Elizabeth City, North Carolina

Elizabeth City is a tiny little place that is making an impressive effort to welcome boaters. There are free docks, friendly people, lots of churches, and incongruously for a town that seems to shut down on Sundays…midget wrestling. We skipped the churches and the wrestling.

Who doesn’t love a gazebo?

Harbor of Hospitality? Take that Port Jefferson, New York!

This place has everything, even a giant chair that makes me look eligible for some wrestling.

Window boats, of course.

By the time the green Duffy arrived the dock was full, so we asked them if they wanted to raft up with us.

You are correct: Cyclops is a pretty girl.

The Great Dismal Swamp

It’s not dismal at all. It is beautiful, peaceful, and smells good! It’s not crowded, it provides a free dock, it’s got a great state park, it is crawling with history.

Coming down the ICW boaters have a choice between the Dismal Swamp Canal or the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal route through southern Virginia and northern North Carolina. Because it is so shallow and narrow, the Dismal Swamp route is free from commercial traffic and anyone in any kind of a hurry. Water depth is controlled by a lock at the north end of the canal and a lock at the south end of the canal.

We brought a conch shell we picked up in the Bahamas in 2019 as a gift for Bob, the lock master at the north lock. He was a super friendly guy and was a highlight of our trip through here when we did it on our sailboat. Alas, Bob died in 2020, but his replacement is carrying on the tradition of friendly and helpful.

The Dismal Swamp Visitors Center offers free docking so we stayed two nights. Our full day at the dock was a rainy one and we got caught up on maintenance tasks (oil change, scrubbing the boat, etc.).

Ellen is tending the lines as we lock up to the Dismal Swamp Canal

The water in the Great Dismal Swamp is the color of root beer because of tannins and humates from decaying juniper, gum, and cypress trees. It also stains boat hulls and makes the notion of swimming very unappealing. You can go head and look up humane and tannin on your own time.

The place was so peaceful and serene in the rain.

Our third night in the Dismal Swamp found us anchored near Goat Island. Sunrise brought shifting mist on the water.

The neighborhood was considerably less lush, but starkly beautiful nevertheless.

St. Mary's, Maryland

On our way back down the Potomac we stopped for a couple of nights at St. Mary’s College, nestled on the St. Mary’s River, of course. The school is a national public honors college and is located at the site of the first permanent settlement in Maryland. There’s all the archeology and history and beauty you could want. We got to the museum about three minutes before closing, but the docent was so excited about his work he let us in and gave us a half-hour long personal tour. Very cool.

I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.

We were treated to gorgeous fall foliage at St. Mary’s.

Hampton, Virginia

You know I am trying to get caught up here, so this entry about Hampton is a bit out of order. Hampton comes after Deltaville (alphabetically and geographically). Hampton is the end of the line in the Chesapeake. This is where we pick up the Intracoastal Waterway that will take us in mostly protected water all the way down to Miami.

We anchored way up the Hampton River, past a bridge the sailboats couldn’t get under. The basin we were in was blank on our charts…no depths indicated. So other powerboats were afraid to anchor there. We had all the water depth we needed, a beautiful view, and the calmest anchorage imaginable.

Our buddy Matthew often asks us when we last jumped.

Moss and Ellen showing our support for a friend who was having a bit of a rough time.

Hampton has what looks like a great air and space museum but it was closed on the day we had time to see it.

Moss met us here for a night aboard. Then we went with her back to Williamsburg to hang our at beautiful William & Mary for a bit.

More Star Wars…these cranes look like AT-ATs from the movie.

Leaving Hampton we stayed a night at Old Point Comfort so we could check out Fort Monroe. It’s got a moat and everything. But we didn’t take pictures because we went for a run around the place (longer than anticipated…the place is big) and didn’t carry a camera.

Heading down through Norfolk we got an eyeful of Navy vessels and big industry.

Washington DC

Looking back a couple of whiles, we enjoyed a week in Washington visiting Simon and Hannah. Our anchorage was right downtown with easy access to food and entertainment and transportation and supplies. It was absolutely the best way to visit the city.

The beauty in the foreground is Ellen, the beauty in the background is Cyclops.

Back in the day when I was a young, starry-eyed attorney I wanted to get sworn in as a member of Supreme Court bar (it’s a privilege open to lawyers who are members of lower federal courts). But ultimately I am not interested in being a member of a partisan and corrupt entity,

Speaking of corrupt, Ellen reached out to Senator Susan Collins to see if we could get a tour of the Senate. Collins let us down (in this instance I mean she let Ellen and me down, but feel free to extrapolate to all Mainers and citizens of good conscience) but Senator King came through like a champ. We got a personal tour of the Capitol from an intern in King’s office. It was fantastic.

The Wharf Marina downtown has a phenomenal rate for visiting boats: we anchored and just $5/day got us access to their secure dinghy dock, lounge, library, laundry machines, and showers. Quite a deal. Everyone there was friendly and helpful, and we can’t wait to visit again in the spring. It’s a long long way up the Potomac, but absolutely worth the trip.

This was the view from Cyclops at anchor in DC.

Simon and Hannah ran an 8k while we were there, and the route took them around the public golf course Trump is intent on ruining. So we got to see it (and run around it ourselves) before he cuts down all the trees, paints everything gold, and makes it a gated community for his rich white supremacist buddies.

Ellen and I walked and walked all over the city. Got to hang out at the bar where Simon works when he is not busy being a scholar. Got to have lunch and play on the simulators at the Formula One cafe – something everyone should try because it was tremendous fun despite the fact that driving an F1 car is really really hard to do well. And we got so comfortable with the Metro that Ellen and I managed to coordinate a transfer from the subway to a bus! Just like city people.

Nope, we are not in Rio de Janeiro and this is not Jesus. It’s a memorial to the passengers who let the women and children get seats in the lifeboats on the Titanic.

Some of the harbor tour boats look like the future. By the way, where are all the flying cars we were promised?

The Potomac is a big river with commercial traffic, but it is so shallow in places (often less than 20’ deep) that it’s more barges than deep-draft vessels.

It’s also the filthiest body of water on which we have ever boated. Every time we raised the anchor there was some kind of nasty stuck to it. We raised so many trash bags filled with who-knows-what that Ellen was getting Dexter flashbacks.

Sage advice in a DC bathroom.

And acrobatic dogs on the streets.

Look at this pair of retirees with their sensible shoes!

We got to enjoy the company of Zoë and her BF Matt, and got to meet Zoë’s BFF The Nut Man. He’s a guy who sells delicious nuts and granola at the farmer’s market near their apartment.

Simon and Hannah joined us on board for some prosecco. (Yes, it’s Waterford crystal, because that is how we do aboard Cyclops.)

I need to get caught up

Oh my word, this blog has gotten so far behind! You don’t know about our visit to Washington DC, our trip back down the Potomac, the fun in Deltaville and Hampton. Or the Dismal Swamp Canal!

Changing the oil filter, I spilled not one drop of oil.

But instead of any of that business, today I’ll tell you about the oil change. Diligent readers will remember a post from April 8 of this year where I crowed about buying a five gallon pail of engine oil. It seemed like a whole lot of oil at the time, and it seemed like it would be years before I actually used it up. Well I am here to report we consumed the bulk of it for one oil change this week.

Draining the old black oil.

Cyclops takes 15 quarts of oil in the engine alone. It was time for a change so we did it. The boat has a wonderful oil change pump system that draws oil out of the engine, transmission, or generator (there is a manifold with selector valves), and into a bucket. Then it’s a simple matter to put that hose into a bucket of fresh oil and reverse the pump to fill the engine. Probably the easiest oil change I have ever done.

Pumping in the fresh oil.

We collected a vial of the used oil and sent it to a laboratory that will test it and report on its contents. That way we will know if the engine is consuming its rings and bearings, if it has anything in the oil that shouldn’t be there, or if it is as healthy as we hope. Stay tuned for that report.

Because the Dismal Swamp Canal is the place to go to find duckweed and all sorts of other floating whatnot, we also cleaned the raw water strainers for the engine and the generator. Fun stuff! Pesto for dinner tonight.

Boats boats boats!

Today we find ourselves in Deltaville, Virginia. What a place! On our way to the anchorage here in Jackson Creek we made a side trip to the innermost reaches of Broad Creek for fuel. After calling what seems like every marina and boatyard between here and Myrtle Beach, we realized the Chesapeake Cove Marina in Deltaville had the best price around. So we filled the tanks for the first time since Portland, Maine. Pretty great range…we expected to need fuel by Cape May but we got all the way down here using less than 3/4 of the diesel in the tanks. Now we are topped up on fuel and a little lighter on cash. It was an eye-watering $1,555 for 267 gallons. Thanks for all the winning, Trump.

Two restored beauties at the Deltaville Maritime Museum. One is the pristine F. D. Crockett a 1924, 62’ log bottomed buy boat. The other is Jennie Mae, a 1986 round-stern, deadrise Virginia workboat.

This morning we dinghied to the Deltaville Maritime Museum. Boy oh boy do we like maritime museums. In the boatshop I got all my crab boat questions answered by a volunteer who was in the middle of building two new boats in the shop. And at the exhibit hall, Ellen and I volunteered to help out at tomorrow’s Halloween party. This part of the Chesapeake is boat-heaven. The guy at the fuel dock thinks there are more boats than residents, and we have no reason to doubt him.

This was a fascinating display describing the difference in stern designs for deadrise boats. I’m partial to a draketail.

There was a whole room devoted to pond boats.

…and outboards, of course.

And as always, there is a collection of boats waiting for some restoration love. This old girl is pretty far gone – her keel is stove in, as a Mainer would say.

F. D. Crockett is one of two remaining log bottomed buy boats. The keel was made by fastening nine logs together lengthwise and then shaping them to form the keel as one piece. She has been beautifully restored.

And of course there were more window boats everywhere we looked.

The woman working at this place, Man Cave and She Shed, accused her boss of being a hoarder. She may not be wrong.

We liked this ¾ tree, custom pruned to accommodate the power lines.

Waiting for the ghosts and ghouls to arrive.

Ellen dressed as a Yankee (geographical, not sportsy) and frightened all the locals.

We walked about 1.5 miles to Nauti Nell’s, a marine consignment store. Our quest was to find a male quick-connect fuel fitting for the backup dinghy fuel tank. It wasn’t until I went to switch tanks a couple of weeks ago that I realized we have one tank with a Yamaha fitting and another with a Suzuki fitting, and the fuel line in Giggle Monster is a Suzuki and wouldn’t connect to the backup tank. Nell’s didn’t have the fitting but had everything else under the sun. West Marine was closed (their one employee left a note saying they had gone to the Post Office and would be back soon.) But the hardware store right down the street from the museum had exactly what we needed. Love this place.

Everything works

Right now everything on the boat works. Every system, every pump, every light, every amenity. All of it. Works. I have no illusions about how long this will last, but for just this minute – perfection.

This perfection didn’t happen accidentally. It is the result of planning, skill, good fortune, and Amazon. We got that anchor light sorted with parts we collected from Simon and Hannah when we saw them last week in DC. The light we installed when we were at Staten Island was functional but took a different bulb from the dusk-dawn one we wanted. The new light and bulb work perfectly. And we have a spare bulb as well as a whole spare fixture.

This is where the magic happens. On at dusk, off at dawn. Automatically.

I like this light a little better than the one it replaces because the pole on this one is stainless steel not aluminum. (Bonus: can you spot the Washington Monument in the blurry background?)

On the way downriver this morning I tackled the last issue (just for now, I know). One of the front burners on the stove wasn’t staying lit. I have a pair of spare thermocouples in my bag of tricks, so I took the stove apart to replace the dodgy one. Works just right now.

Rather than pick and choose among my wrenches, I brought all the little guys up from the toolbox for the party.

If that tiny little nut is so important, why doesn’t the new thermocouple come with one?

The road to stove-perfection was a little winding. When I put the old thermocouple down on the counter, the nut on it bounced into the sink and down the drain. That led to me removing the drain plug from the sink trap. The water, yuck, and wayward nut in the trap came out into the bucket I put under the trap. No problem. No big deal. But when I put it back together, the trap leaked. Turns out the o-ring for the trap plug was brittle and torn. So I cut a new one from an old bicycle inner tube I have on board. Fixed.

Who knew so many wires lived under the stovetop? The shiny new thermocouple and copper wire are installed and ready to do their thing.

The lesson I learned is to cover the sink drain when I am working with bits and bobs in the galley.

Note: immediately after posting this entry the fresh water pump failed. We have three spares and the swap was easy peasy. But still, pretty funny and utterly predictable.

Updated note: despite the fact that the pump is 18 months old, Hodges Marine (where we bought the pump online) and Jabsco (the folks who make the pump) are replacing it under warranty. Hooray!

Up the Potomac!

Fox Harbor was flat calm even with big winds out on the river just a mile or two away. Excellent anchorage.

X marks the spot where we anchored, close to the appealingly-named Tick Neck. We did not go ashore.

On the way up the Potomac our first stop was in Fox Harbor. It’s another extremely well-protected anchorage. When we got there it was hot…in the 80s. So we launched the kayaks and paddled upstream to see what we could see. Among the things we saw were three very different boats. The first is this Stone Horse, a Maine design that is not unusual in New England but was a rare treat in these waters.

The second boat of interest we saw was this poor sunken girl.

Something about the lamppost gives off a perverse The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe vibe.

And we paddled home to our lovely Cyclops.

After a hot summery day, we got hit with some cold and breezy weather. Morning temperatures for the week were in the low 40s and even high 30s. Sub-optimal but we can take it, particularly since we are ultimately headed south towards the warm.

We were in no rush to get to Washington, DC so we took our time heading up the Potomac. There were some high winds out on the Chesapeake that triggered small craft advisories and even gale warnings for the lower Potomac, but Cyclops was unfazed by winds in the mid-20 knot range. When the breeze gusted up into the 30s, the only way we could even tell was by looking at the wind instruments. The big girl kept on trucking.

Our second stop on the way upriver was Cobb Island. It’s a tiny crabbing town with a fascinating mix of well-kept and derelict. We had read there was a free dock but when we checked it out, it was nowhere we wanted to tie our home so we anchored in the protected cove nearby, dinghied ashore and checked out the town.

The market was super convenient - right across the street from the dinghy dock. Those are some big tubes of beef.

Getting a jump on the holiday season, Cobb Island did not impress with its spelling skills.

…but the bumper-sticker math is beyond reproach.

Tipsy indeed, presumably while applying the decal.

Impeller

Ah, the impeller. Bane of my existence. It was a sweaty, bloody two hour job but I got the old one out and the new one in. There are no leaks, the engine seems to be staying cool. Job done.

I’m no longer as nervous about the engine as I used to be, now that I am getting to know it so well. That short piece of black hose was the key to making this task less arduous. Removing it gave me a lot more working space. The water pump is hidden behind it.

Exercising the ball valve the past several days made a big difference but it still leaks a trickle of water and needs to be replaced the next time the boat gets hauled. (The plunger trick won’t work because there’s a sea strainer over the intake – too big for a plunger to cover.) The current valve leaked three or four gallons during the course of the remove and refit. It wasn’t a problem but was an annoyance. While I was making a salt-water mess of the otherwise clean engine room I checked the engine’s pencil zincs, and they are all looking good enough to wait on replacing them for a few more months.

Ok, so maybe the water was a little more than a trickle. This is why we have bilge pumps.

The trick to getting the old impeller out is to thread the big bolt into its hub. As the bolt goes into the impeller it pushes against the water pump shaft and forces the impeller out. That’s great, but today the woodruff key on the shaft galled the bolt as it pushed in. So although I got the job done, it destroyed both of the big bolts I bought for the job. I suppose I have another 200+ engine hours to get myself new bolts for the next impeller change.

“Why isn’t Jonathan using a socket wrench, wouldn’t that save him about 45 minutes of tedious work with the box wrench? Great question! I don’t have a 1 1/8” socket on board…yet. (Also note the chopsticks I jammed in the impeller blades to prevent them from rotating as I screwed in the big bolt. Thanks for the chopsticks Simon!)

The trick to get the new impeller into the water pump is to compress it with a zip tie and to coat it liberally with dish soap. Both of those techniques worked great. I am so relieved this job is done.

In with the new.

This is the blood I was talking about. Don’t worry, I’m fine: the Chief Medical Officer cleaned and bandaged the wound for me.