Up a creek for the weekend

Late that night in the Onancock anchorage, we got to see a tugboat pass by us to pick up a barge that was docked nearby. We had seen the barge docked the day before and wondered if it was staying there for a while, or what. Well guess what, it was definitely being moved! And in the middle of the night! There’s nothing like a giant tug with a huge spotlight coming right toward you as it barrels into the harbor, then returning past you pushing a HUGE barge right by your stern. Patrick woke me up to come see it; he had spotted the tug coming in and radioed him to make sure we weren’t too close to the channel for the tug to navigate past us. (He told us we were fine, but maybe next time add another boat length for comfort.) It was pretty wild.

The next morning: we really felt it had been too many weeks (months?!) since we’d been to a proper bakery, and Corner Bakery in Onancock was supposed to have terrific donuts. Cecelia and I got up nice and early for a dinghy ride into town to pick some up. They were totally worth it!

We really enjoyed Onancock, but we needed to make some way further down the bay, and planned to spend the weekend in Cape Charles. We navigated the channel out, and as we came up to one of the channel markers, realized that two huge bald eagles were perched right on top. Neither of us had our phones, naturally, and by the time I got back on deck to snap a picture, they were flying away. Still, so cool.

After raising the sails in the bay, a quick check on the weather told us that Cape Charles (on the eastern shore, and quite exposed to the west) was unfortunately not going to be a nice spot to hang out, as a sporty westerly wind was coming in for a couple of days. We did some quick research and found a creek we could anchor in on the western shore for the weekend while those winds died down. We adjusted our course and headed across the bay. It was a beautiful day, but we had a bumpy ride for quite a while, with wind against current.

We made it into Mobjack Bay and headed up East River to Put In Creek.

We discovered that a family we had met in Annapolis, Ashley and Jason, and their girls Eloise and Isabel, had their catamaran Dawn Treader on the hard at a nearby boatyard. We made plans to meet up with them the next day at the playground at the local elementary school. We walked into town, which was its own adventure! Then the kids had a blast running around, the adults traded stories about boat projects, and we all wound up going to a Mexican restaurant in Mathews for dinner. Dawn Treader, we look forward to seeing you in the Bahamas when you get there!

The next day we spent on anchor doing boat related chores like updating our offshore communications equipment. It was a beautiful afternoon, and sunset was lovely as well.

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