Tag Archives | Nordhavn

It’s another one of those peaceful Sunday mornings… My favorite way to start a day — quiet, overcast, the view from the salon window is like an old photograph, and so far, other than a few gulls, there’s not a soul stirring around the harbor.
We’re now tied up in Solomons Island, MD at Spring Cove Marina where we’re spending a soggy Labor Day Weekend. Though the sun may make an appearance today, it’s probably too little too late and has been a disappointment for those deserving a sunny respite from work. Especially for the marina operators; all prepped to handle the large crowd of boaters, who for the most part have canceled reservations due to weather.

So far, we’re enjoying the bay, we always do. I like motoring to all our favorite towns and marinas while mostly running in deep-ish water — very comfortable cruising — unlike the attention demanding shallow windings of the ICW. Mel likes the local restaurants serving good Blue Crab and local fish…  and the little shops. We both enjoy bumping into old acquaintances and making new ones, this seems to happen a lot on the Chesapeake.

Lady M, Marty and Amy, we’ve known them for years.  Now 88, Marty and his girlfriend Amy — have been running up and down the east coast for so many years. Marty is a wealth of knowledge and experience, he’s our personal cruising guide. If we have doubts about an inlet or a marina, we call Marty. Been there done that, many times. We always enjoy their company and did for the few days while repairing our lightning damage at Atlantic Yacht Basin. (Which, by the way, seems all good)

Leaving AYB and heading out into the Chesapeake, we found the Bay to be a bit sloppy, but soon the tide changed direction and all settled down.

Around Thimble Shoals Light, we made way toward the York River, Gloucester Point, VA and York River Yacht Haven. We’ve done this many times so with the comfort of previous track lines on our charts, we easily skirted the shoal and eased into the marina.

We were surprised to see Southern Star on the same T-head. Istaboa was briefly tied next to N-47 Southern Star while at Old Port Cove. Later we got together with Ted and Jenny and we’ve enjoyed their company several times since.
Nice folks.

They gave us a great tie at YRYH, out on a T-head with a killer view from our stern. Waking early every morning and having my coffee with the sun rising above Sarah Creek was always a pleasure and certainly worth the effort of getting out of bed.

While at YRYH we endured a tropical disturbance that could have been much worse. With wind constantly blowing hard, gusts to 40mph, and hard rain all day, we discovered a couple of good leaks. Nothing that we couldn’t quickly stop, although they did require some creativity to overcome. Wind and rain found the weak spots, duct tape and a plastic bag stemmed the leaks until a proper fix was done the following dry day.

 The next morning brought an end to bad weather and we started that day with sunny skies and pleasant temps. It’s been a long time since we’ve experienced mid 70º temps, we’re actually wearing pants. Nice.

So after a few days of weather, both good and bad, we untied and pulled out of York River.

We like YRYH and they’ve made many changes for the better. As we did a few years ago, we’ve decided to book our slip there on a monthly so we’ll return from time to time, making this our base on the Bay. It’s a nicely tucked away marina that will make for a decent hiding hole in a blow. (we hope)

Our 90 mile run from YRYH to Solomons was nice and smooth. On the way up we passed through the fleet of commercial fishing boats from Reedville. We assume the Menhaden must be schooling up.

Now, everyone’s attention is on Hurricane Irma. Our intentions are to hang here for a few more days and take care of some biz. Then move on to Herrington Harbour and Annapolis, if we don’t have to head back to York River to hide out.
We’d like to visit old friends over at St Micheal’s and stop at a few more little port towns along the Eastern Shore before heading back, but we’ll see.

Damn, it seems every hurricane update brings even worse news for everyone on the East Coast, time will tell.

Fake News? Don’t bet on that.

Fingers crossed for now.

Adios,

In all the years and all the miles of doing this, we’ve never had any problems with lightning; been in plenty of storms, but suffered nothing worse than the anxiety it brings.
Then,  finally,  a loud bang, a flash, and we realized we’d been hit or almost anyway.

Sonar, chartplotter, and radar screens blinked then rebooted, I turned to head back out to the Neuse River and deeper water, then started working to bring back some electronics. Luckily, we’ve redundant nav systems on-board and our computer driven system was not affected. Charts and AIS were still running, but we had no depth info.

After a few minutes I had depth coming from sonar, but oddly enough no sonar screen – just the numbers. That was enough to get into the marina so we turned back to the entry point and headed in.
Things could have definitely been worse and we’ve heard many stories that were. We slowly motored into River Dunes basin and saw a beautiful marina with Rich, the harbormaster, waving at us from our dock.
The rain had stopped and the storm had moved on. The rest of the night was quiet as I went about going through all the affected systems.

With all the redundancies aboard I was able to put together a working nav system and we pulled out the next morning, heading for Belhaven, NC and River Forest Marina.

Another cool little town. The docks at River Forest are old, but the electricity is stable and the depths are good. The dockmaster’s name is Henry Boyd III. He and a group of Belhaven citizens bought the marina out of bankruptcy. They’re slowly rebuilding the docks, but the lovely old southern manor next door was brought back to mint condition. Henry and his crew are very proud of the project and love to talk about it. They also loaned us a golf cart and gave us directions to town for dinner. Spoon River Art Works and Market is a fine restaurant. The local Black Drum was killer. The place was crowded.

That evening we went through another storm, but other than rolling us around for a few minutes there were no problems. We ended the day with a peaceful sunset

The next morning we made way to Coinjock to spend the night. Coinjock is Coinjock. No, we didn’t get the steak, but the soft shell craps were very good.

Then, AYB. We always stop here and throw a bit of money at James Taylor’s crew. They do good work and this time we may need to take advantage of that.

All in all, we did okay, as far as storm damage goes.
Our main GPS was acting up, but after a reset it came back for the most part. It now shows us running at .05 knots while at the dock, but it’s position seems to be okay. We have several ways to get GPS info so that doesn’t stop the show.
One of our depth sounder transducers is dead.
Both Raymarine displays are blinky.
Ironically, the Sirius Weather Receiver was fried and has yet to return.
By far the most expensive damage is the KVH Satellite TV dish. It’s toast.

I called our insurance company, and inquired about making a claim. They’ve since sent out a surveyor who thinks the damages are worse than I do. He explained how lightning causes crazy intermittent problems that usually show up at critical times. He’s probably correct.

So, here we are, laying up at AYB, waiting to hear back from several folks.

There’s good friends tied up just behind us and it’s nice catching up with them.

For some reason we’ve always liked it here. Always little projects to do and AYB has the essential supplies to get them done.

We’re thinking The Chesapeake Bay will be our next leg, but news of Sea Nettles (Jelly Fish) may change that. The Bay full of Nettles is not uncommon this time of year. They clog sea strainers and stop air conditioning; not good in 90º heat .

And, as they so often are, our plans are still peculating.

Life’s good ~

Cheers,

Nordhavn 57-26 Istaboa

After a nice couple of days in Georgetown, the weather settled and we continued our trip north.Leaving Georgetown, SC was a trip. Inside the little harbor things were calm, a bit of current, but as soon as we made it into Winyah Bay the tidal surge gra…