Deltaville VA USA

The developing autumnal colours on the Corrotoman River

We left Bill & Lydia’s dock at 1000hrs on Friday 16 November on a stunning autumnal day.  When we had been here in summer we had thought this part of the Chesapeake Bay to quite lovely with well-spaced, attractive houses nestling into the wooded shoreline.  In autumn it looks even better with the trees taking on their autumn colouring.

Sailing under the Rappahannock Bridge

We really wanted to be starting our transit south and irritatingly the conditions were perfect for heading out of the Chesapeake Bay and around Cape Hattaras.  Friends of ours were doing exactly that and Chris Parker, the east coast weather guru, was trumpeting ‘sail south now or get trapped for weeks by the imminent round of winter storms’.  However, we still needed to pick up the new DuoGen from Phil & Lesley’s.  Moving BV south a bit we decided on Deltaville as the best destination for us, primarily because Nicky had found out that Enterprise Car Hire run a shuttle service from the Deltaville marinas to their depot at Gloucester.  That solved a big headache for us (how to get to/from the car hire place without having to lean further on Bill and Lydia) so Deltaville was now the destination.  But, aside from all of that spare parts and transport admin, it was just really nice to be out sailing again.

Anchored back off Fishing Bay Marina, Deltaville

We dropped our anchor at 1415hrs a short distance off Fishing Bay Marina near Deltaville.  I think that we must have been within a few feet of the exact position that we had occupied in June and it felt strangely good to be back. We were certainly blessed with some lovely weather whilst we pottered about doing our chores waiting for news on the delivery of the DuoGen.  Fortunately, that news came quickly with a message from Phil confirming that the order from the UK had arrived at their house.  Great news, even though it had taken a week longer than we had expected to get cleared by Customs.  But it was finally there and so we were able to book a hire car and a pick-up from the marina on Monday morning.  That gave us the weekend to catch up on (some of) the rest of the maintenance.

Fitting the new AIS aerial

When we had sailed up to Bill and Lydia’s house on 29^thOctober, Lydia had tried unsuccessfully to track our progress on Marine Traffic and so we realised that, once again, our AIS signal was not as good as it should be.  We knew what the issue was: the ‘easy, no solder’ connection on the bottom of the aerial.  ‘Easy, no solder’ it might be but any tarnishing on the push fit connection and the effect on the transmission is marked.  Tracking down a dedicated, tuned AIS aerial with the right connections that would fit our mounting bracket was a little trickier than I had expected but some internet searches showed that there was just one close by and it happened to be in the big chandlery at Deltaville.  At the time we hadn’t realised that we would be returning to Deltaville and so we had driven down and bought the aerial along with a few other bits and pieces.  Now, anchored off Deltaville, we had the time to fit it.  So, Nicky got a short upper-body workout winching me halfway up the mast to remove the old aerial and, after a bit of soldering, I got another trip up the mast to attach the new aerial.  Hopefully, that will be the last time we have to tinker with the AIS aerial for quite some time.  The only buggeration about the job was that when I was returning to the cockpit from the mast, having completed the job, I slipped, landing heavily on the deck.  I was unhurt but my nice wire cutters flew out of my pocket in a lovely arc and landed in the sea with a loud plop.  Just as well that we were anchored close to a good hardware store!

I was able to put my woes behind me later that afternoon when we joined Bill and Lydia and Doug and Alison Selden in the ‘captains’ lounge’ at Regatta Point Marina to watch The Hoos (UVA) play Georgia Tech away.  Why Regatta Point Marina?  Well, that’s where Bill and Lydia were preparing Dragon Run for her winter haulout on the Monday.  Unfortunately, The Hoos lost this game too, so now Nicky and I are banned from watching them play!

(Left) The charger that abruptly failed.  (Right) The new charger shoehorned into the same space

Sunday provided us with a bit more ‘excitement’.  We had been considering doing an early oil change on the main engine and the generator but, given that we might be motoring through the ICW and that they both still had a few hrs left before they were due the oil change, we decided to wait. But we still needed some hot water, so we fired up the generator.  It had only been running for about 20 sec, with the battery charger switched on and working, when Nicky suddenly remembered that we hadn’t opened the cooling water inlet and exhaust for the generator.  So, I quickly shut down the battery charger and the generator and we opened up the necessary valves.  When we fired everything up again, the battery charger wasn’t working; there were no lights on its panel when there should be several.  A check for loose power supply connections or blown fuses revealed nothing; we had to assume that it had failed.  [Ed: Even if we had got it going, it’s too important a bit of gear to put up with it only working intermittently.]

At least we were in a very good place to get another one; far better it failed in Deltaville than at a Caribbean island in a few weeks’ time .  In fact, the large chandlery nearby had an exact replacement in stock, just with the USA brand name sticker on it.  We called the store and asked them to put it aside for us but then noticed that the reviews on it were dreadful with too many cases of abrupt failures [Ed:!!]. So, I started a search for an alternative.  This was quite difficult because the space the charger needed to fit into is quite limited on BV, plus we wanted a charger that would cover a 100-270 volt input range so that we could use shore power in the USA and Canada (110V), as well as our generator (240V) and shore power in the UK (240V) and Europe (220V).  However, after a bit of work I found a ProNautic model that would accept the right voltages, would just fit in the space available and which also had some half-decent reviews.  Even better, the local chandlery had one of those in stock as well and they price-matched the online competition, saving us nearly $200! Of course, having bought and collected our new charger, we had to spend the rest of Sunday fitting it, rather than getting the blog up to date.  Ho hum. It was an unexpected job but we were very happy that we had been able to replace the suspect charger so quickly and easily.

BV safely tucked up in her mooring in Fishing Bay Marina

With a quick trip up to Great Falls planned, we booked BV into the Fishing Bay marina for a couple of nights (the insurance policy doesn’t allow us to leave her unattended at anchor for more than 24hrs), so on Monday 19 November we had an early start, moving BV from the anchorage into the well sheltered marina berth we had arranged to take.

The slightly troublesome DuoGen delivery finally
made it to Phil & Lesley’s house

The shuttle run to Gloucester worked well, even if the SUV arrived a little later than we had been briefed, and we had a good fast run up the I-95 to Great Falls. It was lovely to see Phil and Lesley again, despite only being back for an overnight flying visit.

The return trip was equally slick. We left very early to be sure of getting through the rush-hour traffic and back to Gloucester in time for the last (1130) run to the marinas.  In fact, we made such good time that we got the packages back onto BV and even slipped into the seafood suppliers in Deltaville to buy some clams for dinner before arriving at the hire car depot 30mins ahead of schedule!

The new DuoGen fitted and wired up ready to go

So, I spent the Tuesday afternoon fitting the new DuoGen whilst Nicky assisted in between doing the laundry, some other chores and a good study of the weather.  Chris Parker had been right, it wasn’t looking good for sailing offshore. So, with a good sailing day forecast for Wednesday 21 November we planned to head down to Hampton under eco-friendly sail power before taking BV on a power driven canal-boating holiday through the ICW – now that we know the height of mast!

Deltaville, Virginia, USA