Adventures (and Misadventures) of Elliott and Mary

Issue 8 - June 15, 2004

As you might remember from our last lengthy missive, we blew into Portsmouth along with a thunderstorm on Thursday, May 19th.  A very dramatic beginning and ending for us…we had had just about perfect weather while traveling with Helen and Ted and now that we are about to part ways, a thunderstorm!!  But it didn’t bode badly for any of us. We had a wonderful stay in Portsmouth and the Browns are well on their way up north to continue their Great Loop adventures.  Though cocktail hour just isn’t the same without them…

Since we were already reasonably well acquainted with Portsmouth, having owned a lovely 120 year old house in the Old Town area we were really pleased to see how much progress has been made in the last couple of years in downtown restoration.  Plus we had forgotten how welcoming the locals are to visitors…so we spent a good bit of our time walking and bike riding around just taking in the sights.

Liked the marina so well that we are semi-seriously considering making Tidewater our winter home….the Portsmouth/Norfolk area is apparently just below a weather belt that makes the area much more temperate than those cities just to their north.  Plus we could never be  bored if we have the Elizabeth River to watch…it’s always full of navy ships, pleasure boats, cruise ships (though I’d guess they wouldn’t be there in the winter) and the ferry boats over to Norfolk are great fun. A great way to commute!  And now that Homeland Security is every present, you see water patrol boats all the time…in multiples. US Coast Guard, local police and local sheriff, you name it and it’s there.

While our “home” was happily tied up in a slip, The Captain and I rented a car, grabbed the cats and drove west to Mississippi then south to Slidell LA where our car, “Bella” had been left since we’d departed in late March.  She’s a good ole’ gal (152,000+ miles on her) and with some TLC she keeps on going.  Elliott drove her and I followed in the rental “chase car”…and got her back to Virginia.  Stopped at my mother’s on the way and had a nice visit…she lives in Lexington and that, too, is a lovely historic part of an absolutely beautiful state.  If it didn’t snow here, we’d be tempted to retire in Virginia. But snow, and grass cutting, aren’t in our retirement contract!
 

Anyhow, the boat survived our absence and we had a very productive and interesting trip.  Got back to Portsmouth on June 1 or so….had several boat-type repair things that had to be done (one is NEVER without repair lists) plus we really were ready for some days that had no schedule whatsoever.  I think even the cats were ready to get back home.

But it was time to consider more seriously how we wanted to handle our summer on the Chesapeake.  Staying in a slip one-night-at-a-time is quite expensive, so it seemed a good idea to find a “summer home base”….Solomons Maryland seemed ideal. We drove north (about 3 hours from Portsmouth) and found a marina that fits our needs perfectly. Now we will have a place with a guaranteed slip and shore power…from which we can adventure on 2-3 day trips out on the Chesapeake.  Not only that, while we were there, we found a place to store “Bella” for the month that we will be traveling from Portsmouth to DC and then to Solomons.  Pretty slick if we do say so ourselves.

Interestingly,  once we found ourselves with a fair amount of time available for unscheduled use, we have come back again and again to one of our initial questions when we began this adventure….is it the destination or the traveling that we find more interesting?  And now, instead of having come any closer to the answer, we find ourselves having another question.  Is cruising a lifestyle (as many people that we’ve met have made it…10-15 years as liveaboards) or is it an adventure without a timeframe?

We are finding both destinations and traveling to be most enjoyable…and will be most interested to see how three months at Solomons evolves, hopefully we will get to know some of the local folk, join in some of the community events and come away feeling a part of a town by the time we leave in October.  And we will have the added pleasure of being able to investigate lots of places on the Chesapeake that we have only thought about before. It’s a cinch that 2-3 days aboard a trawler are a LOT more comfortable than they would have been on our 30’ sailboat!

But we are discovering that this everyday “vacation” probably isn’t a lifestyle that will  go on forever.  What we are doing is a wonderful adventure, one that will be treasured and remembered. And that’s a new wrinkle in our thinking pattern….we are living an adventure and it’s not supposed to be our “forever” picture.  Interesting to ponder and certainly in a different vein than when we began six months ago.
 

So with this issue at a close, we are heading north for a leisurely cruise, eventually landing in Washington DC on June 24th.  We will be stopping along the way at lovely anchorages, small town marinas and will take our first trip ever up the Potomac River.
 

Lots to tell about next time…
 
 

Will be back in to touch later.

The Captain and Mary