Queen Creek VA USA

Our trip to Queen Creek, just 5 miles from Fishing Bay, was to see the Deltaville and Mathews OCC Port Officers, Chris & Bill Burry.  We had tried to meet up with them in June but that hadn’t worked out, but we had also just seen them at the excellent OCC Mathews Yacht Club Dinner, which they had organised, so why the need to see them again so soon?

Blue Velvet moored on Bill and Chris’ dock, head to head with Plover

Other than the fact that they are very good company, we had also agreed to get together so that we could learn a lot more about a computer-based navigation system called Open CPN.  This has been designed by cruisers and uses freely available electronic charts to replace commercially produced chart plotters.  It takes AIS and radar inputs and overlays them over the charts, exactly as the expensive commercial products do but it’s all free and is rapidly evolving with extra add-ons available written by the community of users and developers.  Bill and Chris use theirs on a Windows-based laptop as well as on a tiny Rasperry Pi computer that is barely the size of a cigarette packet.  They have it as their main navigation system and have configured their yacht’s radar and AIS around using it, so they seemed to be ideal people with whom to talk through the system.  So, having crept carefully over the shallow parts of the entrance to Queens Creek (we entered at high tide), at a little past 11am we found Bill and Chris on their lovely dock ready to take our lines.

We love the whole variety of waterside properties in the Chesapeake and Bill and Chris’ home is lovely home, the main body of which dates to the mid-nineteenth century, in a beautiful spot.

Having secured BV, we walked up to the house, trying not to walk over the swimming pool which was camouflaged with its winter cover over it.  Perfect hosts, the kettle was on for a nice cup of tea.  We then sat down in their front room Open CPN School with the picture from Chris’ laptop displayed on the large TV.  She ran through lots of helpful hints on setting it all up and how she organises her electronic charts.  There’s also a very clever way of using Google Maps satellite imagery to create charts; particularly useful in the Pacific where the sextant navigation derived island positions are often somewhat off the GPS WGS84 model of the world.  Fully getting our heads around how to do that will probably have to wait for Post Graduate Open CPN School lessons another day, but we left with a good understanding of what we needed to do to get it all up running. We’ll have a play with Open CPN over the next season and see how we get on.  If nothing else, it’s a completely stand-alone system we can use if our current fixed chartplotters fail.

Centre: Phil and Joan’s house and to its right the wooden bridge over the saltwater pond; a short cut to the neighbours’ home

School finished, Chris and Bill took us for a walk around their land and gave us a brief history of the place.  We walked through the wood that Bill and Chris let grow up over the old helicopter landing site used by the previous owner to fly to back and forth to Washington DC.  We also walked across the wooden bridge which spans the entrance to their saltwater pond.  Relations with Phil and Joan, their neighbours, are very good and we had already all been invited around there for dinner.  Having a wooden bridge over the pond as a short cut between the 2 properties (saving a long hike on the official driveways and track) seemed to be very friendly.  Over dinner we were told that the old rumours suggest that one of the previous owners of Chris and Bill’s home installed his mistress in Phil and Joan’s house and the wooden bridge was very much there to facilitate a ‘friendly relationship’ with the neighbour.

The view out from the huge windows in Phil and Joan’s home

Phil and Joan house is completely different in design being very modern in comparison with Bill and Chris’ more traditional Chesapeake home.  It was a great venue for a lovely meal and fascinating to compare 2 such different waterside properties.  The conversation flowed easily and we heard how busy they all are with local events and societies.  The photographic club, run by Phil, is a particular favourite of Chris and they both avidly provide pictures for the monthly assignments.  It was a lovely evening with great company and we left, having eaten very well, grateful for the short cut back across the bridge to Bill and Chris’ property.

In the morning Bill showed me his enviable collection of power tools in his workshop and used one of his circular saws to cut me a new shelf for our fridge whilst Nicky and Chris unloaded all of the cushions from Plover as part of getting her ready for her winter layup.  We were sad to say goodbye to Bill and Chris but high tide was approaching and it was time for us to be on our way towards Norfolk, so we said our farewells and headed off.  We’ll definitely see them again though, either when we are back in Chesapeake Bay or perhaps further north in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland.  Bill and Chris love cruising there and we have been comparing notes for our planned trip in that direction next summer.

Queen Creek, Virginia, USA