Corrotoman River VA USA

Back on board BV after our stay with Phil and Lesley in Great Falls, we had plenty of jobs to be getting on with before the Chesapeake Bay cruise in company began in Reedville at the end of the week.  So, after a major food shop to refill the fridge and returning the hire car we set to…

….First on the list was to replace the shaped rubber pipes on the engine, one of which had started to leak on the passage from Culebra to the Chesapeake Bay.  I had ordered the replacement parts whilst we were in the Caribbean and they had been delivered to Phil and Lesley’s home. Removing the old parts (one held together with lots of red rescue tape) and replacing them with the new ones was, happily, a quick and simple job.  Hopefully, these ones will keep going for many years ….. but we now have spares on board just in case!

The biggest task was replacing the vast majority of the zips on the sprayhood, bimini and cockpit tent enclosure. Over the 6 years since the canvaswork was built, the sun’s UV rays had degraded the material of the original zips so that many of them ripped under the tension of attaching the panels.  We had already replaced the zips on some of the panels that we use routinely, now, with the recent prolonged heavy rain there was an incentive to replace the other zips so that we could easily set up the cockpit tent and ensure that it is reasonably waterproof.  And so began a frustrating day of sewing [Ed: and swearing!] but the job was done and I even managed to adjust some of the zips so that the panels aren’t quite so taut and so are easier to attach.

Fish and crabs illuminated by Bill and Lydia’s underwater dock light

There were several OCC yachts on the docks and at anchor around Bill and Lydia’s, all waiting for the cruise in company to begin at the end of the week.  On the evening of Thursday 7 June, Bill and Lydia hosted a barbecue to welcome the visitors and to thank their friends for the use of their docks.  It was such a lovely evening, with so many interesting people to talk to that I entirely failed to take any photos because I was having such a good time!  On our way back to BV, we enjoyed a display of circling fish and swimming crabs, all illuminated by Bill and Lydia’s dock light.

We’ve not seen swimming crabs before and we could have stayed and watched them for ages.  But it was a lovely, quiet evening and the mosquitoes were out in force so we contented ourselves with some photos and then hid in safety away from the bugs on BV behind our mossie net screens.

Corrotoman River, VA, USA