Reedville VA USA

Great sailing conditions

We are off and running again!  It was an early start to get some fuel at Deltaville, load our folding bikes, have the holding tank pumped out and say goodbye to our friends in the boatyard.  After all that we set off properly from Fishing Bay at 0940 to head up the Chesapeake Bay to get to Annapolis.  There’s a boat show running there next week and we also want to attend the Ocean Cruising Club’s Fall Dinner which will be held there just before the boat show starts.  Having just spent several weeks working on Blue Velvet this is also a shakedown cruise to check that everything is working properly on the boat.  So far there is a generator problem that we know about from the anchorage in Deltaville plus a question mark over the wind instruments.  Every now and then the wind gauge shows winds of 99 knots.  As BV is still upright with most of her sails set, I think that we can put that down to an instrument error!

Bashing up the Bay

Given that we didn't know what would or wouldn’t work we set our target low for the first day and aimed for Reedville, just 25 miles north of Deltaville.  Twenty-five miles as the crow flies but, of course, we had to beat into wind so we sailed 36 miles to get there.

At anchor in Reedville

Reedville views

Walter and Mary’s house

Despite beating into wind, we arrived very comfortably at 1530hrs.  That gave us time to continue to try to make contact with Walter and Mary who are the OCC Port Officers in Reedville.  We were on the edge of our mobile phone coverage but eventually we got in touch with them to invite them for drinks.  Sadly, we discovered that they were up in Vermont.  Maybe next time?  At least we should see them at the Annapolis Dinner.

So, instead, we spoiled ourselves with crab dip canapés (the dip bought from J&W Seafood in Deltaville) to accompany our G&Ts with ICECUBES!!!!  A big thank you to Bill and Lydia for solving that critical shortcoming on our vessel; the vertical metal ice-cube tray works brilliantly with our new fridge system.

We continued the crabby theme with a celebration meal for being properly on the water again.  What else but crab cakes made from jumbo lump crab meat (locally sourced, of course) also from J&W Seafood.

Now normally this would be the time to turn in, given we had an early start planned to continue our passage north.  However, maintenance work is never fully completed on a sailing yacht and so Nicky’s pre-bedtime task was covering the new seat covers and setting up a painting area in the saloon.  We’d had the timber cut for us by Rick at Stingray Point Boat Yard in Deltaville but, that had been something I’d sorted out at the end of our time on the hard, so Nicky hadn’t been able to paint the wood in her lock-up whilst she’d been doing all the other varnishing work.  So, over the next few days we’ll be sailing and painting timber.

Reedville, Virginia, USA