Jax Visits Deltaville, VA

posted by Ardys

Wet dog onboard

We have been told by several sailors that Fishing Bay is a rather nice anchorage on the way south.  Leaving from the Great Wicomico River, it turned out that Fishing Bay was a perfect days’ journey for a motoring sailboat.  Yes, once again—no wind to fill our sails.  However, ironically, the forecast was for strong southerly winds and potential heavy rains during the night and through the next day, so we would need to find an anchorage with good protection from the south.  The answer was the bay directly across from Fishing Bay, called Godfrey Bay at Lat: N37 30'547", Long W076 21'059".  And here are the directions to the anchorage: 

“Take Piankatank channel, turn to port after G5 

to south of Stove Point.  Don’t forget to honor R8A, 

then turn to starboard to south of daymarker G11.”

(Got it?  I just threw this information into the story so that our non sailing friends might be impressed that we are fluent in this mysterious language.)  Anyone impressed?  No? Nobody?  Alas.

Barnacles, clams, a couple oysters, what else?

Godfrey Bay is shaped like a huge soup bowl with a really wide rim.  It goes from 18’ to 2’ in a blink of an eye.  We found the rim while still 1500’ from shore.  Fortunately, we were able to back off of the sand into deeper water.  When I remarked that this was our first time running aground on NORTHERN STAR, my husband reminded me that we had run aground the same day we launched the boat, at the entrance to our assigned slip.  I figured that didn’t count since we were told that it had been dredged and was deep enough.  Entirely not our fault.  While we’re on the subject of running aground, it is common knowledge among sailors that if you ask a room full of them to “raise your hand if you’ve ever run aground,” everyone should raise their hand.  The ones who do not, you can be certain are liars.

Jackpot--Jax found a tennis ball on the beach

 We took Jax to the sandy beach on Godfrey Bay late afternoon for his dog transactions.  We could see the bottom of the Bay most of the way to shore by dinghy.  In fact, it was low tide and we even had to raise the outboard partially out of the water and paddle to the beach.  As always seems to be the case on our journey south, there are houses along the shore even in this rather remote location.  People everywhere just want their own piece of heaven, don’t they? 

Later that evening, we took Jax back to shore again with higher tide.  We wear headlamps of course, when leaving the boat to go off into the blackness of the night in the dinghy.  This time, the trip was a little more interesting.  We could still see the bottom of the Bay with our headlamps, and not only that, we could see lots of long (~14”) skinny eel-like creatures gleefully leaping out of the water to get out of the way ahead of our dinghy.  I’ll admit that my description of these critters may not sound very appealing, but they were rather amazing!  My husband said they were needle fish.  Who knew they could leap out of the water?  Not I.

Curious about what is going through that pump-out tube?

We had planned to spend two nights in this area because the forecast was for the wind to clock around out of the north with more rain, so we pulled up anchor and moved over to Fishing Bay, the opposite side of the “water bowl.”  Fishing Bay has a little more going for it in the way of civilization.  The Fishing Bay Marina is there along with a working boatyard.  Houses once again, rim the shoreline.  The actual town of Deltaville, however was about a mile away.  We pondered only briefly, walking there.  With the wind and intermittent rain, hanging out on the boat and reading was the preferred option.  

Jax meets Fritz

After the second rainy night in Deltaville we were off once again, but not before topping off the diesel tanks (NORTHERN STAR carries 107 gals diesel), filling the water tanks (130 gals) and getting a pump-out, all at the Fishing Bay Marina.   Meanwhile, Jax had another romp on land, met a resident dog named Fritz and contemplated whether he wanted to get back on the boat with us.  He chose to come.