Day 56 Portsmouth, VA, Deltaville, VA and Solomon Island, MD

The Salt Shaker has become home and the voyage has become a way of life for us.  I guess we were cut out for this kind of thing.

On a sad note, one of our "across the canal" neighbors in Florida is missing.  He is an experienced captain and has made the trip from his dock back and forth to the Bahamas dozens of times over the years.  His name is Glen Brandt and he was on his way back from Nassau bound for Marathon, alone aboard his boat, the Genesis.  He has been missing since May 15.  Our thoughts and prayers are with Glen and his family.

We left the Dismal Swamp Canal and turned into the Elizabeth River going upstream toward Portsmouth and Norfolk, VA.  This bridge is kind of the dividing line between peace and solitude and our new world of noise, large ships and cranes, more noise, factorys, industrial sized trash dumps and other installations along the shore and the associated aromas in the air

This is the view looking up river toward Portsmouth.  The installation on the right is a Perdue Chicken loading and processing facility.  Large ships come here and we could only wonder what they bring to or what they take away from this monster chicken machine.  The aroma is what one would expect.

This is one monster crane.  It is on the nautical charts as a landmark.  Just past is the Ocean Marine Yacht Center where we spent two nights.

This is the little ferry that took us on the ten minute trip across the river to visit Norfolk.  $0.75 each way (geezer rate).

The admiral at her station on the ferry boat.

Norfolk is home to the battle ship "Wisconsin"  Althought still owned by the U.S. Navy, she is berthed at the very large "Nauticus" museum and entertainment facility.  We could only tour the decks of the big "Wis"  We were not allowed below decks because all the interior spaces are still protected with asbestos.  Strange, on deck is a large "decontamination station"  I guess it handles every bad thing except for asbestos   This is one huge battle wagon.

Here is a navy ship in drydock, one of many.  This one looks like the next generation of war ship design.  We were on our way to Deltaville, VA

Container ship docking at Norfolk, still several hundred feet from shore.  Note the tug boat.  There was another one on the other side.  Any guesses what products are in the containers and where they are from?

And as usual, this vessel is not flagged in the U.S.  There are reasons for that.

Deltaville on the west shore of the Chesapeake-----I finally figured out why we are always a midget among the fleet.  The Salt Shaker is an unusually small boat for serious travel but since that is what we are doing, we are put with the "serious" travelers.  I was told the one next to us burns 76 gallons per hour.  I do not know at what speed but I suspect it is at the speed that we burn 4 gallons per hour.

Deltaville is small.  We were told that Deltaville has about 800 residents and about 4000 boat slips.  This guy was giving us an air show in his ultra-light.  He flew and danced around in the sky until just before dark.

Here are some floating "aqua homes."  FEMA might like to know about these.  There were dozens.  Notice that some have outboard motors.  Not sure how well they would handle waves.  Pretty sure I would be just as happy at the dock.

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Next stop---Solomon Island, MD.  The trip up the Chesapeake was interesting.  The bay lived up to her reputation.  Nice chop and on plane tooling right along but the nice chop became 4-5 footers and there was no way I could trim the boat to handle these and stay on plane.  Too tough on the boat.  So we motored along for a couple of hours at trawler speed and pitched up and down over these things until we reached better waters.  Then speed was once again possible.

Pat called her neice Sarah to find out what they live near, we only knew it was near the bay and it is in MD.  Turned out she and her family, husband Billy, kids Abby, John and Charlie live 15 minutes from the island and it also turned out that they had plans to visit the Calvert Maritime Museum which is within sight of the Calvert Marina where we were headed.  Talk about concidence!  We had a great day on Friday with them at this excellent museum.

They live in Hollywood, MD where you can buy beer in either the standard 12 oz cans or--get this--10 oz cans.  This is reported to be one of only of 3 places in the country where this choice is available, the second being a county in TX and the third being a county in LA.  These 10 oz things are hugely popular for a number of reasons.  I picked up a case of 10 oz Bud Lite for the boat.

This is the relocated Drum Point Light House at the museum.  It has quite a history.  We were able to go inside and have a look.  The most who ever occupied the keepers house at one time was 7.  Dad, Mother and 5 kids.  that would have been an interesting life for the kids.

The kitchen and dining area.

Dining/Sitting Room.

This is the lens with one section removed.  It is what they call a Fresnel design, named after the man who developed it in the mid 1800's.  It is so efficient that a kerosene lamp (or a 100 watt light bulb) could be seen up to 11 miles away we were told.

Abby, John and a friend.  Oh well, so much for signs!

Day 51 @ the Ocean Marine Yacht Center at Portsmouth, VA

We have had great cruising and visits along the waterways.  Here are a few pictures we felt were worth sharing.

Replica ship in the Beaufort NC at Town Creek Marina on May 14.

Photo from our side trip to North Augusta, SC.  Joy and Charles (Amanda's in-laws), Ethan, Amanda (Pat's daughter), Chuck, Amanda's husband), Ellie, and Pat

I thought this would interest my grand daughters, keri and Sarah

Joy and Charles brought us back to Swansboro and loaned us a car to use to get back to Beaufort and use for the duration of out time there.  That was really nice of them and we did appreciate that generous favor from them.  The picture is of one of the reasons we selected Beaufort to visit.  The Salt Shaker was in need of routine maintenance and it required hauling the boat to do the oil changes to the out drives.  There we are in the slings with the propellers removed so the oil could be changed.  Town Creek Marina did a nice job for us.  And we met some nice people while we were there, Terry and Pam aboard the "Cozy Corner."

This is the lowest bridge we can get under.  This one connects Morehead City with Beaufort.  The waters leading to Beaufort are a bit more complicated than most.  We tried the route out that had lots of shoals and ambiguous markings (my story and I am sticking to it) and we could not thread our way thru it without the risk of grounding so we turned around and took the route we used for arrival.  When we hit the intra coastal, there was more confusion and we wound up going the wrong way for a couple of markers before we sorted it all out.

From Beaufort, we went on up to Bellhaven, NC to the Bellhaven Water Marina, which is a picturesque place to spend the night.  It is run by Les and Brenda Porter.  They have just a few slips so it is small.  They have it manicured to perfection.  This was the sunset from our deck.  Kudos to the camera for getting the colors right!

Bellhaven is a really comfortable, layed back kind of town.  This little resturant is about 150 feet from the marina.  We had breakfast there.  The total bill?  Seven dollars and seven cents.  And there was enough left overs that we had it as part of breakfast the next day aboard the boat.

This is the stern of the boat belonging to the person who owns the Alligator River Marina.  Obviously her name is Wanda.  The photo interested us because we have a neighbor across the street from us in Florida who we refer to as Miss Wanda.  And the same applies to another Miss Wanda who worked with us at Clover Electronics, Inc. for many years.  Wanda's marina is a combination fuel facility.  It is a roadside Shell Station, with a convenience store with the marina being in the back.

Alligator River Marina.  I believe the house in the background is Miss Wanda's  It is on the property.

This sign is at the Elizabeth City, NC city docks.  These docks are free to visiting boats.  Of course, first come, first served as there are a limited number of them.  The hospitality sign is no fake.  It was a real great place to spend 24 hours.  Friendly people along the water front,  City festivals, etc.  This is where the Rose Boys made the marina and city well known because they would come to the dock once a day and hand out a rose to each lady on each visiting boat.  They also started the tradition of a wine and cheese party most days for the visitors.  Sadly, they have passed on but the town keeps those traditions alive and well.  We were treated to an upscale blue grass concert, put on at the adjacent resturant from 9 til midnight.  We also met some great folks on a number of boats with whom we shared the trip from Elizabeth City thru the Dismal Swamp the next day.

Elizabeth City was the jumping off place for the Wright Brothers.  Also it has much marine history.  We were able to visit the Marine Museum, which has a great display and program that describes Blackbeard's life and times.  His vessel, the "Queen Anne's Revenge," met her last in the waters just outside of Elizabeth City.  Across the steet from the museum is a wood working shop you can visit that hand makes various kinds of small wooden boats.  At the moment they are building two identical boats which are replicas of the shore boats used by the US Lifesaving service in the late 1800's.  Len Conner, you would really be interested in seeing this!

This is the Dismal Swanp Canal.  It is spectacular.  It is very narrow and very straight.  It is also full of snags and stuff on the bottom that are the remains of fallen trees and other vegitation.  The depth ranged from 6 to 8 feet the day we traveled. And happily we did not get tangled up with any snags or other hazards.  The canal is narrow to the point where two boats passing each other is not done casually.  I believe the canal was concieved by George Washington, but it was built later.  Its commercial purpose no longer exists and it is now just a very beautiful route that small boats can use.  We spent the night at the North Carolina Visitor Center which has a free dock on the canal, once agian "first come, first served."  There is a lot of rafting.  When our flotilla of 5 boats arrived, we had to raft one of them out.  The welcome center is unique in the sense that it is really a standard highway welcome center that happens to be on the Intra Coastal so the state of NC built a dock.  U.S Highway 17 parallels the canal but is mostly hidden by the intense tree forrest.

This is the parade of boats arriving as a flotilla at the "Deep Creek" lock that opens at specific times each day.  The boats are the "Fair Haven," that happened along so we did not know its crew but the others in order is the "Potest Fiere," owned by a couple of folks from Canada, Danny and Susan, the "Karen Anne" owned by Roger and Karen, (who else?) "Monk's Vinyard" owned by Gerry and Linda, and the "Trefil" owned by Richard and Karen.  We all fit in the lock once it opened with room to spare.  Danny and Susan had us all aboard their boat for cocktails and snacks and about 4 hours of real enjoyable fun the night before at the welcome center.

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Photo's I promised--we are at Beaufort NC getting the boat service done.

This is the Barefoot Landing Bridge at North Myrtle Beach.  It reminds me of the type of bridges @ my boyhood home on Grosse Ile, MI

For son-in-law Jeff

Building the bridge.  One by one, the low bridges along the ICW are being replaced by high ones, typically 65 foot clearance at mean high water.  This may be the one that will replace the pontoon bridge up the stream that must open to let any boat traffic thru, no matter how small the boat.  Note the temporary supports on the left.  They will be removed once the bridge structure is complete.  This is on the way from North Myrtle Beach to Southport, NC

Political statement

Sunset @ Southport, NC

This is bouy 22 marking the ICW in the Cape Fear River.  This tidal current is flowing swiftly, making it look like the bouy is traveling.  We are swimming against the tidal current so our speed over the bottom is cut by a like amount.  Note the orange square under the number.  This is the indication that the bouy is a marker for the ICW

Big tug encountered along the way

Another Osprey nest

Harbor at Surf City, NC.  The "Salt Shaker," the "Here and Now" and a mini sized cruise boat.  If you enlarge this pic, you may be able to see the well stocked but tiny bar for the passengers just behind the wheel in the wheel house.

Steve and Carolyn with Pat behind Daddy Mac's resturant with the Atlantic in the background.

The "Here and Now" departing for their next destination.  We are about to depart for Swansboro, NC where we will be met by Amanda's (Pat's daughter) in-laws, Charles and Joy Mckee. 

Another "high rise" bridge on the way to Swansboro.  Note the tow boat parked with a large oil barge right in the "travel" opening for the bridge.  He was the subject of a lot of radio traffic on channel 16 but we never did learn why he chose that particular place to use as an anchorage.  All the boats had to squeeze thru in what space remained to his right.

These are some of our marines preparing their boats for the "live fire" practice they have planned.  On the bank of the river besides military supply vehicles, were a couple of large "Enterprise" rental trucks.  The military outsources stuff too.  We did not know what they were up to until we traveled a bit further.

This is the sign that clued us in.  We dropped the hook and waited.  The boats in the above picture passed us and the marines went to their practice area.  They fired a variety of machine guns and gatlin guns for about an hour.  Then we were permitted to continue our journey.

This was a target that was visible from the water.  It looks like it has been worked over pretty good.

View of the harbor at Town Creek Marina at Beaufort NC from the Salt Shaker, where we are now.

Day 38----North Myrtle Beach to Southport NC to Surf City to Swansboro to Beaufort, NC

Long time since last post.  Photo's in next post.  You gotta bear with us.

At North Myrtle Beach we were able to take advantage of something that was completely unplanned by us. Our good friends Bob and Cherrie Ritsema had reserved a time share less than a mile from our marina at NMB. We discovered they would be where we would be and when we would be there just by a chance conversation. The result was that they were able to visit us and have boat cooked dinner with us and another rendezvous attendee, Jim Conlin who lives in Hudson, Ohio. Bob is the man who married us aboard the Salt Shaker back in 2008.



When we returned to the boat after being in Florida for the earlier week, we stayed two more days to give Pat's back a chance to recover and repair the muscle spasms that befell her during the long auto ride and other activities. For her, these two days were unpleasant and would have been really enjoyable had it not been for that.


We did eventually get to leave and take a nice ride to Southport, NC where we met up with our new friends Steve and Carolyn Wood aboard their boat the "Here and Now." Pat and I had a nice dinner at a local well known eatery called "Fishy Fishy." Excellent fare and great Margaritas. We left Southport the next day together and we followed Steve and Carolyn on the portion of the journey that took us to Surf City, NC. This is the portion that included a segment of the Cape Fear River. The tidal current there was pretty swift and unfortunately it was running against us to it extended the time of travel just a bit.


Surf City was a really small small tourist and fishing town with a really friendly and easy to navigate marina that was sized for the town. We were within a block of the Atlantic. Pat, Steve and Carolyn and I walked over to the ocean and found a nice place to have dinner called "Daddy Mac's." The view of the Atlantic with it's sandy beach and incoming surf made this a leisurely experience.


The following morning we departed Surf City bound for a stop at Casper's Marina at Swansboro NC. The interesting part of this day was where we passed Camp Le Jeune just in time to watch a bunch of our country's finest young men and women staging aboard their attack patrol boats preparing for a live fire practice session.


Little did we know that when we just a little way past them, there was a sign that said "Live fire, proceed no farther when the lights are flashing." Needless to say the lights were flashing so we did the smart thing and proceeded no further. We dropped the anchor in the middle of the Intra Coastal where there was already an anchored sail boat and an anchored trawler.


The attack patrol boats seen earlier made their way past us and eventually disappeared from view. Soon after we were treated to about an hour of sounds from what I would figure were 30 caliber and 50 caliber machine guns as well as fire from gatlin guns.


Swansboro was a delightful stop for us because it is the home of Pat's younger daughter, Amanda's in-laws, Charles and Joy McKee. They picked us up at our dock gave us a tour of this really laid back and picturesque town before taking us to their house where they had already prepared a perfect recipe of jambalaya. We were able to enjoy this home cooked dinner with their daughter Marney and her children Brandon and Rachel. This time we spent went well into the evening. Nice time was had by all. We could hear and feel in the ground the sounds and vibrations from the big guns from Le Jeune, lobbing a few shells off to somewhere, a few an hour.


From Swansboro we took what turned out to be pretty trip to Beaufort, NC where we currently are staying at the Town Creek Marina. Here we will have the boat serviced, the engine oil needs to be changed and numerous other scheduled maintenance items need to be attended to. Town Creek was recommended to me by one of the fellow who are involved with www.rinkerboatowners.com . I think he gave us some good advice based on how it is proceeding. Once all the work is done, I will need to write him and thank him for his selection.


Getting into the marina was a test of my developing close quarter maneuvering abilities. Pretty stiff and gusting breeze and not too much room for error. I surprised everyone and got into the slip on the first attempt and without anyone gasping at what they were seeing. I am starting to get a bit more comfortable and it is starting to have the same appeal to me as I used to have landing my 172 and later my 182 (airplane) in crummy wind conditions.


Beaufort is a town with a lot of history and we will probably get a couple of days to explore. We will also have a couple of days to be taken over to North Augusta, SC by Amanda's in-laws to help Amanda and Chuck celebrate the 3rd birthday of granddaughter Ellie and a visit with new grandson, Ethan.


Tony n Pat

Day 33 back to boat @ North Myrtle Beach Marina

After a 9 hour road trip with a car full of new boat stuff, required 3 marina hand carts to transport to the boat, this was how it looked before it was organized and stowed.

This is an elderly boat across from our marina slip at the Barefoot Landing Marina on the Little River at Mile 352.  I am thinking it might be a Hackercraft.  Mr. Austeberry of Grosse Ile had one at one time that from my memory was sort of like this one.  Maybe someone knows her make, length and approximate age.  Maybe my Brother?

The "Admiral" off to the marina laundramat with a load of laundry.  Kathy and Doug, does the wheely thing look familiar?

At last, the Salt Shaker is not dwarfed by her stable mates.  The condos (four buildings of them) are part of the Barefoot Landing complex.  How many dozen would you like to buy?  Myrtle beach was hit hard by the bursting real estate bubble.

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We arrived back to the boat last night from Orlando after the birth of Lea and all the festivities associated with.  Two days in Orlando, followed by two days back to Palmetto (home port of the Salt Shaker) and visited with grandpa Chernushka for two days, followed by two more days back in Orlando to visit with Lea.

Tomorrow we leave North Myrtle Beach on to Southport, NC.  One of the interesting features of this part of the trip is the Cape Fear River.  I like the name.

The camera I bought for the trip was one recommended by Jeff's dad.  It is the Canon SX200 IS Power Shot.  It is simple to use but can do complex things if you need them.  12 mega pixels and a great telephoto lense.  It has not disappointed us and the price on Amazon.com was reasonable.

Pat is cooking tonight's din din and I will put the barbi on the stern and grill some chicken we purchased today.  One of the dock fellows took us to the store after his shift ended.  Great gesture on his part.  Let me recommend the Barefoot Landing Marina.  It is the one on the west side of the river.

We are listening to Pat Daly too.  Great enjoyment!

Tony n Pat