You may recall the while we visited Cambridge, MD we were tied up at the public dock, which is just outside the Dorchester Country Administration Building. Well, about 8 AM on Friday, just before we started to leave, members of the Harriet Tubman Foundation began forming up in the parking lot of the Administration Building – which coincidently was outside our port side windows and portholes – for their annual walkathon. Now I wasn’t a big fan of the speechifyin’ that went on; I could have gone without the Pastor’s comments, the Mayor’s speech and certainly the mini-rally for President O’bama, for example. But they also had a couple of Gospel singers from one of the local churches – and I am here to tell you that those ladies could sing!! I am not much of a Gospel fan, but when they have beautiful voices and they are belting out that Gospel music about 50 feet from your breakfast table – while you are drinking your morning coffee, of course – man, that ain’t too bad!
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| Another afficianado of the Harriet Tubman Foundation singers. Actually, we are not sure where he came from, but we gently removed him and placed him ashore. |
After coffee and the morning serenade we left Cambridge and headed to Oxford, MD. (Now some of you might be wondering why Maryland has two boating towns so close together named after two of the most famous universities in the world. Well, I think that is a very good question and I haven’t a clue. (If you find out, please let me know.) Oxford has a limited number of anchorages. The most convenient is inside Town Creek and which has a very short dinghy ride to town. We went into the anchorage, looked around and decided that we really didn’t like it very much – there wasn’t much swing room and the water was a bit shallow – so we decided to go to the next little cover over, Flatty Cove. Flatty Cove has reasonably good protection from the south, east and west, but not so much from the north – and while we were there, the wind was from the north. Luckily, it was only 10 – 12 knots and didn’t cause us much of a problem because the holding was so good. The only challenge we had was that it was a little over a mile to town by dinghy and we weren’t quite sure how much gas we had.
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| This picture was taken from the park in Oxford, MD. It is so artistic that I think we should copyright it. |
Oxford officially marks 1683 as the year of its founding because in that year it was first named by the Maryland General Assembly as a seaport. Actually, however, the town got its start between 1666 and 1668 when 30 acres were laid out as a town called “Oxford” by William Stephens, Jr. By 1669 one of the first houses was built for Innkeeper Francis Armstrong. Oxford first appears on a map completed in 1670, and published in 1671. In 1694, Oxford, and a new town called Anne Arundel (now Annapolis), were selected as the only ports of entry for the entire Maryland province. Until the American Revolution, Oxford enjoyed prominence as an international shipping center surrounded by wealthy tobacco plantations.
A couple of centuries later, though, Oxford became something of a bedroom community. Yes, it has a small recreational marine industry with a couple of marinas and boatyards, but there are not many touristy shops, like there are in St. Michaels – and like Cambridge would like to have. In fact, there probably aren’t more than half a dozen stores in the whole town, including a convenience store and a book store that specializes in mysteries. They do have a very nice museum with several interesting exhibits. Did you know, for example, that prior to the Civil War the Maryland Military and Naval Academy was in Oxford? In addition, there are also a couple of restaurants, the aforementioned Schooners being one. At this point you are probably wondering why we went to Oxford. “It may be a nice place,” I suspect you are thinking, “but surely there are other places on the Bay to visit.” You would be right except for one thing: the Robert Morris Inn.
Now the Robert Morris Inn isn’t one of those typical Bay restaurants where the view is more important than the food. While it certainly is not the best restaurant on the Chesapeake Bay and maybe not even the best on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, I am here to tell you that they make some awesome crab cakes. (I’m sorry, in re-reading that sentence I am not sure I conveyed the real deliciousness of those crab cakes. They were absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it GREAT.) Anyway, The Robert Morris Inn has both a Dining Room and a Tavern, neither of which have a waterview. Instead they rely on strange things like the quality of the food, the excellence of the service, the quaint ambience of the room, and yes, just a little bit, on the price. By that I mean that – while it ain’t cheap – neither is it THAT expensive. In fact, if you will remember the last time we reported on great crab cakes, it was a result of our meal at the Narrows, on Kent Island. Ann and I agree that the Robert Morris Inn has better crab cakes – AND the price is less. (At the Narrows it was $37 for LUNCH crab cakes; at the “Inn” (as the cognoscenti call it – I have always wanted to use that word J – the price was $27 for DINNER crab cakes.) I kind of like writing about the Robert Morris Inn because as I do I can almost taste the crab cakes again. Sigh.
Well, after Oxford we weighed anchor and pointed the bow south. The first day we went 65 or so miles, arriving at Smith Creek, at the mouth of the Potomac, about 3:30. It was about five miles up the river from the Bay proper, but it looked to us like it was the best anchorage in the area – and we didn’t want to have to go another twenty or so miles before dropping the hook. Anyway, the anchorage was nice and very well protected. In fact the next day we went out to the Potomac and found it to be a bit rough – with a little chop and 2-3 foot seas. But in Smith Creek, we hadn’t even noticed it.
Our night at Smith Creek marked a milestone of sorts. We had now spent 8 nights on the hook without going into a marina. That would not have been possible without our watermaker. It faithfully produced about 30 gallons a night, and we used only about 40 gallons per day. Although we might not be able to stay our indefinitely (we do need this thing called “fuel” occasionally – but I won’t know how much of that we used until we fill up in a week of so) the watermaker has given us a lot of flexibility.
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| Tell me this isn't a great picture and a wonderful anchorage. It was on Smith Creek, just off the Potomac. |
As I was saying it was a little rough on the Potomac and, for the first part of the morning, on the Bay. The forecast called for 1-2 foot seas, but (once again) the meteorologists were off. It was 2-3 feet minimum, with an occasional four footer rolling in. Since we are almost always prepared for 2-4 footers, the seas didn’t bother us and we continued our journey south. We ran through a rain shower or two then turned east up the Rappahannock. It was about 20 miles or so from the mouth of the river to Urbanna, VA where we intended to stay three days.
Urbanna is kind of a quaint little village that Ann and I both like. The Nimcock Indians first settled what would come to be known as Urbanna. The Nimcocks (the word means “Indians who live in towns,”) lived in huts within fenced-in villages designed to thwart attacks from other tribes. In 1649, Ralph Wormeley patented 3,200 acres on the Rappahannock, including the lands that the Nimcocks had cleared for their settlement and crops, forcing the tribe upriver. Landowners like Wormeley established plantations on Virginia’s navigable rivers, which they used as private ports, shipping tobacco directly to market without the inconvenience and expense of going through an official port of entry. The 1680 so-called “Acts of Assembly” passed at Jamestown changed all that. They ordered local officials to establish 20, 50-acre port towns, at a cost of 10,000 pounds of tobacco each, through which all trade would take place. One of these towns was a small part of Ralph Wormeley’s “Rosegill” Plantation that would, in 1705, be named Burgh of Urbanna, or “City of Anne.” The town was named in honor of England’s Queen Anne.
Within Urbanna there are a dozen or so touristy shops, a coffee shop, eight or nine restaurants – including one inside a drug store that looks exactly like a 1950s era soda fountain – and one decent grocery store. But what makes Urbanna a special place for cruisers is that everything is within walking distance; you don’t need a car. While walking around we found the last “saying” I wanted for my “saying wall.” It is from the children’s book Wind in the Willows and goes:
Believe me, my young friend, (said the water rat solemnly), there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing … nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy and you never do anything in particular …
Kenneth Grahame
Wind in the Willows
There is another good thing about Urbanna. We sold our dinghy!!!! Now why are we so hung up on our dinghy. Well, as I pointed out during our time in Marathon Key last year,
“For cruisers, the dingy is the equivalent of the family car. It is the vessel you use to do everything from going grocery shopping to picking up friends who come to visit. Now, our dingy is a really cool 20 year-old, 11’4” center console Super Sport Boston Whaler with a 30 HP outboard; on the dingy circuit it can be basically described as a classic overpowered sports car. Moreover, like many other things on our boat, cosmetically, it has been very well cared for in that it has a well-varnished teak console and seats, as well as a highly-polished chrome steering wheel. Everywhere we go, people comment on the coolness of our dingy. The problem is that we need an SUV, not a sports car. Our dingy, for example, can only carry three people; our visitors usually come in pairs, making it necessary to make two trips to and from the shore; we can only carry a limited amount of groceries; we can’t use much more than ten of the thirty horsepower.”
So what was wrong with our dinghy? I thought I had explained all that in an earlier Blog entry, but after looking through the archives I can’t find it. Basically, there are two problems. We store our dinghy in its davit on the second deck of Traveling Soul. The Whaler weighs around 600 pounds, so we don’t muscle it up and down, instead we use a winch – and you know about the problems we have had with our winch. When the winch isn’t working, we simply do not haul the dinghy up and down. Even when the winch is working, however, the weight is a problem. While our winch raises and lowers the boat, we have to employ muscle power to push the Whaler from side to side. Basically, to raise the dinghy from the water to the second deck, we have to move the empty crane arm so it is extending over the starboard side of the boat, lower the cable about 20 feet and hook up the dinghy, raise it using the winch, then, using muscle power (and a specially created block and tackle apparatus which gives us about a 4:1 mechanical advantage), move the crane arm back to the center of the boat – while it is holding this 600 pound dinghy – so we can lower the Whaler into its cradle. Now moving the dinghy to the center of the boat when there is no wind is challenging, but doable. When, however, we get wind in our faces, that damn boat is tough to move – with or without our block and tackle apparatus.
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| Our last glimpse of the Boston Whaler. She was a beautiful boat. |
There is another problem with the Whaler. Rather than bring it up on deck, sometimes it might be easier to tow the boat from one location to another. But it has only about a foot of freeboard (the distance between the water and the boat’s “rim”). If we are towing it in our wake and there is any chop on the water at all, we are afraid we would swamp the boat.
The RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) we are buying weighs about 300 pounds (with motor) so it will be substantially lighter than the Whaler when we try to move the crane to the center of the boat when redeploying and raising it. Moreover, in the front the AB dinghy has about 2 feet of freeboard, making it more difficult to swamp. In addition, the Whaler has a maximum capacity of three people, where the RIB we are buying has a capacity of five; the Whaler requires us to keep her teak polished and shined, while the RIB does not. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
Now the Super Sport model Whaler that we had is very desirable to a lot of people. There are folks who buy them and fix them up – just as other people might do for sports cars – and resell them. We got almost two-and-a-half boat units for ours and there were a couple of potential buyers willing to step in and give us good money (though not quite as much) if the original deal went south. Though that is substantially less than the cost or our new dinghy it is a decent price for a twenty year old boat with a twenty year old outboard.
After Urbanna we took the boat to Deltaville and left it for some work to be done. This time we had:
· Cutless bearings replaced. Cutless bearing encircle the propeller shaft both where it leaves the hull and where it is supported by the struts. So, since we have two shafts, we have a total of four cutless bearings. The last time the boat was out of the water, the technicians at Zimmerman’s told us that our cutless bearings are worn and that is why we felt a bit of a vibration around 1400 RPM. We decided that before we headed south we would have the cutless bearings replaced. That time has come.
· Stuffing Box serviced. The stuffing box is a casing in which material such as greased wool is compressed around a shaft or axle to form a seal against the ingress of water. It is used, for instance, where the propeller shaft of a boat passes through the hull. Most stuffing boxes allow a small amount of water to drip into the bilge. Ours is a “dripless” stuffing box which makes it better, in some respects, but needs occasional maintenance to ensure that it continues to keep out the water.
· Two toilets replaced. What can I say? Toilets are toilets. On boats, they (apparently) never work very well. (Note: these are the toilets themselves, not the Lectra Sans. The Lectra Sans are processing systems, the toilets are … toilets. The Lectra Sans appear to be working well.) Anyway, marine toilets have a pump that brings in seawater to flush the toilet. The pumps on two of our toilets weren’t working very well. Although you might think that it would be less expensive to have the pumps repaired, we are beginning to think that when you add the labor costs, it is often less expensive to replace the major end item rather than individual pieces of the systems.
· Generator repaired. Our pre-heat solenoid and our fuel injector, apparently, weren’t working properly. Although the more I think about the problem we had, the less I am sure that they diagnosed the issue correctly. I will have to double check when we get back to Deltaville.
· Hull waxed. Because my foot is still in a cast, we have not really cleaned the boat since we arrived in Herrington Harbor last June; it has gotten pretty dirty. Moreover, Traveling Soul has not been waxed since we have owned her. Since I am not going to be able to wax her while she is out of the water (which is the best time to do it), I went ahead and splurged – and spent ½ of a BU for a hull wax job.
While the boat was out of the water we spent time with our Virginia kids and grandkids, and with our friends Dave and Joan Wolf. We also spent the week pre-provisioning our boat and going to the boat show. We had to be careful about pre-provisioning AND about the boat show as we needed to get all our “stuff” in Dave and Joan’s car – as they were taking us back to Deltaville. In the event, we did buy quite a bit of stuff – and it all fit!! Coming back, we stopped at CoCoMo’s, which it a Bay Bar and Restaurant in Deltaville and you know what? It wasn’t half bad. If we come back next year, we’ll definitely give it another try.
ANN’s NOTES: It has been a busy summer… we have had a lot of family and friend time. We also have had all our medical check-ups and procedures done. Michael is excited about not having to wear that damn walking boot … it comes off on Thursday the 18th… champagne will be poured that day. I will have extra time in the morning when I don’t have to strap/Velcro him into the boot any more.
I have to admit that when we leave I will miss the wonderful chill in the fall Virginia air. Fall and Spring are my favorite seasons…followed by winter and then summer. I know what you are thinking, why do I head south for the winter? Well … that is the direction my floating home is going and my husband. Besides what is not to like about traveling, adventure and having friends/family visit.
I am happy to be back on the water and going again. Spending eight days without the support of a marina was fun. Having the ability to make your own water is amazing … add some water conservation to the mix and we are really independent. Now if we could only make our own fuel …
As Michael told you we delivered the Boston Whaler in Urbanna … I was a little sad to see her go … you must think I am crazy but she was a nice ride and a pretty little boat. Just too heavy to launch and a strain on the winch system we have. She went to a good home, a sixty foot Hatteras.
We get our new ‘car’ tomorrow and I can’t wait to drive her!!!
I want to thank Tim and Carrie (son and daughter-in-law, more daughter than in-law) for all the help in making this summer fun. Sharing their time and keeping our computers running. Also for having such beautiful grandchildren and allowing us to spent time with Caylin and Gavin. We also could not do what we are doing without the love and support of our other family, Dave and Joan Wolf. I cannot express how much they do for us, their home is always open to us and they have put many more miles on their cars – taking and picking us up from where ever we may be. Thanks you both very much and we love you always.
Next blog entry from Traveling Soul will be SOUTH of Virginia.
Stay tuned and thanks for reading.
Traveling Soul…OUT
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