Things you don’t want to hear

Things you don’t want to hear

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

As we were turning into the Rappahannock River today we heard that radio call that strikes fear into the heart of all boaters.  “This is the warship XX. We are conducting a live fire exercise at location YY N, ZZ W.  All vessels should remain 5 nautical miles away from our position.“  It was a mad scramble to compare the given co-ordinates to our actual position.  This time the live fire exercise was nowhere near our location.   Thank goodness!

We departed Fishing Bay this morning at about 9:30 and made our way out the Piankatank River back into the Chesapeake.  Skirting around Stingray Point (where Captain John Smith was stung by a ray more than 300 years ago) we made our way into the Rappahannock.  Despite having hoisted our mainsail, the winds were too light to sail.  We motor sailed upstream against a bit of adverse current.  After transiting the Rappahannock River Bridge (plenty of clearance at 110ft), we soon turned into the Corrotoman River and made our way to Yankee Point Marina.  

We got help with our lines from one of the marina staff and our neighbor in the next slip. Once we were all tied up we could turn our attention to the important business of lunch.  It was quite warm by this point so we had a “lovely big salad”.  This is something of a joke with Mike who doesn’t think of a salad as a real meal.  

After lunch I wandered off to find the bathrooms and bumped into our friends Lynn and Lee.  We had a nice chat with them in the cockpit before they had to scurry off to find their bed and breakfast.  Their boat should arrive by truck tomorrow morning.  It sounds like they have had a frantic time in Florida trying to get ready for the transportation.  Once the boat arrives, they will be plenty busy tomorrow.  We are here for a couple of days and hope to catch up with them over dinner tomorrow.   

Gloria

37 41.581 N, 76 29.393 W

The Rappahannock Bridge - partial B&W negative. (I was just messing around with this in Photoshop. To keep the bridge in color and change the background requires a lot of careful work selecting the bridge girders and not the sky - this is a bit rough and ready but I might go back and refine it at some future date)

This is Gloria's photo taken early this morning showing duck footprints on the top of one of our hatches. Apparently Gloria could hear them up on deck but when she went up they jumped off and swam away towards another boat.