Chesapeake

Both Seb and I recently read James Michener’s Chesapeake so we had high romantic expectations of the Chesapeake Bay.  The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States spanning 180 nautical miles from the Susquehanna river in the north to the  Atlantic Ocean.  Chesapeake is an epic book spanning several generations, between 1583 and the Watergate scandal,  from England, France and all over North America but focusing on a few families living on the Choptank river of the Chesapeake Bay.  

We spent our time on the North Chesapeake floating from anchorage to anchorage keeping our eyes out for Chesapeake watermen, geese, crabs, oysters, large Steed mansions and Skipjack boats. Turner Creek offered us a huge marsh, beautiful (very shallow) anchorage and the odd waterman heading out for the catch.  Swan Creek was full of reeds and marshland and you could hear thousands of geese calling to each other as they headed south.  There was also a tiny 2-room waterman’s museum with photos and fishing/crabbing/oystering paraphernalia from times gone by.  St. Micheal’s was a lovely little town with charming restaurants and a good outdoor maritime museum with an old pile lighthouse, wooden skipjacks and a gallery explaining the more recent friction between the pleasure boaters and the watermen of the Chesapeake Bay.  

Finally, we anchored in the Dun Cove on the Choptank river, close to Michener’s house and on the river upon which much of the book is set.  The banks of the river were afire with a spectacular array of reds, oranges and gold autumn leaves.  We tried to enjoy the quite surroundings and some good  ‘leaf peeping’ while sitting with a drink in the cockpit but the cold drove us inside to our warm heated living room and a cup of tea. 

Pancakes and Poor Parenting

The 200 nautical mile sail from Mystic to Chesapeake City gave us a bit of a comeuppance.  Our departure, late in the afternoon, meant that we were just coming out into a rather rambunctious open sea just around dinner time.  We decided to spoil the kids a little to compensate for dragging them away from Mystic by cooking them pancakes for dinner. Bad idea. Macsen (usually a 4-pancake minimum man) ate two and Emma (never less that a 3-caker) couldn’t even finish her first one.  Neither of them were sick but both felt nauseous so we settled them into bed.  The next morning, in calmer seas, they both independently made the shocking statement that they no longer liked pancakes and were not interested in the leftovers carefully saved for them.  Bad association.  Seb and I spent the day brooding on what awful parents we were to expose our children to something so horrible that it would lead them to develop an aversion to pancakes! 

Fortunately it was a quick trip and we anchored in a tiny and shallow inlet next to Chesapeake City at the top of Chesapeake Bay late in the afternoon of November 2nd. To this day our children still do not like pancakes.

Mystic Halloween

My brother recommended that we stop in Mystic, Connecticut.  The wiggly and narrow Mystic river winds about 3 nautical miles inland before bringing you close to the town of Mystic.  At the end of the channel is an old drawbridge weighted with a huge cement block.  We decided to hole up in the Brewer’s marina outside of the bridge and take the dingy in a mile to Mystic Seaport.  

Mystic Seaport is a living history maritime museum noted both for its collection of restored wooden boats and for the re-creation of an entire 19th century seafaring village consisting of over 60 original historic buildings. Upon arrival in the village with our dingy we started chatting with a guy named Mike who was working on the restoration of the oldest whaling boat in the world, the Charles W. Morgan.  We mentioned my brother’s name (he spent a few weeks working at the Seaport a few years  ago).  Mike remembered him and this started a whole chain reaction of friendly welcome in which the director of the shipyard invited us to bring the boat in to stay on their dock in the centre of the village, we got a tour of the inside of the whale boat, met a great guy named Jeff Gold who gave us advice and shared his memories about cruising in Central America and generally were treated wonderfully.  We moved the Pjotter into the dock in the village and settled in. Mystic Seaport has become one of our favourite spots.  

The Seaport village was also an amazing place for the monkeys.  Horse and carriage rides around the sight, a barrel maker who let them roll the barrels, an electric tugboat pond and a nautical children’s museum complete with child size boats to climb on are some of the things that had them leaping out of bed every morning clamouring to get outside.  

We ended up spending a week and leaving the day after Halloween. Halloween may have started to rival Sinterklaas and Christmas as favourite annual events with Emma and Macsen.  Halloween activities started on the Saturday, October 30th with a pumpkin carving competition featuring about 200 creatively carved pumpkins by various local talents. Wandering through the old buildings in the pitch dark looking at flickering pumpkins of every shape and sort was really pretty amazing.  The following day, on the 31st, all of the houses in the village handed out candy to trick-or-treaters.  Emma and Macsen, clad again respectively as a mermaid and a cat, joined the throngs of Mystic children grinning gleefully as their candy bags got fuller and fuller.  This loot was added to their Bristol collection and I don’t think either of them has ever seen a larger pile of candy. 

Hard Work, a Shiny Ship and a Practice Halloween

Seb spent most of the daylight hours in Bristol performing and arranging maintenance for the boat, with the help of Booh’s advice, support and contacts in the industry.  Removed the unsightly and slow beard and barnacles from the hull, new anti-fouling, hull polished and tannin removed from white stripe, battery checked, stock-up of spare parts, wind-pilot maintenance, crack in the keel fixed, anode replaced, oil changed, sail drive oil replaced, air filter motor fixed, design drawn to have a support built for the solar panel, propeller polished and fixed...among other things.  Two rather major tasks were unexpected.  One of our main solar panels flew up in a gust of wind and smashed against a winch while we were on our way to Bristol.  This panel is impossible to replace in the US so we decided to install a support stick with 4-way pivot to maximise the efficiency of our second main panel.  Secondly, the propeller had long been making a rattling sound that we found slightly unsettling.  The local prop pro did some good testing and informed us to our horror that indeed the prop was in need of some significant work or replacement.  The only short term replacement option was an aluminium prop so instead we sent our current prop out for a few days TLC.  It came back glossy and solid.  Whew.  The Pjotter was launched again, with gleaming undersides on October 25.  

 

 

In parallel to this, Jen and I spent some time sewing costumes for a practice Halloween to be held on October 24.  Most of the business in the town of Bristol  (and several of the local politicians) opened their doors on this Sunday afternoon for practice trick-or-treaters.  Emma and Macsen had never celebrated Halloween before and seeing the four of them dressed up (unicorn, mermaid, frog and cat) and giggling was super.  

All in all, our Bristol time was full of work and fun.  It was a luxury to have entertainment (kids during the day and adults at night), house, car and occasional babysitter for a couple of weeks.  Most of the time the kids paired off happily and it was great to see them play but sometime we noticed that they (and as a result we) needed more downtime than four kids in a house will allow.  Emma is already counting the days until she gets to see Seren at Christmas.  And the rest of us are pretty psyched too.  

A Hilly Half-Marathon

On October 15, Jen and I drove the route of the Newport Half-Marathon.  It is a stunningly beautiful route along the ocean and through the mansions along the coast.  It is also a truly unique route in that it is at least 80% uphill.  One might think that this is impossible as it starts and ends in the same place but, nevertheless, it is the truth.  With this irrefutable fact in mind, Jen and I left the house in some trepidation on the 17^th at 0600 to go stand at the start line and freeze for an hour.  Booh and Seb joined us (my parents stayed home to look after all four kids) and freely discussed their plan to head to the nearest greasy spoon for a hot breakfast while we sweated up the inclines.  Whose idea was this anyway?   

My target was to complete the run in less than two hours, a target I became less and less comfortable with at the 0800 start time neared.  Just as I was about to adjust my target to ‘just finishing’  the gun went off and a group of 4000 people moved along around me as I crossed the start line.  I managed to stay close to Jen for the first seven miles (11ish km) and that definitely helped me to keep a good pace.  As my glimpses of the back of her head became less frequent I was almost half finished so I just gritted my teeth and put my head down, wishing all the while that I had trained a little longer and a lot faster but fairly confident that I would make it in time.  I crossed the finish line with a time of 1 hour and 56 minutes and 16 seconds.  Yipee!.  Jen finished in an even better 1 hour 50 minutes and 25 seconds.  Both very happy with our times.