Chesapeake Chase Day 1: Toogoodoo Creek
Departure with full crew
Our group for the first ten days arrived safely yesterday. Miriam, Naomi, and Phoebe, our lovely granddaughters, are the guests and additional crew from Port Royal to Beaufort, North Carolina. That is days by boat, but their dad can drive to pick them up in 7 ½ hours from Atlanta. We are so excited to have them join us.
Captain Grampy assigned each granddaughter a crew responsibility. He designated Phoebe as Communications Technician, Naomi as Engineering Apprentice, and Miriam as Navigation Assistant and Onshore Activities Planner.
The Captain and Admiral arose at 7:00 AM to a warm but otherwise perfect departure day. As you may remember from last year’s big adventure, coffee comes before anything else! The list of final preparations can only be completed once caffeine is coursing through our veins. This voyage has been in the planning stages for months. In the past several weeks we have been finalizing and working on the details.
Today the planning, preparing, and provisioning are complete, but there is a list of last minute to dos before we can leave the dock. These include pumping out (waste management), refilling the freshwater tank, removing the accumulated trash, putting fuel in the fuel tanks, checking to make sure all is secure, engine and oil checks, pulling in the electrical cord, checking current, tide and wind direction, and lathering up with sunscreen.
With final checks complete and crew in assigned places to handle lines, we pushed away at 12:15 PM. The Admiral still is responsible for lines and fenders, which were properly stowed until we will need them on Wednesday when we will be in a marina. I then changed “hats” and started our dinner in the crockpot. I love, love, love it!
Sunday is a high traffic day on the water. We rocked several times, but all in all it wasn’t uncomfortable in the way I remember from past Sundays. The afternoon was a time to relax and acclimate to being on the water again. Miriam worked on homework for one of her summer classes at Kennesaw State; Naomi delved into a riveting book she was reading, alternating between sitting on the flybridge and in the cockpit until the big biting flies chased her inside; Phoebe just chilled with her phone.
By 5:00 PM we were pulling into Toogoodoo Creek to anchor for the night, and at 6:00 we were sitting down to our Asian Meatball dinner with rice and broccoli. Desert was fresh strawberries, blueberries, and cream – so good!!
We purposely do not have a TV on the boat. Nighttime with family is game time. We have several choices on board: Boggle, Dutch Blitz, Rummicub, Skip-Bo, and Scrabble.
Phoebe fixed everyone hot chocolate. We were trying to cool everything down as much as possible before turning in for the night. Just so you all know, we are not totally spoiled. We shut the generator off at night (safety reasons) which means no AC on a warm summer night.
Captain’s Comments:
We had planned on getting under way at 1200, so our actual departure time of 1220 was pretty darn good. For a short travel day, we decided to stay in the same anchorage we stayed at on our trip to Charleston in April–Toogoodoo Creek. It is an easy anchorage just off the Intra-Coastal Waterway (ICW). We ended up fightling the currents nearly the whole day; we were not in a particular hurry (but I’d much prefer to have the currents in our favor to minimize fuel consumption).
It was hot today–still 90 when we arrived (and it only cooled down to 80 by sunrise). As the admiral pointed out, we don’t run the generator when someone is not on watch (awake), so sleep was slower in coming. Of course, the excitement of being under way could have played a part.
Peace
fks