Our second night at our anchorage in the Rhode River was as pleasant as our first. The weather remained stellar, and though a couple of boats joined us at our anchorage, we still felt nicely secluded. We read, watched some football, did some needlework and got in a nice paddle for exercise. There was definitely more boat traffic as it was a beautiful Sunday in September, but the flopper stoppers did their job well to mitigate the boat wakes. You can see the flopper stoppers in the attached video. They are poles that extend out from the boat when we are at anchor. Hanging from the end of the poles are aluminum shutter contraptions that easily descend in the water as the boat leans that way, but the shutters close when the boat tries to go back the other way thus stopping any roll. They really are game changers in making rolly anchorages comfortable!
Rhode River Achorage
We pulled up our muddy anchor early on Monday, September 18 and headed for Solomons, MD, eight hours down the Chesapeake Bay. Bob was happy to arrive at Solomons Yachting Center as he had been stationed at Patuxent Naval Air Station, right across the Patuxent River, as a general surgeon in 1993. He had really enjoyed that area back then and happily found it still had the same vibe. As we arrived, we also discovered that it was the day the area waterman were having their annual boat docking competition. A big crowd was gathered to watch and cheer the skill of these guys as they whipped their boats around and backed into a slip at top speed. Not happening for us aboard Robes! Here’s a YouTube clip from 2017 to give you an idea: https://youtu.be/ea73lQy_ppM?si=hcWNqxYh2PE6AlKT The type of boat they drive is called a Chesapeake Bay Deadrise. They are beautiful to look at and remain the year round workhorses (now mostly in fiberglass) of the Chesapeake for everything from crabbing, oystering and fishing. This picture shows the unique plank construction of an old wooden deadrise being restored near where we docked.
We ate that night at The Island Hideaway, a nice dockside restaurant and planned to get underway for Deltaville early the next morning. Well, the best laid plans… We started out of the harbor and the engine sputtered and stopped! Restart, run a few feet, stalled… again… drifting towards other boats… getting anchor ready just in case… repeat… repeat… repeat… until we managed to limp back to our dock and tie up again. Whew 😅 Bob had changed over from one fuel filter to another the night before – we figured that had to have been the culprit as the engine sounded starved for fuel. We spoke to the marina and planned to stay a second night as Bob descended into the engine room to troubleshoot the fuel system. Fuel additive, changing three Racor fuel filters to new ones, cleaning the filter bowls and working the on-engine mechanical pump brought Robes back to life. The filters were pretty ugly – we clearly stirred up some junk up the night before – another lesson learned: change the fuel filters more often!
All went well the next morning for our seven hour run down to Stingray Point near Deltaville, VA. The wind was NE and built during the day so we were very happy to have the Seakeeper working! We then nervously slipped into the channel taking us into the marina as the water looked pretty lean – ‘just stay EXACTLY in the middle’ the marina said, ‘and you’ll be fine’. We were and we were rewarded with a gorgeous location and set up. Safe Harbor Stingray Point was lovely and tucked into tall pines on a totally protected inlet. Tina guided us to a great tie up and we had a nice walk and delicious meal grilled out.
Up again early on Thursday,September 21, and off to Gloucester Point and the York River Yacht Haven. On the way we passed a group of another Chesapeake Bay classic watercraft – seven or eight Chesapeake Bay buyboats either heading to or from a rendezvous. These boats don’t work any longer, but they were used extensively for many years to haul everything around the shallow waters of the bay: fresh seafood, produce, passengers, construction materials, etc. They are truly gorgeous to look at and because of this, a number have been restored. They were beautiful to see going by.
We were eager to arrive at Gloucester Point (great name 😉) as the weather outlook was deteriorating. A subtropical depression was now building and would soon earn a name, Ophelia, as it strengthened to a tropical storm and was making a run at hurricane designation. It’s projected tract was right on target for both our new home in Oriental, NC, as well as our marina the following day. So, it was with great relief that we arrived at York River Yacht Haven to find it was a virtual hurricane hole that was expertly run. Dockmaster Dave had us tucked away in a safe slip and lots of lines and fenders went out. We celebrated with a great meal at the on-site restaurant YROC (York River Oyster Company) in the company of the super personable manager Chris and entertained with sea stories from locals Mark and Dickie. We felt very welcomed. The next day we rented a car (thanks for the ride Mary Ann!) and did some shopping. The weather continued to fail as Ophelia worked towards the NC coast. The power went out around 8 pm, but it’s nice to be on a boat with lithium batteries and a generator when that happens! It’s less nice to be listening to 30+ mph sustained and 45+ gusts whistle through sailboat rigging and rocking at the slip. Not the best sleep we’ve had this trip. But, our slip was terrific and we’re still here. The weather is still ugly, but the storm surge stayed below the restaurant / parking lot and the pilings were tied to are plenty high enough. We did check the cams down in Oriental and saw a pickup truck that someone forgot to move as the water rose. Our house is 13 ft above water level, so it should be fine, but it’s certainly wet and windy down there. We decided to stay here another day to await the return of power and make sure the storm surge with today’s tide is ok. We will head back to Ohio tomorrow to check on the house, run errands and go through three months of mail 😳 We then plan to visit the house in NC and return to the boat in a week or two. Bob then has a six day job at East Carolina (about 2.5 hours away from the boat). Eventually, we will be back aboard Robes in the last week or two of October to resume our trek down to our new home port of Grace Harbor at River Dunes. So, no blog for a month – we’ll pick it up when we get underway again. Take care!
