We Have Closed the Circle - Again

We have closed the circle once again.  We arrived back in Clubfoot Creek, off the Neuse River, where we started this seasons trip back in June.

After the second trip to South Dakota we spent another week at the dock in Barrett Creek off of the Wicomico River.  We had a few things to take care of once we were back and then waited for some weather to move out.  On Friday we slipped the lines again and started out motoring down the river to the Chesapeake Bay.  We tried sailing but with the winds light behind us we just sailed with the main slowly to Deltaville.  We were in no hurry and didn't want to burn the fuel.  We anchored for the night and started out early the next morning.  We started with all sails up but could not keep them from collapsing so we dropped them and hoisted the spinnaker.  We sailed at about four knots for several hours and then the wind dropped even lower, we were back to motoring.  We continued on until we reached Point Comfort at Hampton VA where we dropped anchor for the night.  In the morning we heard the noise of flogging sails and looked out to find were were near the starting line for a sailboat race.  They continued to maneuver around the anchored boats until the start signal was sounded and they were off.  Eventually we pulled anchor and started off, we were planning a short day only going to the free dock at The Great Bridge in Chesapeake City.  The Great Bridge is in reference to a battle during the Revolutionary War that forced the British to retreat from the Norfolk area.  It is popular with the cruisers because the city has built docks that we can tie up to for the night at no cost.  We caught up with our friends Jim and Laurie on Kismet.  We had talked to them many times on the SSB radio but had not seen them since Florida last winter.

The next morning we moved to the other side of the river to top off the fuel and water then headed out with several other boats for the long motor trip down the ICW to the Albemarle River.  A lot of boats stop at Coinjock for the night and take advantage of their restaurant which serves a very good prime rib but we continued on to the mouth of the North River to anchor for the night before crossing the Albemarle.  We stayed an extra day to give the winds a chance to shift since we didn't want to beat into a headwind.  The next day we were up before sunrise to get started.  The winds had shifted and had dropped so we were again motoring.  We crossed the river and continued up the Alligator River to the Aligator-Pungo Canal.  This is a twenty mile canal that has been dredged to connect the two rivers as part of the ICW.  Once in the Pungo River we chose a spot and anchored for the night in time to watch the sun set..  It was a long seventy mile day.  The next morning we were up early again and continued along the ICW until we reached the Neuse River and continued upriver reaching Clubfoot Creek mid afternoon.  We dropped anchor and the circle was completed.  We are back at our starting point.

How was the season?  It had it's up's and down's.  We did not go as far this year as we had planned.  The sudden death of Cori's Dad caused us to stop while in Connecticut and then the plans for a second trip to South Dakota meant we had to start our way back early.  We had planned to make it to Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket this season.  We had planned to be back in North Carolina the beginning of October so we had to turn around before we had expected.

By boat we traveled 1507 nautical miles, or 1734 statute miles.  Nautical miles are just a little longer than land miles.  This is about the same distance as traveling from Chicago to Los Angeles, but we do it at about seven miles an hour.  Anyone on a good bicycle could beat us.

What's next?  We will be in the North Carolina area for a few weeks or a month getting ready.  We have a bit of business to take care of while we are here, we will talk about that later. We had ordered a new mainsail from a loft in Oriental before we started out and will be going there to pick it up.  After all these years of making do with our old sail it will be exciting to have a new one to play with.  The provisioning has already started.  We are hoping to spend the winter in the Bahamas again.  If the Covid restrictions are too severe we will spend it in Florida again.  If we are going to the Bahamas we need to have about six months of provisions onboard when we leave.