Deltaville VA - Boat Projects and Cruising Schedule

Saturday, September 16, 2006

037-33.420 N
076-18.660 W

Ahoy from Deltaville, VA!

Deltaville is a quaint little town with lots of boating resources.  There's not a lot to do around here, but the people are extremely friendly.  We have fun noting the differences between home in MA and down here.  For example, distances aren't measured in miles, but in time.  For example, if you ask where the hardware store is, you'll be told that it's 10 minutes down the road and not that it's 5 miles.  If you get stuck behind some slow-poke, all bets are off...  There's not a lot as far as shopping is concerned around here.  The closest place is in Glouster (which is "20 minutes" away, but we've never made it in less than 30 minutes) and there you've got a Lowes, Home Depot and a WalMart.  Now I don't know about where you live, but the WalMart here sells kegs of beer!  Now that's unique!  I do miss the anti-smoking regulations of the north-east.  Around here it seems that everyone smokes and their idea of a non-smoking section is a small group of tables stuck next to the bar...


It's been a couple of months since you last got a report from us, but believe me, the boat projects have been on-going.  We've been at home in Marlborough, MA since the middle of July and have been enjoying being there.  I've been busy with lots of house project and made great headway into them.  While we were at home we were keeping the canvas fabricators in Deltaville employed.  We had a new sail covers made as well as a new bimini (sun shade over the cockpit) and we're were very happy with the construction.  The old main sail cover was a huge piece of fabric that took 10 minutes to get off and 15+ to get back on.  You also had to store it down below which was a real pain if it was wet.  We decided to go with a MackPack (which is a StackPack knock off) which remains up at all times.  The sail simply drops into the a canvas cocoon which zips closed.  This should make putting up the sails for short hops much more palatable. 

 

We had the bimini constructed out of Sunbrella Supreme, which is a new product that Sunbrella is coming out with.  It's supposed to have superior water protection and is designed for tropical conditions.  We decided to go with it after talking to the product manager from Sunbrella.  The Ship's Tailor did a wonderful job of fabricating the bimini, but when we got a heavy rain we saw that it was leaking from all of the needle holes in the seams.  We talked to the product manager about this and he's sending the regional manager to inspect the construction so that they can determine what's wrong.  He assures us that we'll be 100% satisfied by the time that they're done.  I sure hope so and I'm very impressed with their customer service. 

I've also been doing battle with electronics.  On our way through the Bahamas the RayMarine C-80 radar/GPS stopped reading the map chips and on top of that my NorthStar 961 GPS died.  So much for redundancy!  Anyhow, I brought the C-80 back home and shipped it in to have to repaired.  They claimed that it read the chart chips just fine.  They did some minor maintenance and shipped it back.  I couldn't test it, but I had no faith that it really worked.  The cost to repair the old NorthStar was prohibitively high, so I went out and got a new NorthStar that used the same map chips.  Back to redundancy!  When we got back to the boat I reinstalled the RayMarine and guess what?  It didn't work!  (*!&#!(@*  However, the NorthStar worked just fine, so we have a system that we can use to navigate the shallow waters of the Chesapeake.


For many of us, hurricane Ernesto was just a little rain event, but that wasn't the case here.  While it may only have been a tropical depression when it blew through here, the winds were clocked at 68 kts (just shy of hurricane strength) in the marina and it did lots of damage in the area.  I picked Dozier's Regatta Point Marina because was the newest and it had floating docks.  The floating docks were key if there was a tidal surge as the lines would be kept a constant length.  Well, there was a 5' tidal surge and there was lots of flooding, but BlueJacket was nice and secure.  We had all of the canvas off and double lines to every piling around.  Unfortunately not everyone did that and some boats broke free and bashed into the docks and pilings doing quite a bit of damage.  Luckily this didn't turn into a domino effect as it easily could have.

We're about to head out cruising for the next 10 days.  Today we're headed across the bay to Tangier Island.  From there we're going to work our way up to Crisfield, Oxford, St. Michaels and then to Annapolis.  Then we'll work our way back down to Deltaville stopping at the Solomons on the way.  As long as the weather stays nice, this should be a lot of fun!



We hope that all is well with you.  If you need to get in touch with us, please use our wcz5101 "at" sailmail.com address.  Oh, we have a new cell phone #:  774-245-2605.

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 897