Life after Looping
We moved aboard
Destinées in April 2013. After living aboard for a year, upgrading some of the equipment, and doing some maintenance on the boat, we left Old Point Comfort (Hampton, VA) on a yearlong, 6345-mile cruise around America’s Great Loop. We’d been through the IntraCoastal Waterway (ICW); out in the Atlantic Ocean and many magnificent harbors; into Canada across the Great Lakes (including travel through the North Channel and Georgian Bay); up and down numerous rivers, lakes, and canals; in and out of 134 locks (including two lift locks and a marine railroad); across the Gulf of Mexico; around and through Florida, including the Florida Keys; and out into the Gulf of Mexico to the Dry Tortugas (named for plentiful sea turtles and no fresh water). Our travels included peaceful and not-so-peaceful, swift current and tidal waters.
What do you do after a yearlong Great Loop adventure? We’d thought to primarily continue travel wherever and whenever on the East Coast, north in the summer and south during the winter.
Sandwiched between annual checkups in the Hampton Roads area, the Fourth of July in downtown Washington, DC, and back close to North Carolina for Nelson’s 55th high school reunion September 26, we decided to see more of the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River and circle the Delmarva Peninsula.
Being full-time cruisers, we thought about where we’d like to spend more time (a week or more) during this travel. I immediately thought of Chincoteague-Assateague Islands. However, when I looked for a place to bring the boat in and stay longer, there was only a town dock and no weekly or monthly rates. The dock master Wayne Merritt said, “We’d not thought of Chincoteague as a place of destination for boaters.”
When Serendipity Strikes
In studying the navigation charts over the next couple of months, it became clear that we’d have to stop at Chincoteague, at least overnight. Maybe we could stay two or three days, but without a weekly or monthly rate, most places to tie up the boat are not affordable for more than a day or two for most people who are retired and living on a fixed income. There is no slip fee if you anchor. Unfortunately we have a 50-pound standard poodle; it’s work to get on and off the boat, three or four times a day, when anchored. So, we tend to tie up at a dock and take advantage of periodic longer term lower fee slip rates. Downtown Washington, D.C. on the Potomac at Capital YC was an extravagant expenditure, so we’d spend the rest of our summer travel looking for economy at other places. Going around the Chesapeake Bay, we explored places that we both had (and not) been to before now. Some places we found a two- to three-day or weekly rate; sometimes staying over and sometimes not. We thoroughly enjoyed everywhere we ventured.
Having a longtime friend in Pennsylvania, we looked for a place to stay within driving distance of her home. At Havre de Grace the marina staff initially said there were no slips available until after August. As this was the closest location to our friend, we managed to arrive the last of July for a two-day stay. Then, serendipity struck. We saw our friend and restocked our supplies. It was also here in a populated port that we detected a need for new 12V household batteries. In case you don’t know, when 12V batteries decide they are at the end of their life-cycle, it becomes quickly apparent, as they will not stay charged for more than a few hours.
Providence placed us at this location. There were other full-time and live aboard boaters who took an interest. It seems a slip, belonging to someone who’d traveled to New York City for a couple of months, was coincidentally vacant. Once the marina staff got to know us, they became our best friends. There we were, in one of the most popular boating ports, with ongoing local activities, given one of the nicest, best located slips at the marina and at a lower monthly rate, too. The cost savings for staying an entire month offset the cost of new 12V household and generator batteries.
Furthermore, a fellow boater provided information and transportation to the largest, lowest price retail battery outlet in close by Newark, DE. We not only economized expenses and had our friend visit again for a short cruise to Port Deposit, but it was luxury to stay here. There were seafood, music and art, and firework festivals, Friday night music, Saturday fishing tournament weigh-ins, daily boaters and parasailing, and good boating neighbors. Surrounding boaters were wonderful company, especially in the evenings, on the dock as the sun was setting and relaxing breeze brushed away the day’s chores or activities.
New Territory
Eventually, we continued our travel across the top of the Chesapeake Bay, through the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, and down the Delaware River. Heading southeast was new territory. We’d never been around the Delmarva Peninsula and were very uncertain about places to stop. The online Active Captain application had been our guide to locate docks and marinas for more than a year. However, this travel route showed only a few options for safe harbors and docking. There were plenty of resort areas along the Eastern Shore, but very few comfortably showing enough water for our 40-foot boat to enter.
Along the Delaware River, a 45-foot fishing boat came and went from a deeper small inlet; Active Captain showed JP’s Wharf Restaurant with a dock, so this was our next destination. The people at the restaurant said there was enough water in the inlet for our boat and enough room to tie up, but we had to come in during high tide to have enough depth to get through the incoming channel. Wow, it was tight. Nelson ran aground, backed off, and tried it again, before we made it in. On either side, it was 20 feet to a sandy beach in the narrows.
Once inside the Murderkill (Dutch meaning Mother River) Creek, there was a 10- to 12-foot water depth at low tide. Our boat needs at least four and a half feet of water depth to float and motor. In anywhere with less than 10 feet of depth, we slow down and expect to encounter shallower water, with a high probability of running aground at any time. The slower you run into a shallow area, the more likely you’ll be able to back-off of it. Even good boaters run upon a shoal, at some time or another. Inside the inlet the current was swift, but the dock was a large solid good fixed structure at JP’s Wharf. The waitresses and owner assembled immediately as we were approaching, took the lines, and tied us up temporarily.
We climbed up the ladder onto the dock and had a nice dinner, on an expansive outside deck. There was a really good small band for entertainment. By the time we finished dinner, the water had raised our boat up five to six feet, where we could easily step over onto the boat directly from the dock. Later in the evening the owner came to help us re-tie the boat lines to handle the high and low tide swings. We and our boat safely floated up and down during the night. The next morning when the current slowed down, the fishing boat left, and so did we. As soon as we started the engines, JP’s Wharf’s owner and his wife, who live above the restaurant, came out to help us untie the lines and swing the boat around to head out. It was a remarkably pleasant and interesting stay, and the locals knew exactly what to do for boaters.
Shipwrecks and Schools of Fish
Our next destination was Lewes, DE, inside and behind Cape Henlopen at the mouth of the Delaware River on the south side. We could see on the charts that Lewes was a relatively long well-protected deeper inlet with a town long side-tie dock. We stopped for one night and, with a hint of a thunderstorm the next day, happily stayed over for another day in this wonderful town. The first night we walked over to Jerry’s, a restaurant which served the best fresh soft shell crabs I’ve tasted in a long time. The next morning, we found this was also the best and nicest place for a full breakfast. The specials were very reasonable for a five-star style of preparation.
In walking around Lewes, we learned about the town’s history and the initial 1631 Zwaanendael Dutch colony. The Zwaanendael Museum was constructed in 1931 to celebrate the original colony’s 300th anniversary. We attended an archeological lecture at the museum and also toured Maryland’s park conservation building. It contained the remnants of the 18th Century Dutch / English / French 85-foot Sloop of War sailing vessel Debraak,, which sunk in a storm off Cape Henlopen May 25, 1798. The shipwreck was located in 1984 and raised in 1986. The remaining hull, with all of the 61-foot keel intact and artifacts, is still undergoing conservation.
This particular ship had several unique technologies of the period, such as a copper-shielded bottom, tarred and painted standard rigging, items of a self-lubricating Lignum Vitae wood, a Broad Stove, and artifacts showing the English navy cultural period of trying to make life better aboard these vessels (such as china plates instead wooden bowls, glassware, and the Broad stove). We thoroughly enjoyed this research, and Nelson combed the graveyards for other interesting tidbits of knowledge. A local Samaritan found Nelson searching, interested in their town (and tired), and graciously gave him a ride back to our boat.
Even though the Worekill (Dutch for river) Canal runs all the way through to the Atlantic Ocean, it is not fully navigable for our size of boat. It also had a swift current between tides. We watched the current and tides. When the fishing boat left, so did we; and we watched their course through the breakwaters and around the Cape. We also watched as they stopped to fish, a long way down shore past Rehoboth Beach. There were periodic schools of fish running from larger rockfish. Nelson rigged his fishing reel. We’d slow down and idle as he cast the lure. We did this several times but finally decided that the pursuing larger fish had plenty of fish-at-hand or they didn’t like any of the lures Nelson threw at them. We saw lots of porpoises and stingrays and many miles of the Atlantic Ocean’s outer bank islands, southward along the shoreline of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia (DelMarVa).
Sand Dune Paradise
Feeling naïve, I observed for the first time how long and expansive the DelMarVa outer bank islands and sand dunes run along the shores. I had driven through the DelMarVa Peninsula roads many times over a span of many years, looking at the farms and towns along the highway. I’d been to and was aware of Assateague and Chincoteague Islands, but had no real knowledge regarding the beaches and dunes, or those vast stretches of white beaches northward from Virginia. It took a long, pleasant, calm ocean ride at seven knots an hour for me to truly absorb in the natural reality of this part of our country.
It also took a long time to travel along the Assateague and Chincoteague shores. Assateague runs all along the Atlantic. At the southern end the coast wraps around and into the Chincoteague Inlet and Channel, back behind Assateague as secondary island. We’d been here only by land many years ago and deeply wanted to visit by water onboard
Destinées.
By the time we arrived and managed to haphazardly and temporarily tie up at the beautiful waterfront town park, we’d also realized that we’d be captive here until the following week. We spent the next hour tying and retying lines to the surrounding slip piling, to accommodate the tides, a short finger pier, and extremely swift current. Although we had a ladder to help us get down after crawling over the front bow rail, it was tedious and not safe, but it was doable. Nelson could always manage to get down and back with Eli, but I’d normally safely exit off at the lower two- to four-foot tide swing.
There were east and northeast winds predicted for the coming few days, along with thunder storms a day afterward. Needing two to three days of good weather with south and southwest winds in order to get back to Hampton Roads, we’d be staying for at least the next week. The travel south from here would include a day of exposed anchoring along the way, crossing the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to Virginia Beach, and then another day of moving inland to a protected safe marina for a month’s stay.
We had time to stay over at Chincoteague for several days and in the back of our minds had wanted this opportunity. We had not seen or thought that the ocean and tides would enforce our desires in such an unexpected way, luring us in to stay longer. We couldn’t leave until the weather cooperated and needed to leave during a calmer high tide swing, which would not happen during morning daylight hours until the next week. So, here we were in a mid-Atlantic Island Paradise for a week over the Labor Day weekend. Because of our unexpected predicament, the dock master offered us a reduced rate for this longer stay. While the rest of the world appeared to be running at full speed and much of it in chaos, here we were cradled and protected by all that surrounded us.
by Sandra J. Kay
Sandwiched between annual checkups in the Hampton Roads area, the Fourth of July in downtown Washington, DC, and back close to North Carolina for Nelson’s 55th high school reunion September 26, we decided to see more of the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River and circle the Delmarva Peninsula.
Being full-time cruisers, we thought about where we’d like to spend more time (a week or more) during this travel. I immediately thought of Chincoteague-Assateague Islands. However, when I looked for a place to bring the boat in and stay longer, there was only a town dock and no weekly or monthly rates. The dock master Wayne Merritt said, “We’d not thought of Chincoteague as a place of destination for boaters.”
When Serendipity Strikes
In studying the navigation charts over the next couple of months, it became clear that we’d have to stop at Chincoteague, at least overnight. Maybe we could stay two or three days, but without a weekly or monthly rate, most places to tie up the boat are not affordable for more than a day or two for most people who are retired and living on a fixed income. There is no slip fee if you anchor. Unfortunately we have a 50-pound standard poodle; it’s work to get on and off the boat, three or four times a day, when anchored. So, we tend to tie up at a dock and take advantage of periodic longer term lower fee slip rates. Downtown Washington, D.C. on the Potomac at Capital YC was an extravagant expenditure, so we’d spend the rest of our summer travel looking for economy at other places. Going around the Chesapeake Bay, we explored places that we both had (and not) been to before now. Some places we found a two- to three-day or weekly rate; sometimes staying over and sometimes not. We thoroughly enjoyed everywhere we ventured.
Having a longtime friend in Pennsylvania, we looked for a place to stay within driving distance of her home. At Havre de Grace the marina staff initially said there were no slips available until after August. As this was the closest location to our friend, we managed to arrive the last of July for a two-day stay. Then, serendipity struck. We saw our friend and restocked our supplies. It was also here in a populated port that we detected a need for new 12V household batteries. In case you don’t know, when 12V batteries decide they are at the end of their life-cycle, it becomes quickly apparent, as they will not stay charged for more than a few hours.
Providence placed us at this location. There were other full-time and live aboard boaters who took an interest. It seems a slip, belonging to someone who’d traveled to New York City for a couple of months, was coincidentally vacant. Once the marina staff got to know us, they became our best friends. There we were, in one of the most popular boating ports, with ongoing local activities, given one of the nicest, best located slips at the marina and at a lower monthly rate, too. The cost savings for staying an entire month offset the cost of new 12V household and generator batteries.
Furthermore, a fellow boater provided information and transportation to the largest, lowest price retail battery outlet in close by Newark, DE. We not only economized expenses and had our friend visit again for a short cruise to Port Deposit, but it was luxury to stay here. There were seafood, music and art, and firework festivals, Friday night music, Saturday fishing tournament weigh-ins, daily boaters and parasailing, and good boating neighbors. Surrounding boaters were wonderful company, especially in the evenings, on the dock as the sun was setting and relaxing breeze brushed away the day’s chores or activities.
New Territory
Eventually, we continued our travel across the top of the Chesapeake Bay, through the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, and down the Delaware River. Heading southeast was new territory. We’d never been around the Delmarva Peninsula and were very uncertain about places to stop. The online Active Captain application had been our guide to locate docks and marinas for more than a year. However, this travel route showed only a few options for safe harbors and docking. There were plenty of resort areas along the Eastern Shore, but very few comfortably showing enough water for our 40-foot boat to enter.
Along the Delaware River, a 45-foot fishing boat came and went from a deeper small inlet; Active Captain showed JP’s Wharf Restaurant with a dock, so this was our next destination. The people at the restaurant said there was enough water in the inlet for our boat and enough room to tie up, but we had to come in during high tide to have enough depth to get through the incoming channel. Wow, it was tight. Nelson ran aground, backed off, and tried it again, before we made it in. On either side, it was 20 feet to a sandy beach in the narrows.
Once inside the Murderkill (Dutch meaning Mother River) Creek, there was a 10- to 12-foot water depth at low tide. Our boat needs at least four and a half feet of water depth to float and motor. In anywhere with less than 10 feet of depth, we slow down and expect to encounter shallower water, with a high probability of running aground at any time. The slower you run into a shallow area, the more likely you’ll be able to back-off of it. Even good boaters run upon a shoal, at some time or another. Inside the inlet the current was swift, but the dock was a large solid good fixed structure at JP’s Wharf. The waitresses and owner assembled immediately as we were approaching, took the lines, and tied us up temporarily.
We climbed up the ladder onto the dock and had a nice dinner, on an expansive outside deck. There was a really good small band for entertainment. By the time we finished dinner, the water had raised our boat up five to six feet, where we could easily step over onto the boat directly from the dock. Later in the evening the owner came to help us re-tie the boat lines to handle the high and low tide swings. We and our boat safely floated up and down during the night. The next morning when the current slowed down, the fishing boat left, and so did we. As soon as we started the engines, JP’s Wharf’s owner and his wife, who live above the restaurant, came out to help us untie the lines and swing the boat around to head out. It was a remarkably pleasant and interesting stay, and the locals knew exactly what to do for boaters.
Shipwrecks and Schools of Fish
Our next destination was Lewes, DE, inside and behind Cape Henlopen at the mouth of the Delaware River on the south side. We could see on the charts that Lewes was a relatively long well-protected deeper inlet with a town long side-tie dock. We stopped for one night and, with a hint of a thunderstorm the next day, happily stayed over for another day in this wonderful town. The first night we walked over to Jerry’s, a restaurant which served the best fresh soft shell crabs I’ve tasted in a long time. The next morning, we found this was also the best and nicest place for a full breakfast. The specials were very reasonable for a five-star style of preparation.
In walking around Lewes, we learned about the town’s history and the initial 1631 Zwaanendael Dutch colony. The Zwaanendael Museum was constructed in 1931 to celebrate the original colony’s 300th anniversary. We attended an archeological lecture at the museum and also toured Maryland’s park conservation building. It contained the remnants of the 18th Century Dutch / English / French 85-foot Sloop of War sailing vessel Debraak,, which sunk in a storm off Cape Henlopen May 25, 1798. The shipwreck was located in 1984 and raised in 1986. The remaining hull, with all of the 61-foot keel intact and artifacts, is still undergoing conservation.
This particular ship had several unique technologies of the period, such as a copper-shielded bottom, tarred and painted standard rigging, items of a self-lubricating Lignum Vitae wood, a Broad Stove, and artifacts showing the English navy cultural period of trying to make life better aboard these vessels (such as china plates instead wooden bowls, glassware, and the Broad stove). We thoroughly enjoyed this research, and Nelson combed the graveyards for other interesting tidbits of knowledge. A local Samaritan found Nelson searching, interested in their town (and tired), and graciously gave him a ride back to our boat.
Even though the Worekill (Dutch for river) Canal runs all the way through to the Atlantic Ocean, it is not fully navigable for our size of boat. It also had a swift current between tides. We watched the current and tides. When the fishing boat left, so did we; and we watched their course through the breakwaters and around the Cape. We also watched as they stopped to fish, a long way down shore past Rehoboth Beach. There were periodic schools of fish running from larger rockfish. Nelson rigged his fishing reel. We’d slow down and idle as he cast the lure. We did this several times but finally decided that the pursuing larger fish had plenty of fish-at-hand or they didn’t like any of the lures Nelson threw at them. We saw lots of porpoises and stingrays and many miles of the Atlantic Ocean’s outer bank islands, southward along the shoreline of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia (DelMarVa).
Sand Dune Paradise
Feeling naïve, I observed for the first time how long and expansive the DelMarVa outer bank islands and sand dunes run along the shores. I had driven through the DelMarVa Peninsula roads many times over a span of many years, looking at the farms and towns along the highway. I’d been to and was aware of Assateague and Chincoteague Islands, but had no real knowledge regarding the beaches and dunes, or those vast stretches of white beaches northward from Virginia. It took a long, pleasant, calm ocean ride at seven knots an hour for me to truly absorb in the natural reality of this part of our country.
It also took a long time to travel along the Assateague and Chincoteague shores. Assateague runs all along the Atlantic. At the southern end the coast wraps around and into the Chincoteague Inlet and Channel, back behind Assateague as secondary island. We’d been here only by land many years ago and deeply wanted to visit by water onboard Destinées.
By the time we arrived and managed to haphazardly and temporarily tie up at the beautiful waterfront town park, we’d also realized that we’d be captive here until the following week. We spent the next hour tying and retying lines to the surrounding slip piling, to accommodate the tides, a short finger pier, and extremely swift current. Although we had a ladder to help us get down after crawling over the front bow rail, it was tedious and not safe, but it was doable. Nelson could always manage to get down and back with Eli, but I’d normally safely exit off at the lower two- to four-foot tide swing.
There were east and northeast winds predicted for the coming few days, along with thunder storms a day afterward. Needing two to three days of good weather with south and southwest winds in order to get back to Hampton Roads, we’d be staying for at least the next week. The travel south from here would include a day of exposed anchoring along the way, crossing the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to Virginia Beach, and then another day of moving inland to a protected safe marina for a month’s stay.
We had time to stay over at Chincoteague for several days and in the back of our minds had wanted this opportunity. We had not seen or thought that the ocean and tides would enforce our desires in such an unexpected way, luring us in to stay longer. We couldn’t leave until the weather cooperated and needed to leave during a calmer high tide swing, which would not happen during morning daylight hours until the next week. So, here we were in a mid-Atlantic Island Paradise for a week over the Labor Day weekend. Because of our unexpected predicament, the dock master offered us a reduced rate for this longer stay. While the rest of the world appeared to be running at full speed and much of it in chaos, here we were cradled and protected by all that surrounded us.
by Sandra J. Kay