[Rhodes22-list] A Better Glorious Cruise

[Richard Arking]

I want to thank everyone who wrote so many helpful notes after I broadcast
my overly ambitious intent to pick up my recycled R22 in Edenton and
somehow have a relaxing cruising experience while also delivering the boat
to Brooklyn under deadline pressure to return to work.  Even after weeks
spent plotting legs on charts of the entire route and reading far too many
details in Waterways Cruising Guides ( I also had been enjoying  the
Chesapeake Guide you mentioned, Mary Lou)  I did not immediately grasp the
magnitude of such a delivery trip. Nor, until the List responded did I see
what was plainly in front of me- that a fine cruise could be had by ending
up where one started and so being free meanwhile  to go here or go there,
see this or do that and really just mess around in a boat, getting to know
it and our own capabilities.  I realized why I had been awakening at three
AM with dream intimations of disaster- 'got-to-get-there-itis'- on a rushed
delivery trip could lead to taking stupid weather-risks. I'm sleeping just
fine since deciding my brother Bob and I will launch from Edenton to cruise
and gunkhole in Ablemarle Sound,  Pamlico too maybe, and end back at
Edenton.  Thanks for helping me realize that long distance small boat
deliveries are for trailers.

    What I really want to create with my R22 are moments on the water like
an October 2008 sunrise when I sat ,coffee mug in hand, in the cockpit of a
Chesapeake bare boat charter we had overnight anchored in a tributary of
the Chester River not far from Rock Hall,Maryland, looking at the growing
light play over the flat water and marshlands. It seemed so pristine I
wondered if this was what The New World had first looked like,  if
Jamestown or the Roanoak settlement could be right around the next bend. As
I watched the dawn I shifted on the bench and realized that two mature bald
eagles were watching me, sitting like bookends in a dead tree three boat
lengths away.  I felt so contented to be allowed to float into their world
for awhile.
     Donna and I enjoyed a short daysail out of Edenton with Stan in his
R22 in 2010.  I will ask Stan to help annotate my Ablemarle chart with
local knowledge. Meanwhile,  has anyone sailed/explored these Carolina
Sounds?    (I'm saving your Chesapeake recommendations for another, longer
cruise, thanks)
    Thanks, Richard Arking, Brooklyn, NY