Northbound on the Chesapeake

December 4, 2024

There are still a few of you around interested in the adventures of Tardis, and a few more interested in building an Olga 28, since once in a while it appears from my stats that someone is reading the whole blog going back to 2014!

As I mentioned before, Tardis is heading back to Connecticut for a refit, which meant cruising from the bottom of the Chesapeake in Hampton, VA back to the top at Essex, MD last October. Poor me, but you gotta do what you gotta do. It was an interesting trip, both weather wise and as a test for Tardis.

By the time I left my car at the BWI train station, took the train to Newport News, an Uber to Enterprise to get a car for errands and provisioning, overnight in Newport News then to Hampton Dry Storage to get the boat ready to go, it was about 2 pm. I was heading up to the gorgeous East River in Mobjack Bay, but that put me on a course due north just as the wind came up strong (and contrary to the forecast) right out of the north. Hurricane Milton and the subsequent low pressure in North Carolina that just never seemed to go away created constant north winds (but blue skies and no rain) throughout the trip.

Tardis was designed to sail the Salish Sea and Straights of Juan Defuca with a big high bow, lots of freeboard due to the raised deck forward, and a comfortable inside helm station. But heading into wind-against-tide, steep 3-5 footers in 12 feet of water was just too uncomfortable. Tardis is a light boat, so she tends to go over rather than plow through the waves, but every five minutes or so we were lifted off a wave, slammed down into the next one and water would come over the pilothouse. “Tacking” downwind to put the waves on the forward quarter helped, but that meant a two-hour run into Mobjack Bay would be over three and getting close to dusk.

I had identified a bailout into Chissum Creek, a totally protected and beautiful anchorage south of the York River, prior to setting out. But heading in there would put us beam-on to the waves and rolling the drawers out. So I hung on for another 20 minutes, then made my turn and with the wind and waves on the stern quarter, Tardis was again a happy boat, surfing and sliding her way to an appointment with a bottle of Mount Gay. That’s a point I think is important with any powerboat, particularly a light one. Yes, you can muscle your way onto any course, but behaving a little bit more like a sailboat can make things a lot safer and less rolly. The wind was never as bad again after that day, but with the constant northerlies, I really watched my angles in choosing destinations and courses with no problem at all.

Then another surprise coming out of Chissum Creek — the engine would just not draw fuel out of the port tank and pumping with the hand bulb that fills the fuel filter was useless. I had noticed this before on a short summer cruise and had a mechanic in Hampton look at it, but he said he couldn’t find anything wrong and had run the engine at the dock with no problem. I think the engine will run on port at low RPMs, but something is restricting the fuel line or the fuel pickup, and when you bring the engine up to cruising speed it just doesn’t get enough fuel through, the filter empties and the engine dies.

So restricted to about 7 hours run time maximum, I got a tour of Chesapeake gas docks — Hampton, Deltaville, Point Lookout, Solomons, Oxford, and Kent Narrows. Visited some old favorites and some new — Mills Creek south of the Potomac and Broad Creek at St. Michaels — enjoyed the perfect, warm weather when it wasn’t blowing too hard and put the boat away in the big barn at Sunset Harbor. There she will get a trailer go-over and look at that pesky gas problem prior to a spring cruise over to the Chester River, then on the road and back to the Guilford Yacht Club.

Here are a few pictures. Not too many since Chesapeake creeks look very different when you are in them, but pretty much the same to the camera.