Corrotoman River VA USA

It’s 45nm from Kiptopeke to Bill and Lydia’s home on the Corrotoman River and we had got the call to the party shortly after 1100hrs on Saturday 11 May.  To get there we needed to make tracks, and fast.  There was some breeze but it was quite fine to our track so we motor-sailed the whole way across a flat, grey Chesapeake, in rain from time to time.

Twin Cove on the head of Bill and Lydia’s dock, with Kelly Rae, belonging to Rick Simpson on the side closer to us and Dragon Run (Bill and Lydia’s yacht) on the far side

But we got there in time and at 1845hrs shut down the log, rapidly put BV to bed on the dock of Bill and Lydia’s neighbour and joined the gang on board George and Frances Sadler’s new yacht, Twin Cove, a beautiful Fleming 55 motor yacht.

Twin Cove

Aboard Twin Cove.  Left to right: Bill Strickland, Reg, Frances Sadler

It was a lovely evening.  We arrived just in time to sample some of the sill (Swedish pickled herring) brought by Rick Simpson to go with pre-dinner drinks.  Rick isn’t Swedish but he had spent time with a couple of Swedish yachts over the winter, had developed a taste for sill and had been gifted some when they had parted.  This was followed by a fabulous crab cake dinner, with crab cakes made to Frances’ own recipe and far better than any we have tasted elsewhere.  Jumbo lump-meat is, apparently, the key to the dish.  We will have to try to replicate it but I fear will come a poor second.

The fleet on the docks

It was a lot of fun to catch up with old friends and, in the case of Rick Simpson, get to know new ones and Bill and Lydia, as the generous hosts they always are, opened their house to everyone.

Dinner out at Adrift.  Left to right:  Doug Selden (Ithaca), Lydia Strickland (Dragon Run), Reg, Bill Strickland (Dragon Run), George Sadler (Twin Cove), Nicky, Rick Simpson (Kelly-Rae), Frances Sadler (Twin Cove)

We had dinner out at Adrift, a relatively new restaurant in White Stone, where the food was excellent but, of course, the company was better.

George and Frances depart on Twin Cove, heading home to Virginia Beach for a short stop before heading north for a cruise on the Hudson River

Just ‘the twins’ left – with us in our usual
position on Bill and Lydia’s dock

But all good things must come to an end and on the Monday George and Frances headed off back towards their home at Virginia Beach.  In a few weeks’ time they planned to be leaving there for a summer cruise up the Hudson River and into Canada – a lifetime’s desire for Frances.  With Twin Cove gone we moved across into our ‘normal’ position on Bill and Lydia’s dock and, after a final evening with Rick, making good use of Bill’s barbecue, we waved him off the next morning.  ‘And then there were two’.

Cleaning and re-proofing the sprayhood.  Something we haven’t done in years!

Over the few days that we were at Bill and Lydia’s we socialised hard but also worked hard, completing some of the never-ending list of boat chores.  Nicky scrubbed the mildew off the sprayhood and then re-proofed it (necessitating it drying in Bill’s workshop as rain threatened and the proofing agent needs to dry thoroughly before being exposed to rain).

Bill’s fabulous workshop where he let me use his tools to fit new zincs into anode
holders for our engine and fridge

Clean sprayhood refitted.  Now we just need
to do the rest of the canvaswork…….

I used Bill’s workshop press-drill to drill out the remains of used zinc anodes from their holders and so that I could re-use the brass holders, filled with new, screw-in zincs.  And, of course, we lent a hand here and there to Bill and Lydia and enjoyed evenings in their company.

But we had a lot of things to organise at Deltaville in advance of putting BV on the hard at Chesapeake Boat Works for the summer.  So, reluctantly, on Wednesday 15 May we left the Corrotoman for the short journey to Fishing Bay at the mouth of the Piankatank River.

But we had a lot of things to organise at Deltaville in advance of putting BV on the hard at Chesapeake Boat Works for the summer.  So, reluctantly, on Wednesday 15 May we left the Corrotoman for the short journey to Fishing Bay at the mouth of the Piankatank River.

Sailing from Cape Lookout to the Chesapeake Bay

Cape Lookout on another beautiful day

Thursday 9 May, Liberation Day in our home Channel Islands, was a beautiful day in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.  Perhaps we should have stayed, dressed overall, to enjoy the weather but we had a passage to make and a good forecast for it, so we left Cape Lookout Bight at midday to head north to the Chesapeake Bay.

Leaving Cape Lookout Bight

We negotiated the sandy entrance and then turned south to clear the miles and miles of Cape Lookout shoals.  The shoals extend 10nm from the lighthouse, 8nm from the tip of the point, so it felt like a long motor south, in wind that was too light to sail, before we could turn to head northeast towards Cape Hatteras .  In the end we did nearly 5 hours of motoring at the start of passage, much of which was quite stop-start as the wind temptingly seemed to be enough to sail but wasn’t.  We met nasty short seas around the shallows off Cape Lookout and on the approaches to and around Cape Hataras, even in these benign conditions; we certainly don’t want to be anywhere near these capes in storm conditions.

Dawn on Friday 10 May

Overnight we had south-southeasterly winds of up to 20kts – good sailing conditions – and we made commensurately good progress.  A flying fish flew over the cockpit and landed on the deck, giving Nicky a bit of a shock, and a small one also landed in the cockpit.

We rounded Cape Hatteras at 0130hrs and bore away downwind towards the Chesapeake Bay.  At dawn the wind started to drop off, which was frustrating, but there was sufficient to keep sailing, albeit much more slowly.  More frustrating were the number of sport’s fishing boats with no AIS and the almost incessant, gabbled radio calls from the US Coast Guard.  Their calls are made so quickly, presumably to try to minimise time on channel 16, that their transmissions are completely ineffective.  It’s virtually impossible to make out the main content of the message and you certainly don’t have time to write any of it down if you can discern it.

You wouldn’t want to get between this tug and its tow

As we approached the entrances to the Chesapeake Bay the shipping became much busier.  There were warships doing manoeuvres and commercial traffic working to deadlines and, mixed in amongst all that, commercial fishing boats, sports fishing boats and grotty yachties like us.  We had lots of dodging to do.

In our opinion, areas of the Chesapeake Bay rival Maine for the number of pot-bobbers per square mile, so we didn’t intend to go too far into the Bay at night.  But we didn’t plan to spend the night holding clear until daylight, not with that amount of shipping in the vicinity of the entrance.  We entered the Bay via the northern entrance, where the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel is a bridge.  It’s quite low but higher than most on the ICW and it kept us clear of the big ships which tend to use the southern entrance over the tunnel.  The biggest problem is resolving the geometry of the bridge (actually 2 bridges) and making sure that you aim for, and pass through, the correct span.  It’d be jolly embarrassing expensive otherwise!

Kiptopeke anchorage and breakwater as seen the morning after we arrived

By this stage the wind had dropped to almost nothing so we were under power, heading up the eastern shore of the Bay to Kiptopeke where we knew, from a visit the previous October, there was a good anchorage close to a State park and protected from the main body of the Bay by a barrier of sunken concrete WWII ships.

Part of the Kiptopeke breakwater as seen the morning after we arrived

Daylight photo of the unlit fish weirs (fish traps) close to the southern entrance to the Kiptopeke anchorage

We arrived in the anchorage at 0025hrs on Saturday 11 May having made a very slow and careful approach through the southern entrance with me on the foredeck with a big torch.  Our ‘steamer-scarer’ was invaluable to search for the unlit fish weirs (traps) that we knew were out there……

Pot-bobbers galore.  Less of an anchorage more of a crab culling zone

……  and the myriad pot-bobbers we knew we would find.  It was a more stressful approach than we would have liked, and finding space to drop the hook in the anchorage [Ed: now more a ‘pot-bobberage’!] was very hard work, but we took it carefully, got BV secure and crashed out for what was left of the night.

We were woken the following morning by a very irate crab fisherman.  Apparently we had anchored too close to his pot-bobbers and were in the way.  We should have been ‘in a marina with all the other yachts and rich people’!  Welcome to Virginia!

Kiptopeke’s an odd sort of place with the breakwater formed by sunken WWII ships; a small ferry dock, all that remains of the busy ferry and railway terminal that was here before the bridge/tunnel was built and now mostly used by anglers; and the State park ashore.  After our resounding welcome from some of the local populace we weren’t planning to stay long.  And then we received a message from Lydia.  A mini-OCC party that evening in George and Frances Sadler’s new (to them) Fleming 55, Twin Cove, on their (Bill and Lydia’s) dock.  Could we make it?  It was only 45nm away.  Of course we could!

Leaving Kipropeke

Kiptopeke Beach, Maryland, USA

Cape Lookout NC USA

Town Docks at Beaufort

At 1000 prompt on Wednesday 8 May we were outside the Beaufort Maritime Museum, almost waiting with carnations in our buttonholes and copies of The New York Times tucked under our arms.  We had no idea what Dianne’s friend would look like but we managed to meet up with each other without resorting to too many spy-movie clichés and collected our camera from him, for which we were very grateful both to him and, of course, Dianne.

Views around Taylor’s Creek in the morning sunshine

With camera in hand [Ed: actually firmly attached to his belt!] we had a last try to buy shrimps from Homer Smith’s Seafood, but the boats hadn’t come in, and then returned to BV and set off for Cape Lookout Bight.

Heading out to Cape Lookout Bight

Cape Lookout Bight entrance

Cape Lookout Bight had been highly recommended to us as a beautiful wilderness area and an excellent anchorage for waiting for a weather window for rounding Cape Lookout.  Actually, the weather was perfectly acceptable for heading off straight to the Chesapeake Bay but we wanted to see the bight and also, if it were open, have a look at the lighthouse.

Cape Lookout Light.  The light has been illuminated by various means over the years.  It is now powered by electricity, all of which is generated by an enormous bank of solar panels close to the light itself

The bight is enormous, with low sandy banks all around.  Parts of the bight are quite deep, other areas are extremely shallow.  Cautiously, we followed the winding shallow channel across the sandbanks in the middle of the bight to get to the eastern side, convenient for a dinghy ride ashore to view the lighthouse from close-up.

Cape Lookout Light with the old keepers’ cottage below it.  The spit on which the lighthouse stands is eroding remarkably rapidly, and mostly, surprisingly, from the Cape Lookout Bight side.  In the past, the spit on which the lighthouse stands was connected to the mainland via a narrow isthmus.  Hurricane damage resulted in that isthmus being breached and the local leisure and commercial boating communities found the waterway that was opened up so useful that the Army Corps of Engineers now maintain it as a branch of the ICW rather than letting it silt up and rebuild as land as it naturally would do.  The consequent waterflow is causing the spit on which the lighthouse and the keepers’ cottage etc stand to erode from the bight side.  In the days when the keepers lived at the light, the bank up from the beach was located about where the people are standing in the water in the picture above

Disappointingly, the lighthouse was not yet open for the season but the keepers’ cottage was so we enjoyed a wander through that, where we learned quite a lot about the lives of keepers and their families and a fair amount about lighthouses in general and those of North Carolina in particular.

We took a stroll south along the spit towards Cape Lookout point, but we didn’t have the time to go all the way to the point proper.  However, on our walk we did find out the name of some of the flowers we had seen on Shackleton Bank Island at Beaufort.

Outer Banks view

A beautiful peaceful evening in the bight

Grilling dorado kebabs

And after a good walk ashore we returned to BV, finished off the last of the dorado as kebabs……

…..baked the bread we had started off that morning…..










….and enjoyed a fabulous sunset across the bight.

Cape Lookout, North Carolina, USA

Beaufort NC USA

BV anchored in Taylor’s Creek

We slept late on Monday 6 May and then moved round to Taylor’s Creek.  With the gale over, a fair number of yachts had moved onwards, so finding a suitable space was easy.  We’d come to Beaufort to see the OCC Port Officer, Diane Tetreault, who was looking after the camera Reg had lost when we were last in the town in November 2018.  We managed to get in touch with her, only to discover that she was on holiday in Peru for another couple of weeks!  Oh, well, some things are just not meant to be.  We’d just have to collect the camera on our way back south again.

We like Beaufort.  It’s a small quiet town with a great dinghy dock, a usefully positioned laundry and pretty good food shops only a mile’s walk away.  Best of all, it’s a pretty place so we spent the day wandering around enjoying the scenery and visiting the excellent maritime museum (of which we have no pictures).

The old part of Beaufort is most attractive, with old lapboard houses, complete with the air-conditioning of the time – verandas and balconies.

Some of the properties are very old.  We saw ‘Historic Beaufort’ plaques dating properties from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the oldest building we found being over 250 years old and dated at 1768 and 1728.

Views across Taylor’s Creek to Shackleford Island from the Town Dock

The Navtex Active antenna box which I initially
thought had failed

But we live on a boat so there’s always something not working quite as it should!  This time it was the Navtex, which we realised was not picking up messages from Norfolk or many from Charleston either.  So, we needed to spend some time working on it.  I initially suspected that the active antenna box wasn’t working properly, but that all seemed to be OK so ‘clearly’ it had to be a poor connection somewhere.  Unfortunately, there was nothing obvious wrong with any of the connections in the antenna chain or on the electrical side, so it looks like a problem that’s going to bug us for a while.

Scoot, one of the other yachts in the anchorage, with crew Sam and Jane (and Poco the dog)

The following day, 7 May, we heard from Dianne again.  Working well above and beyond the call of duty she was in the process of calling her friends, trying to find one who wasn’t also on holiday like her(!) who could go to her flat to retrieve our camera.  We couldn’t believe our ears and promised to sit tight in Beaufort until we heard back from her.  Shortly afterwards we got chatting with the crew of Scoot, Sam and Jane and dog, Poco, who were also in Taylor’s Creek.  It would have been nice to have spent a bit more time with them but they were planning on moving north with the southerly wind the next day and were moving across to Cape Lookout Bight for the night – perhaps we should go too?  But, of course, we couldn’t.  So we waved them off and hoped to see them sometime in the future.

To fill the rest of the day I made new straps for the dinghy seat and promised myself that before too long I would make a proper cover for the PVC seat as well.  I also made a new harness for the outboard motor, one that sits under the motor’s cover, rather than on top, so that it too is protected from the ravages of strong UV light.  It would be a bit of a bummer to have the engine fall into the drink as a result of the lifting harness being weakened by sunlight.  And, in a bid to do all the ‘really fun jobs’ in one day, started the 2-day process of descaling the pipework in the aft heads.  Mmmm – such fun!

Looking across Shackleford Bank Island

One of the hundreds, thousands of tiny crabs we
saw in the salt marshes on the island.  This one’s
a left-hander (left-clawer?).  Others are right-handed

To recover from the shock of work, we took the dinghy across to Shackleford Bank Island, hoping to see the wild horses which live on the island.  We’d inadvertently chosen to go over at low tide which was a boon in a couple of ways.  Firstly, it meant that we could take the outer loop path along the beaches (which are totally covered at high tide) and, secondly, we got to see the thousands of tiny crabs that live in the salt marshes that fringe the island.

Miles of pristine white Outer Banks beach – until the tide comes in

Quick!  Escape!  Dig-in!

Having spent longer than one would have thought possible watching the hundreds and thousands of tiny crabs scuttling around in the marshes, we had a lovely walk along the pristine beaches on the ocean side of the island.

The grassland in flower

And then we headed inland in search of the wild horses and enjoyed the maritime grassland covered in thousands of tiny, and not so tiny, brightly coloured flowers.

Big sky country

Big sky country with wild-horses

We eventually found a herd of wild-horses…….

Said to be from original Spanish stock brought here when America was first colonised, the wild horses currently on the island actually only date back to the middle of the twentieth century.  There are several herds.  This one appeared to number about a dozen

…..and were able to get surprisingly close to them without, noticeably, causing them alarm.

Beaufort (across Taylor’s Creek) from Shackleford Bank Island, with BV in the centre of the picture

The walk back to the dinghy took us past an excellent vantage point for taking a picture of BV in the anchorage.

And we had one last look at the thousands of crazy tiny crabs before dinghying back to Beaufort and trying out the ice-cream selection at the General Store (excellent!).

More homemade pizza; maybe I should made
less pizza dough next time!

We were settling down to enjoy an evening pizza and film night when Dianne got in touch again.  She’d found an available friend who could help, gave us his details and said that he should be able to get the camera for us the next day.  What great news!  And, indeed, the next day we met him outside the Maritime Museum (local focal point everyone can find) and he handed us our camera.  Dianne is absolutely a fabulous Port Officer and we OCC members are so lucky to have her in Beaufort.

Beaufort, North Carolina, USA