An unwelcome visitor on the way to Hampton, Virginia!
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sun 11 Nov 2012 14:44
| After a bit of indecision as to which way to go to get to Hampton, Virginia, we decided to take the easy route and sail down in one hit over night. Our original plan was to arrive in Hampton on 11th November to meet with the crew of Brizo, and then head south to the Bahamas. As they were delayed by a week, we had thought about going up Delaware Bay, through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and down to Norfolk, at the south end of Chesapeake. This would have taken us about a week with various stop-offs en-route. As you will know, we have been suffering some pretty cold weather here and, having spoken to our friend and travel guide for North America, Glenn, we chose to follow his advice and go straight down over night and see the places we wanted to in the Chesapeake Bay area by car which turned out to be a much more sensible idea. Our intended route would be great in summer with long, balmy evenings sitting on anchor, but at this time of year when it is freezing cold, too cold even to launch dinghy and go ashore, it wasn't going to be much fun. The trip down was about 15/16 hours, but due to tidal constraints in Cape May, we couldn't leave until about 2pm on Saturday. We set off, all wrapped up for cold weather with the intention again of sailing the boat from inside as far as possible to keep warm. The trip was pleasant, but we had to motor all the way as the wind was bang on the nose the whole way. That said, despite being nearly 20 knots most of the night the banging wasn't too bad, until it was John's turn to go off watch, when he swears it was much worse than when I was trying to sleep - he got very little sleep that night! What a surprise when we arrived in Norfolk to 70 degrees! It was lovely and warm, people were out in their shorts and t's, no woolly jumpers or hats to be seen. We did a few jobs on the boat, the sun and warmth made us forget it was November until about 5pm when it went dark and cold very quickly! The marina is a bit in the middle of nowhere here, but we can get all our jobs done and buy some new anchoring bits and pieces. John has a list as long as his arm after reading his favourite sailing books on the trip down, the chandlers will be rubbing their hands with glee when he walks in! Ah, the unwelcome guest - John spotted this one, during the night when the waves were washing over the decks, a jelly fish had landed on board and was sitting over the starboard side deck drain - yuck! John removed it with 2 of my kitchen spatulas, they have now been very well cleaned!! |