Chesapeake Bay sailing is AMAZING, and I’m officially jealous of any of you for whom this is home base.
We had a slow morning on anchor in Jackson Creek, and as a very faint breeze filled in, we got under way. It was just enough to get us moving under sail but with only a 30 mile hop across the Bay, there was no need to rush. The breeze stayed light, and Silent Sky glided along over the mirror-calm water. Sure it was slow, but we were sailing and I couldn’t think of anything better.
Chris put out his fishing line (with little hope of catching anything, given the 1.5-2 kts we were averaging) but he got a bite and reeled in a mackerel. We thought it was a king mackerel and let it go since it wasn’t keeper size for that species, but we later realized it was a perfectly legal Spanish mackerel. We were bummed that we didn’t keep it – in 8+ years of owning this boat, we’ve always wanted to catch dinner and failed. But at least we knew the new set-up Chris got actually worked. A couple hours later, he caught a second Spanish mackerel, and we looked forward to our first fresh-caught fish aboard.
When the wind still hadn’t filled in by late afternoon, we begrudgingly fired up the engine. The trip through Onancock Creek was beautiful – aside from the crab pots everywhere (although they did help serve to mark the channel). We finally reached the anchorage just off town, which we had entirely to ourselves (although it wouldn’t stay that way for long). Chris cooked up our fish and we had a nice dinner in the cockpit.
In the morning, we launched Squall and took a dinghy ride around before heading in for breakfast at Janet’s General Store and Cafe – it was busy but really good. On the way back to the boat, we stopped in front of a real estate office to look at the listings (a favorite pastime of ours) and the couple behind us stopped to chat. They had seen us go by their house on our dinghy earlier and were asking about where we’d come in from. We had a nice conversation and they invited us to stop by next time we were in town.
Our sail home was amazing – we were doing around 7kts most of the way with full main and jib, and we ended up passing most of the boats that had left before us. We even caught up to one that was significantly bigger. Unfortunately, they weren’t paying attention to their charts and went hard aground well outside the channel in the Piankatank at full speed. We’re hoping that they didn’t sustain much damage and that no one was hurt.
Onancock ended up being one of my favorite places that we visited, and this weekend was exactly what I needed. It had been starting to get frustrating hanging around Deltaville – I kept thinking of all the things I was missing back home – but getting out to do some Chesapeake cruising reminded me of how lucky we are to be able to have all these new experiences.
