Reedville VA USA (Part 1)

On the morning of Friday 8 June there was a mass exodus from the area around Bill and Lydia’s dock.  Sofiagot away early, with Hullabalooan hour or so behind them but a little ahead of us.  We slipped our lines at about 1000, after we’d had a bit of trouble starting the engine and Dragon Runfollowed us out.  A Capella of Belfastremained behind to complete their jobs list, planning on joining us all the next day.  The engine start problem was a bit odd.  Prior to this, apart from the problem with air in the fuel system that we had in Greece in 2016, the engine has always started enthusiastically first time.  On this occasion, however, the starter motor struggled to turn over and, when the engine did fire, it ran lumpily for a few seconds before all the cylinders fired up properly.  It sounded rather as if there were insufficient charge reaching the starter motor but there was plenty of charge in all the batteries and it made no difference which battery bank we selected or if we tied both banks together.  It was very strange and a little worrying.  But once it was going the engine clearly ran fine so we departed the dock and resolved to give ourselves extra time to get it going when we approached our destination.

Once clear of the Rappahannock River there was a gentle southerly breeze – about 9 knots – and with the fleet arrayed ahead of us we decided to hoist the MPS, poled out on the spinnaker pole, to add a touch of colour and some much needed speed to our passage.  We ‘raced’ Dragon Run(the closest OCC yacht to us) and kept an eye on the others on AIS, as well as closely watching the antics of Reedville’s menhaden fishing fleet.  Shortly after we had eaten lunch one of the large fishing vessel raced up to quite close off our port bow.  She stopped abruptly and launched 2 boats which sped towards us, moving apart but clearly dragging a large purse-seine net between them.  Running directly downwind we were hardly at our most manoeuvrable to avoid ‘vessels engaged in fishing’ as per the ColRegs, but then they had hardly given us ‘room and opportunity’ to do so.  We couldn’t easily bear away and go behind the fishing ship because we would have needed to have gybed (slow with the MPS up) and we couldn’t head up sufficiently to manoeuvre clear of the RIBs because of the MPS. The fastest option we had was to pull the sock down over the MPS but even that takes longer than the time that was available.  It looked rather as if we would end up in the middle of the purse-seine net but no sooner had Reg called the mother-ship on the VHF radio to ask their intentions, than the boats came together clear of us and started to close up their net for the mother-ship to vacuum up the catch.

Entrance to Reedville. Top left: Menhaden fishing boat.  Bottom left: The Morris-Fisher Stack, the last remaining part of the original menhaden fish factory.  Right: close up of the Morris-Fisher Stack

Bermuda Triangle impression averted, we continued north towards Reedville and arrived off the entrance to the river at about 1530, having successfully caught up with some of the fleet. There were a lot of yachts coming in from other directions too and, knowing that Lydia was planning on a gathering of about 25 OCC yachts over this weekend, we wondered if they were all on the cruise in company.  Having persuaded the engine into starting and lowered the sails, we joined the line of boats motoring up the river, past the new fish factory and the location of the old one…..

Reedvill from the south.  Quay and Crazy Crab restaurant to the left of the picture. 
The Reedville water tower just right of centre

Anchored astern of Hullabaloo

…. and up to the southernmost point of Reedville town with the quay and the Crazy Crab restaurant. Here, as briefed, we took the right-hand fork and anchored in a pool about 4m deep, a little behind Hullabaloo.  The creek quickly filled with yachts and we felt a little guilty about having anchored almost in the middle of the deepest part but with several crab pots close to us in slightly shallower water (as shallow as we would have wished to anchor) we felt we had few options.

Looking further up the creek – Kealoha V(ketch, furthest right), Sofia(cutter rigged, just astern of Kealoha V),
An Gobadàn(green, centre of picture)

We shut the engine down at 1615, very conscious that we were all invited to a pot-luck drinks gathering at the Fishing Museum beginning at 1730, before which we really wanted to have a look to see if there were any dodgy connections on the engine that might explain its poor starting.  I cleaned up the obvious connection – the negative grounding onto the engine block. Almost invariably in situations where the starter motor is not getting enough ‘oomph’ this is the weak connection and it had been in the firing line of the salt water leak on our passage from Culebra to Deltaville, so it seemed an obvious place to begin.  Connection cleaned up, we tried an engine start and it leapt into life immediately – great relief!  Hurried showers, collect some food and beers and we were only 45mins or so late for the party – a great catch up with old friends and a chance to make many new ones.

Reedville, VA, USA