moving things around

Made a few adjustments on the packing chart this morning.   This is for cruises when there are two of us on the boat.  This chart is a couple of years old and a few items have moved here or there but it is really pretty accurate as far as weight distribution.

With two of us on board, plus all the food and gear, there is a lot of additional weight, particularly up forward.  And up forward, as you see from this photo of Bruce on Spartina leaving out of Engelhard, is where it is often very comfortable to sit.  So I've been wanting to shift a little weight aft to make sure we maintain a good balance on the boat.  

I've marked in red things that could probably move aft and be stored in the four compartments under the cockpit seats.  These storage areas are very much under utilized, on a typical cruise we use 50% or less of the space in there.  We'll look at moving the tool kit, spare anchor and chain for their usual storage spaces below the bunk flat to the very aft compartments under the seats.  And we can also move some of our food - most likely the fruit cups - to the forward compartments under the seats.  That fruit I consider to be one of our luxury items on the boat - not in the sense of cost but in the matter of weight.  A few dozen fruit cups, "fruit in heavy syrup" as the package says, are in fact a fair amount of weight.  So why not move them aft a little bit?  

The amount of weight isn't the issue, Spartina can handle that just fine.  It is the distribution of the weight I'm looking at and I think this will make things a little more comfortable.

steve

plans made, plans kept

 

Above is the rough map Bruce and I started with for planning our spring cruise.  We roughed out the trip when I was visiting San Diego in early December, talking over a couple of cold schooners of beer about where we would like to go.  In this case it is the middle part of Chesapeake Bay.  We had sailed through the area in 2009, much of that trip was out on the open bay.  I started exploring the shoreline last fall on a solo trip.  After a little discussion Bruce and I decided to revisit the area, exploring the bays and rivers along the way.

Once we have the initial map in hand it is a matter of working out the details.  We need to find a ramp to launch the boat and a parking lot where we can leave the jeep and trailer for a week.  In this case it will be Onancock, Va.  I'll be over on the eastern shore next week and will drop by Onancock wharf to confirm this with the dockmaster.  I think we'll end the trip at Cambridge.  But I say "think" because I haven't nailed down a marina.  In addition to a marina, we need a ramp and an Enterprise rent a car office - we'll rent a car to drive back to Onancock to retrieve the jeep and trailer.  Cambridge, St. Michaels, Easton and Kent Narrows all fit the bill with ramps and rent-a-cars.  What we still need to work out are marinas.  They are crowded and expensive on that part of the bay.

Between the start and the finish are a series of roughly 25 mile days of sailing between possible anchorages.  We've done as little as 13 miles (though it took us about 30 miles of sailing to cover that that 13 miles) and as much as 48 miles in a day, but 25 miles seems to be a pretty comfortable distance for us to cover on a relaxed day of sailing (hey, we're out there to have fun).

Then there are the other details - food (Bruce handles most of that), navigation (my job) and gear (shared responsibility, but we've done it enough we both know what we need to have on hand).

Thinking about the planning process got me thinking about past sails.  I have never gone back to the planning maps to compare the plan with the actual sail, so I decided to take a look.  Above is the Tag Team sail with Paul and Dawn last June, the planning map at left and the actual gps track at right.  

There are some minor differences between the two.  Instead of going down the ICW to the Bay River Bruce and I cut over on Jones Bay and took a tiny creek to the Bay River, something we had talked about as an option before the trip.  And we made a side trip to Vandemere, again a possibility we had talked about beforehand.  We did not sail outside from Cape Lookout to Beaufort as marked on the planning map, it was too windy and rough that morning and we sailed the back way to Beaufort.  And the last night out we anchored in Beard Creek instead of behind Great Island.  But otherwise the gps track is, to me, surprisingly close to the plan.

Above are the maps from my solo fall sail on Chesapeake Bay, the map showing possible anchorages at left and the gps track from the trip at right.  I probably did less planning on this trip than most others.  Since I was alone I knew I had to end up where I started, my plan was to sail north from Rumbley to Oxford, then work my way down south to Tangier Island, then return to Rumbley.  The nice thing about this stretch of the bay (and for the areas of the Inner Banks of North Carolina that we sail) is that there are anchorages almost everywhere.  Finding shelter from a storm or for the night is not a problem.  

My rough sketch for the trip proved fairly accurate, the biggest change was opting to go to Tylerton on Smith Island instead of Tangier Island.  It was apparent during the last couple days of the trip that Smith Island was a better fit as far as mileage, plus I had never been to Tylerton (I have been to Tangier Island several times).  But otherwise the plan was pretty close to the final trip.

As for the spring trip with Bruce sketched out in the map at the top of this post, it is still evolving.  We will probably bypass Holland Island.  We might anchor the first night at Watts Island instead of Tangier Island.  We'll sail near Wenona on Deal Island, but it will be late in the afternoon and we probably won't go into the harbor.  Tylerton, Whitehaven, Dogwood Harbor and Oxford are on the "must visit" list.  How will the trip turn out?  We've got a couple of more months to tweak the plan and even then we won't know for sure until we sail it.

steve

weekend walkabout???

Enough of watching other people's boats, I'm ready to do some sailing myself.  This weekend is borderline, a front is coming through tonight.  It might be nice enough by the weekend.  I hope so.  For the first sail of the year I like temps in the 60's, wind at 10 mph or below.

Looking at the schedule at the office I noticed that I've got a four day weekend in late April/early May.  Looks like it might be a good time for a weekend walkabout trip.  I did one of those last May, you can read about it here - day one, day two, day three, day four and day five.  Five days of sailing, about a hundred miles of travel.  It was a lot of fun.

I emailed Shawn down at Pate Boatyard in Hobucken, NC to see if I could launch out of there.  He said sure, come on down.  Now I just need to figure out where I want to go.  I could head north to Mouse Harbor, Swanquarter Bay, Caffee Bay and Juniper Bay.  Or south to Bonner Bay and maybe West Bay behind Cedar Island.  This won't be a distance kind of sail.  Just a take it easy, sail, read a good book and relax kind of trip.  

I'm pretty familiar with the area so it won't take a ton of planning.  

In the meantime I'll hope for warmer weather here for this weekend or next so I can get out for the first day sail of the year.

steve

a planning map

I did this google map with all eight days that we have planned out for the trip.  The mileage came out to 162 miles.  Throw in dealing with the wind, currents, tacking and it could be 200 miles or more a little more.  That is just about right for an eight day trip.

On past cruises we've sailed legs as short as a dozen miles or as long as 50 miles, but the trips always seems to average out at 25 to 27 miles per day.  Boat speed, with good wind, head wind or no wind always comes out to around 3.3 nautical miles per hour.

This gives us a pretty good plan to work with.  Then we'll adapt as we go along.

steve

back to the future

I've been preoccupied with getting Spartina ready to sail, plus work, plus college trips with the daughters and I put the planning for the Spring cruise on the back burner.  But I had a few free hours this afternoon to sketch out the rest of the trip.

I've got the first four days worked out, you can see the rough maps here, here, here and here.  After four days of sailing we should be somewhere on the Honga River.  We'll head north on the river and take Fishing Creek to get back out on the back, sailing north and then cutting in behind James Island to the Little Choptank River.  There are two marinas off of the Little Choptank, Slaughter Creek Marina and Madison Bay Marina.  We might stop in at either one for ice, supplies or maybe a nice meal and a cold beer.  And a hot shower wouldn't be a bad idea either.  Or we might just stay anchored out, there are plenty of nice protected coves on the Little Choptank.

Below is a photo of James Island, I passed by it on days three and five of the Bay Days trip, plus Bruce and I sailed by it on our way to Tilghman Island a year earlier.  

On day six we could head north across the mouth of the Choptank River, maybe sail into Dogwood Harbor to stretch our legs and, yes, maybe have a cold beer there too.  Tilghman Island is a great spot to visit.  I'll have to check on the docking at Harrison's Chesapeake House.

One of the attractions of Dogwood Harbor would be the possibility of seeing a Skipjack under sail.  I saw the sails of one from a distance last fall, plus Bruce and I saw the Rebecca T. Ruark, below, coming into the harbor under power.  Wouldn't it be nice to be out there sailing alongside one of these classic old boats?

Day seven we would head up the Choptank River and take a brief detour up the Tred Avon to visit the great little town of Oxford, then head back out onto the river for an overnight on LaTrappe Creek.

Day eight would be a short sail into Cambridge, the likely destination for the Spring cruise.  That day's sail would be only six or eight miles, getting us in early in the day so we could rent a car and head back down to Onancock to pick up the jeep and the trailer.

This is just a rough plan of course.  Bruce will take a look and let me know what he thinks.  And of course on the cruise itself Mother Nature will add her two cents.  In the meantime I've got some emails out the marinas checking on restaurants, ramps and transient docks.  

steve

the liars bench

There's Bruce sitting on the Liars Bench at Onancock Wharf a few years ago (either 07 or 08, can't remember).  We were getting ready for our first cruise down in North Carolina and I had to run up to the eastern shore for work.  Bruce came along for the ride.  You've got to love a place honest enough to have a liars bench.
Onancock is where we'll start our Chesapeake Bay sail this spring.  I've been so busy getting the boat ready to sail I've neglected thinking about the next cruise.  I better get back to planning.  The Onancock Wharf is, I believe, a municipal ramp/parking area.  Below you can see a photo of it with Onancock Creek running down to the bay.  (Isn't that just a beautiful, winding tree-lined creek?)   The question is "Can we leave a car/trailer there for over a week while we are off sailing?"  I need to figure that out.  I've called the wharf a couple of times but no answer, probably too early in the season.  But I'll get through I'm sure in March sometime.
Parking for the jeep and trailer has been an issue on past cruises.  Sometimes I've paid $20 for parking, sometime $40 and sometimes nothing.  And sometimes leaving a vehicle and trailer in the public lot has led to the sheriff trying to track me down.  So I do want to get that worked out.

The photo below is about five or six days after I shot the photo of Bruce at the Liars Bench.  We were anchored next to Wainright Island at the top of Core Sound.  You can see the anchor lights glowing, one up on the lazy jacks and the other under the bow sprit.  These days we use just one anchor light, and that one hangs down from the bow stay (so it doesn't interfere with the view of the brilliant night sky).

Got some work done today.  Installed the new wiring harness and lights on the trailer, bought some smoked oysters and sardines for appetizers on the cruise, cleaned the O-rings on the deck plates and put new batteries in the gps and vhf radio.  Spring is coming fast.

steve

day four of the spring trip

This is probably the easiest day of the trip to plan.  From Whitehaven west and then north onto the Honga River.  Trip, as measured out on google earth, is about 30 miles.  

The main goal would be to get across the top of Tangier Sound, enter Hooper Strait and sail north into the Honga River.  That is the Hooper Island Light, below, from day two of the Bay Days sail.  Once we get there we head north on the river and there are countless anchorages on either side.

If we make good time we might head into to Hoopersville and get some lunch.   But we'll most likely be too late for that.
As for the Honga, lots of coves, rivers and bays.  Easy sailing (famous last words).  But that would be the goal - get into the Honga River and head north from there.

steve

it's like putting a puzzle together

The fun, at least to me, of planning a trip is putting all the little pieces together.  A good ramp where you can leave the car and trailer, a few good anchorages spaced out along the route, a place to get fuel and resupply, a hotel somewhere along the way and maybe even a good meal at a restaurant.

I emailed The Whitehaven Hotel today asking about the chances of getting a room without a reservation mid-week in May.  No problem, they said.  And how about a restaurant within walking distance.  No, but the not too far away restaurant The Red Roost will pick us up and drive us there for dinner.  Pretty cool.

One more piece of the puzzle in place.  I can taste the fresh steamed crabs already.

steve

the Wicomico River

If wind and weather cooperate we would use the third day to get to the little town of Whitehaven on the Wicomico River.  I've measured out the distance below from South Marsh Island and it is about 18 miles.  Just about right to get us in by early afternoon so we can look around, clean up and relax.

There is the very classic looking Whitehaven Hotel where we would like to stay for a night.  You'll see photos of it down at the bottom of the post.  And here is a photo of the old Whitehaven Shipyard from the hotel's website.   Like all the little waterfront towns on the bay, there is a lot of history there.  It was at one time a thriving little town.  I'm sure it is much quieter now, but still it will be fun to look at the waterfront and imagine what it was like in days gone by.

That satellite photo at the top shows the route from South Marsh Island to Whitehaven.  But as I said in yesterday's post we could end in at Deal Island instead of South Marsh Island.  If we do end up at Deal Island we would have a choice of two routes to get to Whitehaven.  One would be to sail west back out on to Tangier Sound.  The other would be to head east and then north using Laws Thorofare to cut through the salt marshes behind Deal Island as drawn below.  I always enjoy taking those narrow passages.  We'll just have to see where we end up spending the night and what the weather is like.

And below is the hotel.  Pretty nice looking place don't you think?  I've emailed the owners checking on room availability and meals.
Drawing out these routes, measuring the distances helps me think through the trip.  I can kind of see it all coming together now.  A few days on Tangier Sound, then work our way up to the Little Choptank and then maybe Tilgman Island, Oxford and..... well we've still got to figure that out.

steve

and then the day after that...

From Tangier Island we'll sail north to Smith Island and hopefully time it right to have a nice lunch at the Drum Point Market in Tylerton.  I stopped there on day seven of the Bay Days trip and really enjoyed the lunch and a nice walks through the streets (lanes really) of the village.  

We would be coming from the south entering the wide, shallow Tyler creek between Peachorchard Pt to the west and Horse Hammock, a salt marsh, to the east.  The navigable part of the creek is a very narrow channel marked only by a few stick and pipes put out there by the locals.  We've have two gps, including Bruce's with Garmin Bluecharts to help us stay in the channel.  

After a visit to Tylerton we would like to continue north.  There are three different paths we might follow to get through Smith Island and our choice of the route will probably be dictated by the wind.  We could head west to Rhodes Pt and turn north to Sheep Pen Gut.  We could take Tyler Ditch north from Tylerton to where it intersects with the Big Thorofare and head southeast to come out on Tangier Sound.  Or we could take that same ditch north to the Big Thorofare and head west past the village of Ewell and then out on Chesapeake Bay.  Bruce and I sailed the Big Thorofare from the sound to Ewell and then from Ewell to the bay a couple of years ago on the Crab House 150.  It was a beautiful winding creek through the marshes of Smith Island.  

So one way or the other, depending on wind, we'll end up either on Chesapeake Bay or Tangier Sound. The question is where do we go from there.  If you look at the map at the top of this post you'll see I've got us going to Deal Island on the east site of Tangier Sound.  The mileage on that route, as drawn in yellow, is about 28 or 29 miles.  That sounds like a good distance for the typical cruising day.

Deal Island is home to at least one of the very few working Skipjacks.  I caught a glimpse of this boat's sails on the horizon on the Bay Days trip.  Wouldn't it be nice to sail into the harbor and get a closer look at her?

On days two and six of the Bay Days trip I was within a mile of Deal Island as I tacked across Tangier Sound but I was on my way to other places so I did not get to visit the place.  Maybe this year.  You can see my tracks from those to days below, and in the photo above I think that is Deal Island on the horizon as I sailed from South Marsh Island on the morning of day two.

Then again South Marsh Island could well be the stopping point for day two on the next trip.  It just depends on wind and weather.  The two islands are just about four miles from each other.  I like having options of a couple of anchorage and I know from my last visit there that Little Pungers Creek on South Marsh Island is a very nice place to drop the anchor.

That's my gps and chart heading down Tangier Sound on the way to Little Pungers Creek, a decent 4.2 kts sailing into the wind and waves, reefed, with small craft warnings.
And there is the salt marsh that lines Little Pungers Creek.  It is a shallow creek but provides good protection from wind from just about any direction but due east.
So day two could end at Deal Island or South Marsh Island.  Those are at least two of the options - we like options - and a quick look at the charts shows there could be lots of other stopping places.  But these are nice places for me to think about on a very cold winter day.

steve

the first day

Talking with Bruce about the trip got me thinking about the first day's sail.  I had meant to put day-to-day sailing plans off until late February or early March, but we talked a bit and next thing I know I've got the Chesapeake Bay chartbook out and google earth is open on the computer.
We'll start out Onancock, lower right on the sat photo above, and head down winding, tree lined Onancock Creek, entering Chesapeake Bay as we pass by Parkers Marsh Wildlife Refuge (which in itself would be a nice place to visit on a weekender trip).

It is about a four mile run down to the Bay and then we turn NNW to enter Tangier Sound.  There are two potential stopping points the first evening.  Watts Island, above and below, or Tangier Island.  We tend to keep that first day's sail a short one, 12 to 15 miles, as we'll already have started the day before dawn at my house, made a drive up the coast, rigged and loaded the boat.  Driving, rigging, packing and then a few hours sailing is, for me, a full day.

Both Watts Island, 11 miles from Onancock, and Tangier Island, 15 miles from Onancock, fit the bill.  I shot the photo approaching Watts Island in 2007 on my first ever cruise aboard Spartina.  It is a narrow, sandy island with some trees and a few millions bird.  The island runs north to south and does not offer a lot of protection.  By "protection" I mean a nice little cove that would block the wind from at least three or four directions, say north, south and west.  That way I don't have to worry about wind shifts in the middle of the night.  Watts Island would be fine if the wind is out of the west or WSW, or if there is little or no wind at all.  

The narrow little island once was large enough to support a plantation, but has since eroded away (like many of the islands on Chesapeake Bay).  In fact at one time there was a Little Watts Island off the southern end of Watts Island with a lighthouse that marked the entrance to Tangier Sound.  The lighthouse and Little Watts Island are long gone.

Below is a sat photo of Tangier Island. (Here is a post I did about Taniger Island a while ago.)  This island offers a couple of good places to anchor.  For years I've wanted to anchor inside the sandy hook (marked "XX" on the chart down below) at the southern end.  Good protection there from the southwest, west and north.  I've been on the island a few times for work and once took the long walk down that narrow stretch of beach to see the area marked as Cod Harbor on the charts and it was just beautiful.  Bright white sand and clear water.  To me that would be the ideal spot to drop the hook that first night.

If the wind is out of the north, northeast or east there is another good spot to anchor that I used on that first cruise on Tangier Sound.  (Here are some more photos from that trip at Duckworks.)  That is inside of the small island called Port Isobel.  I've put an X where I anchored on that trip.  You can see from the chart that it is a sand flat that for a lot of boats would not be considered navigable.  But for a shallow draft like a Pathfinder it was perfect.  I raised the cb and anchored in about two feet of water.

There is Spartina anchored on the sand flats, waiting for a front to coming rolling through that night.  I did need the boom tent that night as the front brought both high wind and rains.  But I was very comfortable, dry and warm inside my sleeping bag anchored out in protected water.

If you look close at the photo you can see the water tower and church spire in the village.  I didn't get into the village on that trip.   I don't know if we'll make it in there on this trip either.  Smith Island and Tylerton are on the schedule for the second day of the trip and I certainly want to get to Tylerton in time for a nice lunch at the Drum Point Market.

That sounds like the start of a plan.  Tangier Island for the first night, lunch the next day on Smith Island.  Maybe Deal Island the next night.  I need to look at the charts and figure that out.

steve

planning, and a camera

We are in the early process of roughing out the spring trip.  (I need to talk about spring right now as it has been snowing all day here, I need something to look forward to.)  Bruce and I agreed on sailing the middle part of Chesapeake Bay from Tangier Sound in the south to Tilghman Island in the north (or possibly higher on the bay).  

This would be some of the same area that we covered on the Crab House 150, and also some of the same area I visited on a solo sail last September on the Bay Days 220.  On the Crab House we were on a tight schedule heading up the bay and just sailed north on open water, bypassing a lot of interesting creeks, rivers and bays.  This time we'll meander up the coast, checking out those places along the way.

Starting places could be either Onancock (in Virginia) or Rumbley (in Maryland).  Possible ending points could be Cambridge, St. Michaels or, if the wind favors us, as far north as Chestertown on the Chester River.  All three of those possible stopping places have what we need to complete the trip - a nearby car rental spot so we can rent a car to retrieve my jeep and trailer for the drive home.

I came across an interesting camera the other day that I briefly considered as a replacement camera.  It is the GoPro HD Hero, a camera designed for adventure photography (both stills and video).  It is a video/still camera that comes in a housing with a variety of mounts.  They are available to mount on cars, surfboards, bikes and helmets.  The one I looked at, without mounting attachments, is called the "Naked" version.

Pluses of the camera are....

• designed for the wear and tear of the outdoors
• impact resistant housing good to 180 feet
• 170 degree view (and from their sample photos there is little distortion)
• presets for interval shooting of still images
• hd video

Minus are....

• that very wide angle lens is a fixed lens, no zooming
• no preview window
• very few controls
• no flash
• no close-up feature 

It is a pretty cool camera, take a look at this clip. (Keep in mind that is a low-rez stream, go to their home page for higher resolution.)  It might be perfect for adventure racing (I wonder what the EC crowd would think of this - maybe mounted on the nose of a kayak or a multihull sailboat??).  And it might be nice to have one of these as a second camera to mount somewhere - on the mast, on the end of the boom, on the bow - and forget about.  But I don't think it has the flexibility that I would like for a primary camera on cruises.  So right now the Pentax Optio W90 is the frontrunner, but I'm still doing some research.

steve

planning

new territory

Spent just about all day yesterday fishing with my long time friend Steve on the Rappahannock River. Please note right here I said "fishing" and not "catching." No luck. We marked a ton of fish on the bottom, but the baits we trolled could not entice them at all. Didn't matter. It was, as Steve said several times, a glorious day. Blue skies, a light southwest wind and temperatures in the sixties. A beautiful fall day for the Mid-Atlantic.

I enjoyed the day on the water with a good friend. I also enjoyed visiting the old port town of Urbanna. This tiny town on Urbanna Creek just off the Rappahannock reminded me of both St. Michaels and Oxford on the eastern shore. It's an old fishing/farming village than has gone upscale with weekend homes and lots of nice boats, both power and sail. In the photo above you can see some of the newer homes and a classic old buy boat that has been restored and is most likely used as a pleasure boat.

There is Steve reeling in a trolling line on his Donzi center console fishing boat. A very nice boat with lots of power, fuel efficient engines and plenty of room for comfort. I've fished with Steve on and off since the late 80's, starting in his old family 21 foot boat and then moved on up to 24 foot, 28 foot , 30 foot and now this 35 foot boat.

The trip got me thinking about a trip on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay. I've always been attracted to the eastern shore, also known as the Delmarva Peninisula, but for some reason I've ignored the other side of the bay. From yesterday's trip I can tell you it is a beautiful place with lots of creeks and rivers plus a handful of small towns like Urbanna, Reedville, Kilmarnock. Both Fleets Island and Gwynns Island look like they are worth exploring. I can easily see a long weekend trip anywhere from Mobjack Bay in the south to the Wicomico River in the north. Tangier Island and all the other islands of Tangier Sound are not that far away from Reedville and Ingram Bay. Maybe a sail up the western shore and then crossing over to the eastern shore. Wouldn't that be fun?

Here are a couple more views of Urbanna from the bridge over the creek, boats houses above and some of the marinas below.

And below is the view coming in after a nice day on the water. A full moon and a handful of sailboats moored along the farmland of Bailey Point.

Yes, it was a glorious day on the water. And it gave me something to think about for the future.

steve