East River Mobjack Bay VA USA

Hard on the wind eastbound approaching the Rappahannock River bridge

Wolf Trap Light

Bright and early on the morning of Thursday 19 July (well at about 0820), we motored away from Bill and Lydia’s dock, headed south down the Chesapeake.  It was a beautiful sunny day with a light easterly quadrant breeze and, feeling that we had done more than enough motoring for a while, we took good advantage of the wind and had a lovely sail east along the Rappahannock and then south. Our plan was to visit either East River or York River for our overnight stop, both places recommended by Bill and Lydia.  As we were sailing in that direction, Nicky sent an e-mail to Susan Goldstein asking if they were still in their East River house or if they had returned to their main home in Fort Lauderdale.  If they were in East River we’d go there and invited them to come on board for drinks. We knew the Goldsteins through some friends we’d spoken to regularly on the Mediterranean SSB Net, Karen and Steve Jones.  They had told Susan that we were in the area and to look out for us and, amazingly, that had been very easy because Susan and Richie were on the OCC Chesapeake Rally with us.  Susan came back immediately with a different plan.  They already had plans to go out to the Mathews Yacht Club with another sailing couple and suggested we join them.  East River, therefore, became the destination.

New Point Comfort Light on the north side of the entrance to the Mobjack Bay

Turning south down the Chesapeake, we found the waters to the east of the Mathews Peninsula to be shallow (<10m deep) to a good 4 miles out with patches only 3m or so deep at around 3nm off the shore.  So we kept a close eye on the echo-sounder as we passed inshore of Wolf Trap Light and maintained our heading for a good mile or so before turning into the Mobjack Bay. Here the shallows continue but we were able to creep within half a mile or so of the New Point Comfort Light – close enough to be able to appreciate the beautiful beach backdropping it.

Views of the East River, Mobjack Bay

Richie was out sailing in Puff and spotted us as we made our way towards the entrance to the East River.  He called us on the VHF radio and gave us details of the location of their mooring and said that there would be plenty of room for us to anchor close to it.  With the wind in the east we were able to sail into the East River and almost all the way to the anchorage, about 2½ nm up from the entrance.  It’s a beautiful river and we thoroughly enjoyed the views as we sailed up.

Williams Wharf, East River.  Once the site of the East River’s steamship pier, now the site of a very active rowing and kayaking club with an enormous new clubhouse being built

We also appreciated the many withies (small stakes or bamboo sticks) stuck in the shallow areas.  There are proper lateral marks showing the general line of the channel but regular users of the river, presumably local homeowners, have marked the places where silting has started to encroach on where one might expect there to be deep(ish) water.

Puff ghosting towards her mooring

At the top end of the navigable (for us) river, we anchored near to Puff’s mooring and watched for Richie, ghosting up the river, a short distance behind us.

Richie and Susan’s home.  Built in the 1840s (‘pre-Revolution’) – a truly old American home, pre-dating ours in Guernsey by about 60 years!

Boats put to bed and with us showered and ready to go ashore, Richie picked us up in their small run-around powerboat and took us to their dock.  Their home is a lovely old (1840s) lapwood house, on three floors, set in about 12 acres of land.  There’s lots of beautiful original wood inside, particularly on the floors, and they have done a wonderful job of renovating the whole building so that it is in keeping with its period but comfortable for living in today.

View from Richie and Susan’s screen porch

But we particularly loved the view out towards the river from the screen porch at the back of the house.

Mathews Yacht Club waterfront

We had a great dinner at the Mathews Yacht Club with Richie and Susan and their friends, Gerry and Wendy (who own a Zimmerman motorboat, Zimmerang, but who spend most of their time delivering other people’s boats). The Yacht Club is in a lovely setting on Stutt’s Creek and, with Thursday nights being ‘home-style cooking’ night, we ate a delicious meal of pot roasted beef or fried cod, mash and veg. Both the cod and the beef were very good and the portions were huge so there was meat left that we took with us for lunch on board BV the following day.  We had a lovely evening chatting with everyone and were sad when the meal ended and it was time to return homewards, though with a short detour through Mathews town, of which Susan is rather proud and rightly so.  It’s one of the few places we have been here that is a town centre in the style that we would recognise from the UK.  There’s a church in the middle, several places to eat and drink and a wide variety of shops including, shock, horror, somewhere to buy food!!  And you can walk around the town too!  It’ll never catch on as a concept……[Ed: and, clearly, it didn’t!  Most of the villages/small towns we have seen are devoid of a decent grocery store and you need a car to travel to get supplies].

Early morning on the upper reaches of the East River

Puff²!

The following morning we were up bright and early as I had volunteered to help Richie fit a replacement inner forestay to Puff before we left.  It was a beautiful morning, with golden sunlight and glassy still waters.  Rivers are particularly beautiful on this sort of day so I took several photos. Richie came over shortly afterwards and hauled me up his mast whilst Nicky readied BV for sea (and for Richie’s look-see at BV).

And then we were off.  With the new deck wash, raising the anchor was a joy. All the mud washed off easily; clean decks and not a bucket in sight, fantastic!  It had been a delightful short stop with Richie and Susan in a beautiful river, somewhere we will certainly return to, but our next stop Cape Charles Town Harbour (recommended by both Susan and Richie, and Bill and Lydia) would put us ready to depart from the Chesapeake Bay when the weather window started on Sunday.

East River, Mobjack Bay, VA, USA