I know it has been a long time since I last posted and it looks bad, dog ate my homework? Lost at sea?
We left Elizabeth City NC and took the Dismal Swamp route and My dad, Mr. Harris to you, hopped on Godspeed along with his buddy Tom and rode to Portsmouth VA where we found yet another free dock so we tied up for a few days. We then were commandeered by my parents to get a marina for a month and help them get their home of 42 years ready to sell, so we did. After doing our time, we set sail for Yorktown and anchored in nearby Sarah's Creek. We got a little to used to the place as we had daily shore excursions and Anstasia from the Bahamas was close by and also some other boats we new as well. We ended up staying there for almost three weeks. Every day these three gangster ducks would swim up and demand some type of payment for thier protection services, so we paid them in bread twice daily, in turn they claimed to have kept us safe. We got so lazy that Lorrie and I were finding that it was becoming too much work to just breathe. When we finally found enough energy to weigh anchor, the chain had barnacles all over it, what bums!
Shortly after the "Lazy Days Incident", we were called back to Norfolk for another month of moving Mom & Mr. Harris to another house. So we found ourselves as "dock rats" again and we had actually become celebrities at the marina because we were the only boat that had been anywhere. A month later and "hurricane Earl" later we were cruising the Chesapeake again. Jackson Creek in Deltaville was a great place to anchor. We met up with "Finally" finally and a new buddy boat "Heather" and had some great cruising times. There are these cool old Chesapeake Bay work boats called a "Deadrise". We got to watch them come and go each day and one Called the "Martha Lynn" would unload 20 to thirty bushels of Blue crabs a day. Well, Lorrie dinghyed over one day while they were unloading with a bucket and a twenty dollar bill, a few minutes later she came back with a bucket and a twenty dollar bill. The bucket was full of Female Blue crabs, Captain David set us up and a new friend was made. We shared the Crabs with "Heather" and moved on to Tangier Island.
Tangier Island was settled in the 1600's and the same people just kind of stayed there and kept making people to replace them until now. They speak in old English (would thy like some Gas?) but really nice people and all they do is crab. There is no place to anchor so Mr. Parks has a few really inexpensive slips that have a wicked cross current are nothing short of horrifying to crash land into. After getting Godspeed and Heather secured Mr.Parks began giving his famous golf cart tour of the island and we unloaded the bikes and peddled everywhere. Going slow it took about a half hour! That evening we asked Mr.Parks about soft Shell crabs and a few minutes later a man in a skiff knocked on our hull and sold us two dozen soft shells ready to cook and if that wasn't enough he took Lorrie and I on a personal tour of his facility and explained the entire soft crab business to us,now this is cruising.
We waived goodbye to heather and set sail back to Deltaville. This is to be Godspeed's home for a while...
