by tomodda » Thu Jan 02, 2020 3:17 pm
GL and DS Folk:
Happy Gregorian Calendar New Years! Thank you for the tale of your night cruise, sounds like it was wonderful and I need to try night sailing. Usually I avoid, come running back to the ramp/dock by sunset, I should stop being such a chicken (and get some nav lights). Also, I thought that by "cruise," you meant staying on-boat or in tent overnight. If long daysails are permitted, I'll tell you about my cruise around Gwynn Island, Virginia.
Gwynn Island is right at the mouth of one of my old favorite sailing grounds - the Piankatank River on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake, roughly halfway between the Potomac and Norfolk. Beautiful Tidewater scenery, friendly locals, great food, good winds, and a variety of local waters to play around in. There's everything from a protected harbor behind the island to the open Bay, with just the right amount of other boats to see and soft sandbanks to dodge around. I.e. I ran aground a lot, but it was all just a matter of "Oh, look, the centerboard handle moved, I guess we'd better come about!". I spent a wonderful 4-day weekend there with my adult son right at the end of October, leaves were still turning colors adding to the beauty. Each day was special, but the best was the day we decided to circumnavigate the Island, "just becuz."
If you take a look at a map, you'll see it's about 9 miles around the island, but adding up all the tacks and doglegs, it was nearly 20 miles and a full day's sailing. We started the day by gliding out of Milford Haven and thru the swing bridge - under sail. I was happy that the bridge-tender let us sail through (usually frowned upon), but the truth is that we were probably going faster than my little EP Carry motor would have taken us anyway! Once thru into the mouth of the river, we began a steady beat out to the open Bay - a 3 foot steep chop made things interesting. But the DS behaved beautifully under full sail in 15 knot East winds, steady in strength but backing north. Once my son learned to trust her (and me!) he was hiking out nicely and helping to keep her on her lines. Nevertheless, it was too wet for me to use my smartphone GPS and I didn't have a chart, so I was navigating by sight alone. No problem getting out to the Bay, but I probably took more tacks than I needed to. Basically we hauled across the river until either of us thought that the water looked suspiciously lighter and then tacked, I didn't want to hit the shoals in that chop! The annoying thing is that I used to know those waters by heart, but that was 40 years ago... There's something wonderful in sailing on water that you can navigate like your own front door, I'm slowly getting that way with my local lake.
The reward for all our efforts was a nice broad reach across the Bay side of the island, admiring the million-dollar houses. To my surprise, no chop, that was all caused by the "funnel" effect at the mouth of the river, the Bay was smooth sailing. Relax, break out the beer, try and get our bearings for the tricky turn around the bottom of the island. The south end of Gwyn Island has several miles of sand islets and shoals, the way back thru to Milford Haven is ominously named "The Hole in the Wall." The inlet is an S-curve with no government markers and unknown currents, so was sure to be "fun." For the little it was worth, the chart showed that the beginning and end of the passage WERE marked with a "WC"' and a "WJ"' respectively, whatever those were - WC in particular didn't sound reassuring. But once we got down there, easy sailing and slack water. "WC" was an unlit iron post with a big white "C" on it, we managed to avoid the fish traps, fish "haven," and the finger of 2 foot shoals sticking into the Bay. WC even had a brother, WD, also unlit, but between the two they sort of pointed in the general direction of the first turn in the passage. Tricky, but nowhere near as bad as sailing the Florida Keys (and no bottomless mud). As we threaded along, we noticed a stick....with an upside down bait bucket bucket on it! Now that's mighty convenient.... Gawd bless the local watermen, is there a next one? a few hundred yards off to the south, there it was, we jibed over to it. And now? Nothing... we just pointed ourselves west towards the houses on the mainland-side and hoped not to hit anything. Where's WJ, are we out of this thing yet? Nothing but a big black post with something written on it, so we bore down on it. D-A-N-G-E-R... of what? Where were we? There were no warning markers on the chart when I looked at it earlier.... Then my son spotted it, a 12-inch high letter painted under the Danger sign - "J". This was it?!? The WJ marker that we'd been looking for all afternoon? Seriously? Kind of burying the lede here, no? Anyway, after a good laugh about having to almost hit the danger sign to see that it's really a navigation marker, we headed north. The wind had died down so we had a pleasant evening glide, zig-zagging home thru the well-marked shoals as the sun set.
Crabcakes and beer were waiting for us at the island's only restaurant, co-incidentally named "Hole in the Wall Grill." I asked one of the locals, "What's with the Danger marker at the south end of the Haven?" "Oh, the inlet is dangerous." "Huh, it wasn't too bad, I've just sailed it." "Yuh, you should see when you Summer Folk try to go thru there in a powerboat up on a plane!" OK, point taken, even if it was October. Anyway, nothing that day was really hairy, just enough to keep it interesting. Sailing Gwynn Island was plain good fun and the DS was perfect for it. Looking forward to next season!