To the Eastern Shore – Sailing Oestara

We hadn’t had a chance to get to the eastern shore of the Chesapeake yet on this trip, and we were determined to make it over there for at least one stop. Onancock, Virginia sounded like a neat little old town to check out, so we pulled up the anchor in Deltaville and motored into the snaky channel to head back out into the bay.

We saw another sailboat coming into the harbor, and decided to be kind and let them in before we headed out–the channel was quite narrow, so passing each other would have been a tight squeeze. We edged over to an area just off the channel and made a circle, waiting for them to make their way in. Suddenly we felt the boat gently lurch to a halt, and quickly realized we had planted it in the mud. Oops. Guess it was a little shallower right there than we thought! (No good deed goes unpunished?) Anyway, we backed off easily and got on our merry way after that boat passed us.

We put out the sails and headed across the bay. A Dutch cargo ship coming our way hailed us and asked us to take his stern. We would have made it across his path before he got to us, but he clearly had a preference, so we did as asked.

We sailed all the way to the mouth of the Onancock River, dropped the sails, and headed into the channel that would take us about four miles up the river to town.

We anchored in a sweet spot right near town and took the dinghy to shore.

The town was fun to check out, and had a bit of an artsy feel to it.

We walked to the old Onancock High School, which is now a community center with art galleries and studios inside of it. There was also a playground and a nature walk nearby.