Jackson Creek, Piankatank River

Today we are going to Deltaville, about 20 miles south of the Greater Wicomoco. The weather is sunny, mid 80's high with a very light northerly wind -- a wind we really can't sail.

The trip down to Deltaville was straightforward, albeit boring. The seas were calm, the current not against us and in general, there was little to do but baby-sit the autopilot as we worked our way down the bay.

Sue researching "what's hot" and "what's not" in Deltaville

You can get into Deltaville from a creek on the Rappahannock river (the Northern approach) or from a creek just off the bay itself (the Southern approach) -- we opted for the latter since it looked less crowded, prettier and would be shorter to "kick-off" from when we leave to head south on Monday.The channel in was well marked but very narrow in spots and barely 6 feet at its lowest point --  we dropped the hook in the Northeast branch of the creek, just north of the Deltaville Marina. This would be our home for the next few days -- apart from the Marina, the shore was lined with nice residential homes, our kind of place.

Well, almost -- unfortunately we also saw nettles (a.k.a. stinging jellyfish) in the water as we dropped the anchor. This was the first time we had seen them on our trip and a big disappointment -- we wouldn't be swimming off the boat in this anchorage. Indeed, there is a cottage industry in the Chesapeake area for "Nettle Pools" -- basically a swimming pool sized net that you can put in the water to keep them out -- unfortunately, we didn't have one :-(

A Chesapeake nettle

Not being able to swim, we decided that the next best thing would be to go ashore. So, we set up the dinghy and motored the short distance to shore, conveniently finding a dinghy dock at the Marina. Sue went off to talk to the Marina owners to see whether it'd be OK to leave our dinghy for a couple of hours -- my theory is that woman generally get a better response than men when asking to use a facility.

As it turns out, the Marina owner was there and was very nice to Sue and explained all our options (we could dump garbage and/or user the showers and/or take a slip, all for differing fees of course) -- he also told Sue that the local grocery, while a distance, generally was willing to drive cruisers back to their marina once they finished shopping. He even offered to drive us to the grocery. Wow, talk about service oriented businesses !

Naturally, we had our "ever present" grocery list with us (we had to get ready for the arrival of our guests on Saturday) and were interested in getting some exercise, so we opted to walk to the grocery -- perhaps a 3 mile jaunt. It was hot but there was a pleasant breeze in the air. On the way, we happened upon another cruising couple -- Brits and in a different marina, they were out for an afternoon walk. Linda was the more talkative of the pair (we never get her mate's name) -- among the things she shared in her clipped British accent was that they had gotten too close to a Naval Academy facility in Annapolis and had been "shoo-ed away". She also "just mentioned" that they had about 60K miles "under their keel" -- that's one heck of a lot of cruising !

The Deltaville Market was a delight -- the Customer Service desk assured us that they would be happy to drive us back and encouraged us to ask their staff for anything we couldn't find in the aisles (which we did and the uniform response was very polite and cheerful help). Once we checked out, the store's owner, a nice woman in her late 50's, drove us back to the marina in her personal car -- try that in NY/NJ!

She and her husband lived locally and have owned the grocery on and off for 30 years -- they actually had a 10 year "break" a while back when they sold the business, but a combination of the new owner deciding he wanted out and her not finding more satisfying work, had caused them to buy it back. She told us that in past years, sh would get about 10 transient cruisers like ourselves per month, but that this year it had been much fewer (perhaps 2/month). She was happy to hear the praise both Sue and I heaped on her staff -- in her words, "the training had worked". By the way, the car was a late model BMW SUV -- guess you can make a decent living owning a rural grocery in America :-)

Deltaville Harbor scene

Talk about being "protective" of your boat, on a lift and in a garage!

By the time we got everything back to the boat, we were both "good" tired -- the balance of the day was spent quietly reading and/or blogging on our hook.