (here reattached and a foot shorter),

and one of the welded aluminum





 padeyes holding up the bow ripped open.

But we landed and enjoyed three days at the YC, though the first of them was rainy.



On the sunny days that followed we enjoyed this view from ILENE of a replica of a screwpile lighthouse at the adjacent marina. I visited our friend, Johns meticulously maintained 28 foot S2, "Hearts Content" there.

 John, a former New Yorker and Harlemite was the best host one could find and our reason for staying in Cambridge. He has many talents in boating and as a mechanic, and he has a whole lot of power tools and the knowledge of how to use them. He rebuilt the interiors of the Plaza hotel and Columbia Universitys Butler Library as well as working for 15 years in NY theater, both on the stage and behind it. A gentleman and a pleasure to be with who put himself at our service. 

He drove us all around the town (population 12,250) showing us where everything was, took us to the post office to mail time sensitive mail, to the hardware store where we got a stainless steel padeye, bolts split washers, to the supermarket, several times, for provisions, to his home where we hacked off the extra length of the 1/2" bolts of the padeye and chamfered the edges, did our laundry and printed out a letter that was on our computer. He lent us one of his cars. He came to the boat and "helped" (lets just say he did the jobs with me as helper/learner/doer of the easy parts). He ground off the remnants of the old aluminum padeye, drilled the 1/2 inch holes for the new bolts

and we attached the new stainless padeye -- stronger than before!

We also replaced the old carburetor with the new one which had been fedexed to his house and he showed me how to adjust the idle and it works again!








We spent our days here with John and actually stayed the fourth night, when it was much calmer, at the wall of the town basin, rent free.

For our stay in the basin, he suggested the creation of the fender board, shown here, which uses two fenders and a hanging board to keep the pilings from harming the boat.

We watched Johns TV. He took us to his favorite restaurants and bar, Leaky Petes, where we had Natty Bos (National Bohemian beer). We tried scrapple, and crab, oyster and fish.









Cambridge is a very sleepy town, which has seen better times, especially its downtown district, which was devastated by suburban stores, fires, the recession and greed. We toured its Arts Center, and visited its Maritime Museum

and the Harriet Tubman Museum, but  the last two were closed.

Here are the kitties exploring a neighboring boat at the YC; maybe they smelled fish.

And I just loved this one, which I call "Still Life with Boat".

On our last day John took us on a long car ride to the southernmost of the three Hoopers Islands, connected by road and only a few feet above sea level, and populated mostly by watermen (crab and oyster harvesters) and their families. These islands were reached after driving through the Blackwater Wildlife Preserve, a huge swampy expanse.  We had lunch at Old Saltys

which has this wonderful view of mainland Maryland, the thin line at the horizon, across the Bay,

where we will be going next. John and I are planning the next leg of the cruise, I wish we could have persuaded him to come along for a few days.

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October 19 Mill Creek of Solomons Island to Mill Creek near Reedville 43 miles

From one quiet anchorage to another. We had planned to go to Reedville, a nice small town, formerly capital of the menhaden fishery. These small fish are used in fertilizer and cosmetics; in NY we call them bunker. A millionaires row of Victorian houses of the captains of the fishing boats is well maintained. On our first visit, in 2006, we dinked in, toured the town and were invited to the weekly Friday night pot luck gathering in progress at the Public Library, even though we had no "pot" (nor bottle) with us. But in checking "Skipper Bobs" we learned of another Mill Creek, on the opposite (southern) side of the entrance to the Great Wicomico River from Reedville. The chart said that the water in the marked channel was deep enough and many folks in Active Captain had praised it so we changed our plan and added another new port (Cambridge was the first this cruise) to our Chesapeake destinations.
For all except the out and in portions of the days trip the wind was about 160 degrees off our starboard bow plus or minus 20, and strong. The direction gave us the first chance to use the new preventer lines - the first time on this cruise that the wind was nearly behind us. The preventer prevents us from damaging ourselves and the boat in the event of an accidental jibe.  We did not have such a jibe today, only one very controlled jibe near the start, but its like carrying an umbrella to prevent rain.

We saw a lot of 20 knots, some 25 and a gust of 30!  And that is apparent wind so the true wind was five to ten miles stronger. The boat got to 10.5 knots during one long memorable surf down a wave. Our chart plotter has a logging feature which records our position every half hour and computes our course made good from one such fix to the next and the distance between them. Of course this is worthless if you make big loop and end up in the same place half an hour later, in which case it shows you went zero knots and zero distance. But today we were going relatively straight, with only a  few detours to avoid hazards. During the four hour period from  10:30 to 2:30, the computer says we covered 31.7 nautical miles, for an average speed of 7.925 knots. Not bad. One half hour period shows 4.5 knots! Well take it. I have a video of the knotmeter display, showing the speed shooting up and then back as we surfed down a wave, but not the 10.5 knot wave, and Ill have to add that video when I learn how to, because my computer says I cant due to no "previewer" installed. And another video shows a wave rushing up behind us and passing under us. If I was really good at this we could see the two on split screen, but Im not going for an advanced degree.

This was with small jib and reefed main.
The day was clear and bright but cold, as shown by the outer layer of Lenes attire.

She can handle the boat. During the beginning of the "going in" part, when we turned west and brought the wind forward of the beam, we discovered that we were overpowered and the boat tried to round up into shallow waters. Lene steered while I furled the headsail. She also made excellent suggestions as to a good location to turn directly into the wind to drop the main, and monitored iNavix on the Ipad while we went from buoy to buoy, in to the anchorage. We had a beep at seven feet when we got too close to the shallows that line the channel and I turned to safety.
Another delicious home cooked dinner.

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October 26 and 27 Elizabeth City to Deep Point to Slade Creek 43 5 and 33 NM Respectively

From Eliz. City we got a late, 11 A.M. start, due to marketing.  It was mostly motoring but we put up the genoa three times for about half of the passage, once even turning off the motor. We arrived at the anchorage after the sun had set, but before it got dark. Our route was to continue down the Pasquotank River, traverse Albemarle Sound and go south (up) the Alligator River to a place off Deep Point which is deep enough to anchor, moderately protected from potential winds, outside the ICW channel and reachable before dark. The little white space to the left of the word "River" in the upper right quadrant of this chart segment hit the spot. It is 2/3 of a mile long and about 700 feet wide at its widest spot.

There are about 8 boats here. We are in 11 feet of water with 60 feet of chain out. We have a potential problem because when we tried to use reverse gear to set the anchor, we heard only strange sounds. So we laid out sixty feet of chain, which, with the weight of the anchor, held us in place all night in very gentle air. If we had dragged, there was a lot of room behind us toward the channel in which the anchor, hopefully would have caught. No internet access here. Dinner, card games (Lene almost always wins), reading and in the morning we emptied the aft compartment so I could take a look at the "no reverse gear" problem. I saw how, by disconnecting the end of the cable from the shift lever at the helm, one could manually shift the boat at the engine itself. And while we had access, I added distilled water to those of the cells of the batteries that looked like they could use a few sips.
Among the boats here were "Whisper," who we met in Elizabeth City, and their buddy boat "Piper."

In fact, two of the three adorable kids who played with Witty belong to Piper, not Whisper. We accompanied them most of the next day, toward Slade Creek through the Alligator-Pungo Canal and somewhat down the Pungo River, but they had elected to go elsewhere the second day.
The AP canal is quite a bit wider and almost twice as deep as the Great Dismal Swamp Canal.

Our only scary moment was crossing under the Wilkerson Bridge, near its southern end; unlike all the other fixed bridges over the ICW, which are 65 feet high, this one got short changed and is only 64 feet high -- and we are 63.5 feet high!

Slade Creek is wide and over a mile long. We got here first, at about 2:30 after a totally motoring day, and anchored in the first bend after entry, where the wind protection was good, in eight feet of water and were later joined by two other boats. There is lots of room here.

Then chores: I dove into the brownish, tannin dyed water and cut several lengths of line from around our propeller, but the boat still makes a chattering noise in reverse. We will get this checked out in Oriental, our next stop. (Also the harvesting of leaves in the Great Dismal Swamp Canal whacked our wind speed and direction instruments making them even more in need of calibration.)  I went up the mast to reattach the halyard for the Harlem Yacht Club burgee because the halyard had worn through in the strong winds in Yorktown, completed the wiring of our two million candlepower flashlight for finding buoys at night, hung a picture, fixed a cabinet and organized our cabinets. This last in the course of looking for the two white LED interior lights that we replaced with red ones to preserve night vision. Lene does not like living in a red light district. But we have not found the white ones yet.
The problem here is flies, lots of them. Lene killed about a hundred that had invaded ILENE. She is fully screened but they got in while we were underway and the companionway was open.
Also Alphie gave Lene a scare. She was missing, Lene was crying. I looked in both the aft end and the forward end of the stack pack tube that holds our mainsail when it is not in use. No Alphie. Finally I unzipped the top of the tube to raise this sail and there she was, in the middle, perturbed that her nap disturbed.

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October 18 Cambridge to Solomons Island 34 miles

Underway from 8:45 to 3:15 today.   Would have left a bit earlier but I left my cell phone at Johns house and he had to deliver it to us.  Thanks again John!

After motoring out of the inner harbor the still was supplanted by breeze which built during our passage. It soon became apparent that single reefed main and small jib were enough. The Choptank River has several ninety degree bends which permitted us to beat our way out of the river, but slowly. Once out in the Bay we turned increasingly to port, onto more southerly courses which put the wind closer to the beam and eventually, slightly aft of the beam. With those two small sails we hit speeds of 8 knots and averaged about 7.5  for several hours until we had to turn increasingly to the west again, to enter the Patuxent River, which features Solomons Island (no longer an island due to landfill at the upstream end) close to its mouth, on its northern shore.

We put in here twice before -- in 2006 and 2012. The first time we stayed at a marina and explored the town and its restaurants, supermarket, and museum. Solomons is very popular with boaters and has more than ten Marinas on Back Creek (it  runs in BACK of the town?). This time we motored about a mile up Mill Creek, slightly to the east. which is one of the several creeks that branch out from the harbor. We anchored in Old House Cove, off of Mill Creek, in 9 feet of water with 40 feet of snubbed chain out. NOAA predicted a continuation of todays NW winds at 15 knots tonight so we anchored in the lee of relatively high ground. Our newly found friend, Active Captain, sort of like a "Yelp" for boaters, reports this is a nice sheltered place with good holding and we agree. It is inaccessible to the hotels, restaurants, shops and other tourist attractions of this area but that is alright by us. We did not even lower the dink. We have each other, food, books and work to do. We were about 50 yards closer to the boathouse on our bow, this view upstream in the cove. No company tonight.

The Cove is bucolic; foliage just starting to turn here

Looking out from the Cove to the Mill River. Lots of room here.

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September 17 to October 9 One Sail One Raft Float Down the Snake River in Wyoming and Work

Twenty four days since my last post; a,sad new record. Partly due to the trip through some western red States: SD, WY, MT, ID and UT and partly due to computer problems at home which are semi fixed. Sorry folks, Ill try to never repeat that record.
A trip down the Snake from Jackson Hole WY was fun, but not sailing. The only water related activity other than majestic waterfalls and geysers.

We were up to nine tourists in each of the big blue inflatables, each steered by a forward facing captain-guide seated in an aluminum contraption on the stern with huge oars. The river was never more than 2.5 feet deep and occasionally we rubbed over the river-washed smooth rocks on the bottom. in six inches of water.

Occasional small rapids were present, in one of which a wave crested the port bow wetting part of my left pant leg. We saw eagles  nests, anglers and glorious landscapes.

I sat with a couple on the forward inflated thwart, outboard to port and we talked. And you can guess what I talked about. After a while the gentleman told me he plays fiddle in an Irish band and has a friend who plays with him on a small eight sided accordion and has an old wooden boat near New Rochelle. "If you mean Lennie S, he belongs to my Synagogue and Ive sailed with him on his sloop, Mary Loring", I said. Yep, its a very small world.

Returning from out western trip  I wernt out to ILENE, what with the approach of hurricane Joaquin, to check the mooring and tighten things up in case of a big blow. I also made tentative plans to take her over the the Huguenot YC where she safely weathered Sandy in their hurricane hole, but Joaquin veered far enough off shore to not molest us.

We had the rain date for Lenes HS classmates -- the outing that was postponed in September for fear of rain that did not come to pass. This time it was cancelled due to a nice strong wind and cool weather. I have to stop listening to Lene on this issue. So we made a brunch for them at our house and will sail with them in the spring.

The one sail was three hours with the Old Salts.

From right to left: Marcia, Dave, Peggy, Bennett, me, Art and Angelo. Angelo was brought by Bennett. He is visiting from Italy, had never sailed before but was an eager learner, a quick study and a big help. ILENE did not get much of a workout because the northerlies were too light. We did get to 5.8 knots SOG during a five minute puff, but otherwise it varied between slow and slower. An innovation in the liquid refreshments department: Wine replaced the G&Ts. And with light winds, they began before we got back to the mooring.
My service as crew on the 47 foot Aerodyne sloop "Pandora" from Essex CT to Hampton VA was delayed because the yard work needed to make her seaworthy was not completed. Hey, Id rather not be way off shore in a boat that is not ready. The kitties are disappointed though that they wont be petted and pampered by their cat sitters.
This adjournment freed me up to participate in the Harlems annual Fall Work Weekend. I always love this event because I meet folks who I barely knew and get to know them much better while working with them. This time I was assigned to a crew led by Ken whose task was to paint the Yard Car.  That lovely machine permits us to move boats on their cradles from one place in the yard to another. Our machine is about 20 years old and looks great again. Working with Ken were me, Jim and Drexel.

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October 25 Portsmouth VA to Elizabeth City NC 43 8 Nautical Miles

Today we traversed the Great Dismal Swamp, one of three inland routes between Norfolk and North Carolina. This is the westernmost route and most of it is a very straight and narrow (about 50 feetwide) canal

that is not very deep (about eight to ten feet).A new route to a new port.
One thing about it is easier. Normally I piece together many legs of a days journey, measure the length of each lag and add them together. But in the ditch, the charts show the mileposts from mile zero in Norfolk to over a thousand miles later in Florida. But these are in statute (land) miles and so one must take only 85 percent of them to get the nautical miles. Today we started half mile north of mile zero and Elizabeth City is at mile 51, leading to 43.8 nautical miles. And describing "legs" would have been difficult after we exited the canal proper into the Pasquatank River, which is nothing if not sinuous. Oops, upside down. Eliz. City is the black boxes (streets) toward the upper right, the old down town.

But this path is more challenging because there is no sailing allowed, and the road is so narrow, requiring constant attention as when driving a car. Also there are hazards above and below. Below are "deadheads" -- water soaked tree stumps that lay on the bottom and give us a thump when we hit them. We know they are there and that we will take a few hits (four today) but unlike coral heads in the Bahamas, they do not sink your boat. The peril above is tree branches that overhang the canal and get whacked by our mast (about three times today).

Here is some of the flora we harvested with our mast and shrouds, showing also the straightness of the canal, the diagonal to the lower left corner.

It was a long day, but warm at last and sunny, and windless. Normally we dont like windless days but no sailing is possible in the canals so no big loss. We got underway at seven in morning mist, and headed up the Elizabeth River to make it to the first lock, at the northern end of the swamp, at its 8:30 scheduled opening.


Here we are, all five boats, locked up together.

The lock business and the associated bridge took an hour and we timed the next 22 miles at five knots to arrive at the second and last lock for its 1:30 opening, and arrived in Elizabeth City at about 5 pm. A long, slow, ten hour day.
Yesterday we crossed paths with a mammoth container ship; today a more modest craft.

Eliz. City calls itself "The Harbor of Hospitality" and this billboard

is 50 feet from our slip. It proves this true by providing seventeen free guest docks, and we took one. In the morning, a man and his daughter offered us a ride, three miles, to the supermarket and Judy and Rich, who work for the Coast Guard, gave us a lift back. Yep, a friendly town. We are bow in. On the way in we looped our starboard stern line over a piling and  then ran forward to hand a bow line to one of the friendly volunteers who secured it to a piling near land on the port side. Easy, in the absence of wind. The other two lines loop around pilings off the other two corners and I added a spring line to keep us from crashing into the street ahead of us if there was a surge (but no surge tonight) and we were totally secure. Black line is starboard aft line and white is spring line.

The last step was loosening the starboard forward tether and tightening the port one to bring our bow above the short stubby dock so that we could climb down from the bowsprit onto it.

On arrival we took free shoreside showers

and had dinner ashore before returning for the evening. There was a very easy camraderie among the crews of the boats here, all enthusiastic about their similar but individual adventures. Next to us, separated only by our biggest fender, is a beautiful Shannon, "Whisper", whose three very young, very blond children came aboard to play with our crew. Witty was not really a happy camper in this, but he played along well enough. I missed the photo op.

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October 21 23 Cape Henry to Yorktown and Two Laydays There 23 miles

The crossing was done by motor, all the way, without raising any sails, less than five hours. The wind was in our face but only five knots true, not enough to raise any waves. The only obstacle was this guy,

last seen in the sunset on the horizon from Cape Charles, who lay on anchor right on our course across the Bay. I caused another problem by accidentally turning off autopilot while trying to turn on the cockpit radio, which gave Lene a scare. The York River is wide and deep almost to its shores. We entered against the tide slowing us somewhat.

Yorktown County government runs the modern efficient Riverwalk Landing Marina here, which we visited in 2006 and 2012. We asked about staying on the outward side of the marinas floating dock (so easy to get on and off) but the friendly dock master said: "No way am I putting you there!" He was right. Both days we were here the wind howled, the river was filled with large whitecaps and the large excursion schooner, "Alliance", tied up on the opposite side of the dock from us, pitched up and down like crazy.

In fact I had planned to move to our next port on our second day here, and with the strong wind at our back and then at our side, we could have made it. But Lene and the kitties have had enough rough rides for a while and there is much here to amuse us.

The reasons we keep coming back to Yorktown is that our friends, Stan and Carol, live in nearby Williamsburg. I met Stan up at Cornell 52 years ago; he has been teaching at William and Mary for the last 36 years. They are such wonderful hosts and lend us their car, though which we provisioned and visited barbers and the drug store as well. They also shared with us two delicious home cooked meals, we took them to a French restaurant and we had mango-blueberry pancakes aboard with them and also did some sight seeing. Their home is decorated with the Carnival glass that Stan collects and the imaginative quilts that Carol makes.

I visited the Watermans Museum, located immediately adjacent to the marina, which is at the river side immediately below the cliffs where General Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington, ending our Revolutionary War. Cornwallis surrendered after the French fleet under DeGrasse defeated the fleet of British ships containing the reinforcements that Cornwallis needed. The museum is housed in a large plantation house that was donated and transported to this site from the other side of the river on a large barge. Watermen are defined as anyone who makes his or her living on the water. As amateurs, Lene and I are not watermen. The battle of the Capes, which led to the end of our revolution is portrayed, as are piracy, fishing and shell fishing and wooden boat manufacture and repair. Here is the museums model of a fish trap,

also called a pole net. These run for considerable distances in an east-west orientation in the Bay. About half the fish that are brought up against it by the flowing tides will swim toward the trap and can be harvested periodically from the pen at the right. These traps are one reason to not sail in the Chesapeake at night. We came too close to one of them a few days ago, before turning away.  Running into this would likely damage both trap and boat.

I learned that a certain local Pirate, when captured and convicted in England, was fined 1000 pounds by the crown to be used to create a new school in Virginia, William and Mary. Thus unlike Harvard and Yale, which were funded largely on the basis of the profits of the slave trade, William and Marys founding moneys were the profits of piracy. I had only 90 minutes there and two docents latched onto me. Phil (wearing a "Tin Can Navy" hat) took care of me inside, followed by Bubba who filled my head with knowledge once I proceeded outside to the wooden boat sheds. Clearly, these knowledgeable gentlemen would have talked my ears off for several hours more if I had more time, which I would have enjoyed.

The next day, Carol took me to DeWitt Wallace and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museums of Art in Colonial Williamsburg, where I saw a lot of beautiful old quilts and wooden furniture, but found nothing  nautical to report to you.

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