A LAST FEW WEEKS IN THE US

The British Armada

In contrast to the Delaware river popping out of the canal into the Chesapeake was like stepping out into a whole new world. Think Beaulieu River and then magnify the scale by a few hundred, the most beautiful lush green landscape with lots of different rivers to explore. We spent our first night in the Sassafras river, a total contrast to the previous night, warm enough to swim in the brown water with a beautiful sunset watched from the balcony of the local clubhouse with Sandra and John. An excellent $6 burger and a few glasses of wine, magic.

Mel & Sandra

The following day we crossed to the Mogathy River and spent a quiet night at anchor and then we both set off to Annapolis to meet up with Mel and James on Blew Beyond. With three British boats moored in the harbour it was suggested that the British Armada had arrived. We had a jolly good knees up in the town and then a somewhat subdued brunch the next day with very sore heads! We really liked Annapolis; it is a very pretty town with a good vibe and lots of life.

The White House

The Vietnamese memorial

We had intended to take the boat up the Potomac River to Washington but with time running out we decided to leave her on the mooring in Annapolis, booked a cheap hotel room for one night and ubered into the capital. Arriving on a Sunday we spent our first day walking around the town. We walked past the White House, which is actually quite small, and then past all the monuments which were very impressive. Keen to see the Vietnamese Memorial, having been to Ho Chi Min and seen and heard their version of events, we walked to the curved wall which has the name of each American who lost their lives engraved on it, 560,000 in total, and thought again what a total waste of lives, all for nothing.

Arlington

We visited Arlington crematory where thousands of American Service men are buried, travelling around the grounds in a tour bus staring out at row upon row of white head stones stretching as far as the eye could see. We visited the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, actually three unknown soldiers from the two world wars and Vietnam, and watched the changing of the guard. This ceremony takes place every half an hour.  Day and night whatever the weather, hurricane or sunshine. Once again we got a sense of how patriotic the Americans are.

The town was very quiet that evening, walking to our very inferior Thai restaurant we came upon many tramps sleeping on park benches and a huge rat ran across our path almost running over my toes! The town seemed dead and deserted, a far cry from the hustle and bustle of most capital cities that we have been to.

Hot to trot!

We woke to torrential rain and resorted to walking around the city in our very smart plastic ponchos that we had purloined on our Big Bus tour the previous day. The height of fashion we turned many a head! We spent most of the day in the Capitol managing to join a tour of the old Senate and originalHouse of Assembly, which was fascinating. On being told by our tour guide how the British had destroyed part of the building in the early 1800’s I almost felt the need to apologise, how very unkind of us!  We then managed, to our great surprise, to gain entry to the House of Assembly and the Senate, the latter was sitting. The American’s have to gain access through the offices of their representatives, foreigners just have to present their passports at the front desk.  It seems a little unfair especially considering our past treatment of the building.

We arrived back on the good ship Hullabaloo later that evening to find we had an unwelcome guest, a rather large cockroach sitting bold as brass on the sofa looking at us as if we were the intruders! On the third attempt we managed to wrestle it overboard, amongst much high pitch squealing from the female crew. We prayed it had been an unsociable male and therefore not left us with any of its offspring or any of its friends.  

Pre dinner drinks in Oxford

We left the next day for a quiet night up the Wye River arranging to meet the Armada in St. Michaels the following evening. There followed a very jolly three days of travelling to the East Wye River and then the town of Oxford, each boat taking their turn at hosting dinner.  It was then time for us, to leave and go on our merry way alone. We had always planned to return to England in October, not being keen on spending time in the increasing cold and not being able to head past 30 degrees until 1^st November due to the risk of Hurricane. So we decided, in our infinite wisdom, that we would leave the boat in Charleston where we thought it would be warmer, hmm perhaps not the best decision we have ever made.

York Town you could almost be in England

Before we left the Chesapeake we had one more stop to make, York Town the site of the battle that heralded the end of the War of Independence and where the British were well and truly defeated. Although it is worth noting most the effort was done by the French!  Now a tourist destination the town has been preserved as it was and is like walking through a film set. We had a fantastic tour of the battlefields with the usual well informed and enthusiastic tour guide, and we kept very quiet not wishing to be rumbled as the enemy…

Always partial to a cannon...

We left the next day for an overnighter down to Beaufort in our quest for warmer weather, this turned into a very uncomfortable trip with thunder and lightening and rolly seas. The first mate definelty felt a bit queasy. There was some sort of naval exercise being conducted a few miles off the coast and they didn’t seem very pleased to have us around. Honking their horns at us and then escorting us many miles along the coast with 5 frigates.

However there was one memorable moment, finally back in deep blue water I caught my first fish! The skipper disappeared down below to get the knife and got distracted by the kettle, oblivious to my cries for help as I had spotted a small shark that also had its eye on my fish and was in hot pursuit of it.  I had to struggle gallantly on alone managing to land Lilly the Tuna and I have to admit to being very pleased with myself, a true hunter-gatherer! And how delicious she tasted! Even if she was a little smaller than Kylie the tuna caught by Andrew earlier in the day.

A quick dodge to Port

Arriving after dark at the entrance to the Bight we were not concerned as we had been there before. We therefore got quite a fright when we hit the bottom especially as we were well inside the channel marker; obviously there had been quite a shifting of sands during Hermione.

We took a day to recover enjoying the tranquility of the anchorage and then turned on Passage weather to plan the next part of the trip. To our horror we saw a familiar picture making its way up the east coast, a possible hurricane on its way all nasty green and brown swirls with a very pink center. Hurricane Mathew estimated to arrive in Charleston in about a week so we had plenty of time to get into port and get the boat sorted, but still a shock and a worry. Needless to say we set sail immediately arriving the following morning after another squally night.

We dropped anchor in the outer harbour and set about making plans for the oncoming onslaught. We had already been talking to the Charleston City Boatyard about leaving the boat there and having her bottom painted, which was fortuitous as they had a space penciled in to haul us out. They told us though that we had to get there three days hence as they had many boats to haul out before the bad weather hit.

The only place we could find a Marina in the meantime was up river away from town but we felt we needed to be tied to a pontoon in order to get the sails off, quite a job for the two of us. Three days followed of stripping her of everything as the news got worse and worse with potential winds of 120knots being forecast. The locals all seemed quite relaxed about the situation, used no doubt to many false alarms but as the days progressed they started to look more and more worried. Hurricanes move relatively slowly and there is no guarantee of their direction, so it is a nail biting time will it /won’t it hit? At least this time around we had a definite plan. One elderly gentleman who lived on a motor boat in the Marina and kindly took me into town one afternoon was very laid back and was just going to stay on the boat as he had two cats and he didn’t want to leave them incase they got frightened!!

In the midst of all this activity I decided to use their launderette to wash all the bed linen. Taking our mattress covers out of the washing machine I found three or four black plastic pellets amongst them, suspicious I took one back to the boat and discovered thanks to both Googles that these were infact Cockroach eggs!!! Hurrying back to the laundry to pull the washing out of the dryer I came upon the lovely Annie keen to chat Hurricane tales whilst I surreptitiously checked to see if there were anymore, feeling somewhat grubby and unclean!! I did discover more in the washing machine, which I had used after an interesting looking salty sea dog, were they from his washing or mine? There followed much frantic cleaning of the boat in the middle of all the other chaos. I did not fancy coming back to find the boat infested, if she survived the hurricane, from our friend from Annapolis.

Nothing more to do but wait

We arrived at the City Boat yard as instructed and were lifted in the dark. Standing in the stripped out cockpit with everything beautifully tied down or taped up by the skipper.   It did cross my mind that although it was all rather scary it was a lot more exciting than sitting at home watching the TV! The boys worked all night long, sleeping on the hard we could hear them going backwards and forwards with all the boats. They did a fabulous job and we felt the boat was in as safe a place as possible so there was nothing more to do but cross our fingers and worry, big time!! We had managed to get a flight out the next afternoon to New York but were advised to get to the airport first thing as the city was being evacuated and all six motorway lanes out of the city were to being made one way that afternoon.  So we spent six hours at the airport city by the empty baggage carousel, no one flying into Charleston that day.

We were lucky, by the time the Hurricane hit the gusts were down to 55 knots and although there were a couple of boats sunk and much flooding it wasn’t nearly as bad as feared. We received the happy news that Hullabaloo was undamaged and now I could go back to just worrying about cockroaches, which really didn’t seem so bad after all!!