THE BEERS' GREAT LOOP TRIP ABOARD HUMBUG: May 2014

On May 9, Anne and Keith Palmer joined us in Norfolk and the next morning, I drove their car to Yorktown, VA where they and Pete met me with the boat. Keith was Pete's high school science professor at Loomis and they have stayed in touch ever since, so it was a great treat for us to explore some of Chesapeake Bay with them.

The Palmers hanging out with George Washington

Since we had their car, we decided to visit Yorktown Battlefield and Museum. While we were on our audio-auto tour of the actual battle field, torrential ran began, so we contented ourselves with blurry vistas from closed car windows. Still, we learned a lot about that battle which ended the Revolutionary War when Washington and Rochambeau defeated Cornwallis.

Tangier Island crab shacks

Our next stop was Tangier Island, a place where time has, in part, stood still. The islanders drive only golf carts and speak an almost incomprehensible dialect left over from the original colonist settlers from south west England.

Tangiers' two restaurants

Keith, who is English, was the only one of the four of us who could figure out at least the gist what those folks were saying.

After Tangiers, which is on the east side of the bay, we crossed over to Solomons Island which is much bigger and far more sophisticated than Tangiers, on the west side. While there, we walked over to the Calvert Maritime Museum.

Calvert Museum's light house

The Calvert Museum has a restored example of the old style of Chesapeake Bay light houses, a "screw-pile, cottage-style" light house. The name is descriptive - they are cottage-like structures sitting on legs that were screwed into the sand/mud. There are still a few of them functioning on the bay, but are now automated.

Ahab almost in the mammoth shark's mouth

In addition to maritime and fishing industry artifacts, the museum has a large collection of fossils from the ancient, lime stone Calvert Cliffs. One of the most unusual exhibits is of a partial skeleton of a mammoth shark.

Relaxing on the upper deck in Kinsale

Having had enough museums and tourists, we headed next, to Kinsale, VA a small town on a river off the mouth of Potomac.

Placid water in Kinsale

It looked just like a large lake from our boat in Kinsale - beautiful and quiet. We spent the whole afternoon reading and looking through our binoculars at the Osprey family nearby.

Full moon in Kinsale

All good things eventually have to end, so the next day, we backtracked down the bay to Delataville where HUMBUG was scheduled for a short hull to inspect the bottom and install new zincs. While Pete took care of that, I drove the Palmers, in an Enterprise rental, back to their car in Yorktown. From there, they went on to a B & B in Chincoteaque and I, to the Deltaville Market for groceries.

Lovely Oxford, MD

Because Pete, in preparation for cruising the bay, had read "Chesapeake," we had to stop in Oxford to eat at The Robert Morris Inn, where Mitchner reportedly outlined the novel. Oxford is on the quiet, east side of the bay and was our favorite port of call on the Chesapeake.

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

After Oxford, we stopped in St Michaels, home of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum and Acme (I kept looking for the Road Runner), Market.

Oystering exhibit

The Chesapeake
Bay Maritime Museum is very much like Mystic Seaport in our home town - lots of restored buildings and beautiful old boats.

Waiting for crab cakes in St Michaels

One of the things we found interesting at the museum were the "pusher boats". They have no steering mechanism on them, just an engine.

Pusher boat engine

Pusher boats were used to push larger boats and were steered by cables, from the larger boat they pushed.

Pusher boat pushing an old Skipjack

Ever onward, as my friend Loretta says, to Annapolis and Baltimore next!

Intracoastal Waterway in Georgia

We had visited Savannah twice in the last two years by car, so we did not do our usual Grey Line/tourist thing and instead, just treated ourselves to a wonderful dinner at The Olde Pink House restaurant there.

Olde Pink House SavannahI

Instead of staying in downtown Savannah (where only MEGA yachts usually dock), we stayed just south of the city in Thunderbolt (I just love the name of that place...indian legend says it got its name after a lightning bolt split a rock that revealed an artesian well and the well produced water for several hundred years).

Swing bridge on ICW in GA

Our next port of call, was Hilton Head, SC to visit our friends, Carol and Stacy Wolfe, who had moved there from Barrington, RI after Stacy retired from Met Life.
We only stayed there one night, then moved on to Beaufort, SC. There, we hunkered down and read for three rainy, windy days .

Fortunately, Hiromi and Mike on "Off Leash," happened to be there, so the four of us went to Southern Graces restaurant in the Beaufort Inn one evening to help stave off our cabin fever.

After all the fun we'd had in Beaufort, we couldn't wait to get to Charleston. There, Pete had the oil changed and some other stuff done to the boat, and I went to a spa for the day (it's only right, huh?). Like Savannah, we'd been there twice in the past few years, so we din't play tourist and stayed only two nights.

ICW in NC

As we worked our way north, another of our other ports of call was Georgetown, SC which is a nice small town with lovely old houses that unfortunately, had a large paper mill looming over it which made the whole town smell like sulfur.

ICW near N Myrtle Beach sand dunes

After, Georgetown, we cruised up to North Myrtle Beach, where we stayed at the Barefoot Marina, home port of our friends Margie and Rick who had just finished the loop on their power catamaran, "Journey."

Leaving Southport at dawn

Next, we stopped in Southport, NC. We hung out there for two nights due to tornado warnings.

Southport is truly a beautiful little town that looks out over the Cape Fear River to Baldhead Island and where the locals drive golf carts instead of cars.

Us leaving Southport at dawn (taken by Island Time)

Because we'd lost a day due to tornado warnings, we left Southport at dawn and opted for a long day (81 miles) in order to reach Swansboro.

In Swansboro, we had dinner with Tom Goodman with whom we'd traveled off and on during the past year. He and his wife Melisa, and yellow lab, Mango, had just finished the loop and are the harbor hosts in Swansboro.

Also in Swansboro, our good friends from our Aetna days, Phyllis and Bob McDonnell, joined us. They now live outside Charlotte.

Upper bunk of McDonnell's cabin - good friends bring their own booze

Phyllis and Bob cruised with us two days to Oriental and Belhaven, NC, then the weather changed preventing us from moving for the next three days.

Our 89-yr old Enterprise driver (really)

Faced with three days of just staring at each other, we decided to rent a car and drive over to the Outer Banks.

Cute couple

While there, we visited the Hatteras Lighthouse.

Another cute couple

We also stayed at the very romantic White Doe B & B in Manteo.

White Doe Inn

The next day before returning to the boat, we drove up to Kitty Hawk to see the Wright Brothers monument and museum.

Wright brothers museum

In front of Wright brothers monument

A very large snapping turtle crossed our path while we were visiting the Wright brothers complex. We did not pet him.

Mr. Turtle

The weather cleared as soon as we returned to the boat and we set off for Alligator River Marina on the edge of Albemarle Sound, a very large body of water. Cruisers sometimes have to wait at this remote spot for days, sometimes weeks, for the conditions of the sound to be suitable for a crossing.

We were lucky and the sound was like glass the next morning for our crossing. However, we not so lucky on our way. We were swarmed by thousands of Midges (non-biting mosquitoes). It was totally gross and other boats crossing that day had the same problem.

We heard one boat was killing them with vinegar, so Bob went out into the cockpit and started spraying vinegar. Sure enough it killed the creepy little things, but what a mess - we had to scrub the whole boat with soap and water when we arrived in Elizabeth City.

Albemarle Museum

That afternoon, we visited the Albemarle Museum and walked around town.

Elizabeth City, is the jumping off point for one of the highlights of our trip, The Great Dismal Swamp Canal.

The Dismal Swamp was surveyed by George Washington in 1763 but it was not finished until 1805.

HUMBUG on Dismal Swamp Canal

It is 22 miles long and connects northeastern NC to southeastern VA and it is the oldest continuously operating waterway in the US.

Built by hand, mostly by slaves, originally it served as a trade route and later a means to get lumber to market. It also was a major (but yucky) hiding place for slaves seeking freedom on the Underground Railroad.

It's VERY narrow!

There are two locks on the Dismal Swamp Canal - one at the beginning that lifts you up 8 feet and one at the end that lowers you 8 feet. The two days we transited the canal, we were with 8 other boats so the locks were very crowed.

Crowd in the lock

There's a Welcome Center about half way through the canal, where boaters can tie up for the night for free. However, the wall there is only 150 feet long, so boats have to raft two or three deep.