Left Deltaville 18 Sep 08
Finally Kwanesum broke away permanently from her D-31 slip at Deltaville Marina.
It was beginning to feel as if there was a vortex holding us there. If not one more thing needed to be done to the boat…there was another. If you wait long enough, you’d own the whole boatyard! Always something cool to add to the boat to make it better and better…or finding something that you might as well update now. So as we figure it, the Kwanesum Room in the top level of the Deltaville Boatyard office should be open soon.
We popped out of that slip like a champagne cork at 8:48am, Thursday September 18. It’s bad luck to start your journey on a Friday, they say. We must be sure to keep up with the sailing superstitions for a safe journey…right?! Besides…it was time to get the heck going.
“Put this puppy in reverse, Randy, wave bye to (our great friends) Jack and Marianne, (berthed next to us for the last 4 months) and head out! Norfolk, here we come!” We are now truly on our way South…heading for Mile Marker Zero (which is actually red buoy 36...go figure) of the Intracoastal Waterway.
To make our departure perfect, dolphins swam by and a little ladybug rode with us in the cockpit for awhile. Now do tell…how do lady bugs get out there in the middle of the Chesapeake?! We also saw several different kinds of butterflies fluttering by. Nature truly is a wonder. Except for the damn flies. Why are there flies on water anyway? Yucky, biting flies. Took us 2 days to get rid of them. Bad flies. Bad, bad flies. Go away! But I digress….as they say.
To make our departure perfect,too…our great D’ville friends came by the night before to toast our journey on. Matt and Jennifer run the boatyard and the harbor. They are SO fun and so helpful. We spent many late afternoons talking and drinking beer with them, dinghying out to the flats. (Is that a word…dinghying?) Jack and Marianne from GravyBoat next door came over. They are from Colorado and are going the same way we are; making their boat ship shape and perfect before carrying on. Again…many evenings of talking, talking and enjoying each other’s company. So fun. Speedy and Nancy from Marcnicliz, berthed across from us, came by, too. They have a condo there in D’ville and are awaiting their time to go South in November. Speedy is a retired Brigadier General and Nancy is an IMPORTANT part of the community college system in the surrounding counties.
Randy and I enjoyed many evenings with them, too. We will miss these people a lot, but hope to catch up with all on our travels to the Bahamas and Caribbean. We told Jenn and Matt they have to join up with us somewhere. They are veteran cruisers but are workers now. They’re too fun to leave behind.We missed saying goodbye to Keith, from the boatyard, but we are grateful for all he did for us. These are good people. We can’t say enough about the Deltaville Boatyard and Marina.
Bottles of ice cold Yuengling and chardonnay were savored and toasts were made by all in the cockpit of Kwanesum. Isn’t that what cockpits are for? I brought out my friend Penny’s wonderful red wine she and her husband Al produce in the Alexander Valley of Sonoma County in CA. We visited them on our trip across the country. GREAT stuff.
Deltaville was such a nice little town. So many interesting, cruising people from all countries stop by the marina on their way to or from various places. They share their personalities and their information; showing good places to aim for on the charts…and bad places to avoid. Potlucks, swims in the pool, music in the outdoors…chats over our computers in the marina lounge. But…now it’s time. Time to get going.
Our sail away from D’ville was actually a motor/sail away. The winds were directly behind us so we went wing on wing with the engine running, too. We were destined to arrive in Norfolk before dark. Wing on wing, for those who aren’t sailors, means you put one sail to port and one to starboard. The wind from behind billows them out to float you along. You hold the jib sail out with your whisker pole and the mainsail needs a preventer to keep from jibing. We did it without our preventer but all was well. It’s one of my favorite points of sail and it made for a nice ride all day.
We arrived at Thimble Shoal Light around 3:00pm. This was the beginning of the Elizabeth River that took us into Norfolk, Portsmouth, and the ICW. Pretty good wind blowing at that time. As we took the long journey in, we were proud to see the presence of all the military bases and ships. We arrived at Tidewater Yacht Marina on the Portsmouth side at 6:10pm and slipped into a downwind berth between 2 power boats. This is a lovely marina with floating docks, nice facilities and nice people. Immediately we were invited over for a drink, but we passed…instead opting to open a bottle of champagne to toast the real beginning of our journey in the intimacy of our own boat. We caught up with the invitation on a later day and enjoyed the company of fellow cruisers. Our immediate boat slip neighbors are from Ohio and awaiting the weather to head up to Deltaville. Such nice people boaters are.
We are sticking here until the weather window opens for our trip down the ICW. Big winds have been hanging around...big, big winds. We want to enjoy it all and not have to fight inclement weather. After all…that’s the point! We will head down the Dismal Swamp to Elizabeth City. An historic waterway. We are anxious to see this part of the East coast going south. In the meantime, we are taking advantage of seeing what there is around Portsmouth and Norfolk.
As we get underway again…we will continue our adventures on this blog.
Stay tuned for further news as it happens!
