6 June to 1 August 2024

Yorktown to Fishing Bay, Deltaville, 37° 32′ 42″ N, 76° 20′ 18″ W, 36nm, 7 hours

We had to make a trip back to the UK to make sure that my Mum was thoroughly celebrated as she reached a grand age we won’t mention here! It was a trip that we had planned long before we even arrived in the US and before we had got a feel for the place. So rather like our random selection of Portsmouth as our winter base, we selected a boat yard in Deltaville, Virginia, to haul Pintail out for some well earned rest whilst we returned to the UK to spend time with family and friends.

We sailed out of the York River and round into to Piankatank River with a good few days to spare before our scheduled liftout. The anchorage at Fishing Bay was picturesque and quiet and an easy place to hang out. The boatyard let us come on to their pontoons early so we had easier access to land and we collected a load of parcels we’d had delivered. The staff were so friendly we immediately felt at home.

The yard was a hot 20 minute walk, through acres of growing corn and passed shady pine forest, to the main road at Deltaville with its chandlery and other boat services. The marina had a loan car that we could use for the longer trip to the supermarket but as we didn’t plan on staying long on our return we weren’t too worried about the isolation.

From our pontoon, we had a front row seat of the lives of some of our other neighbours – the ospreys who live and fish on the river. I remember as a child seeing one of the only osprey pairs at Loch Garten in Scotland when they were almost extinct in the UK so to see them in such numbers and so very close felt very special to me. We even forgave one of them when it attempted to land on our mast, sending half of our wind indicator crashing to the deck!

Fast forward a month later, and with my Mum’s multiple birthday festivities over, we returned to the boat yard ready to do some work on Pintail’s hull and do a repair to the cutless bearing. However, returning in early July, we had woefully underestimated the heat of a Virginian summer. We spent five very hot days in the yard getting the cutless bearing replaced by the knowledgeable Michael but the heat was too excruciating for living on board on the hard. We can’t run the air conditioning out of the water and in temperatures of 30°+ we were soon desperate to get back in.

So we put off our other less urgent jobs until later in the year and returned Pintail to where she belongs.

We didn’t move very far, however, as the next week was even hotter and very, very humid. We took a short trip down the Piankatank river to anchor for one night, picking up a hitchhiker we named Jiminy, but returned to Fishing Bay the next day.

It was so hot and sticky with almost daily thunderstorms bringing rain and very close calls with lightning strikes.

We could do little more than laze around and take a daily visit to the next door marina’s swimming pool where we would meet our new friends, Ann and Kim, who with their yacht SV Ilanda, were on the pontoon of the boatyard waiting to get their bowthruster fixed. One week turned into two, as they waited for their work to be completed and we didn’t feel very inclined to move on in the heat so we enjoyed breakfast, lunch and dinner together at all of Deltaville’s handful of eateries.

A day of heavy rain at least blew the worst of the humidity away but heralded another week of forecast thunderstorms. We could have moved on but it was easy to stay in our now familiar and peaceful surroundings so two weeks turned into three.

There is no mistaking that Deltaville is a boating town. Really it is just a collection of every kind of boat service imaginable spread out along a four mile stretch of the General Puller Highway. There are marinas and boatyards on every little creek and bay on the peninsula between the Piankatank and the Rappahannock rivers.

In search of some cooling air conditioning, we enjoyed an afternoon out at the Deltaville Maritime Museum with Ann and Kim. In this a tiny town it was a surprise to find such an excellent museum. Although perhaps not that surprising given its history of boat building back to the 1800s.

Inside the Boat Shop we learnt a little more about the craft that earnt Deltaville the title, Boatbuilding Capital of the Chesapeake Bay

and outside we wandered the pretty gardens and boardwalks to see more of the historic boats restored by the museum.

We tried to leave Fishing Bay on 24 August, we really did! But we discovered there was still an issue with the packing gland overheating and we had to get it checked out which meant another lift out and a night on the hard. Thankfully the boatyard was able to put Michael back on the job there and then and we were back in the water the next afternoon, all fixed and ready to go.

So it turns out that Fishing Bay is a very easy place to just stay put and that there is a reason that Deltaville has gained a reputation as ‘Velcroville’. We were finally ready to leave before Pintail started sprouting weeds like the osprey nest next door but we’ll be back in the Autumn for a third lift out to finish the jobs we didn’t get to…