Sitting in the mud

Date: May 16th, 2007
Location: Coan River
Position: 37 56.657 N 076 28.891 W


We finally left Deltaville last Tuesday and had a lovely 2 day sail up the bay to the Coan River. Well, lovely other than some slight electrical problems causing the iron monster (the engine) to not start. More on that later.

Some friends have offered to let us keep Rachel at their dock while we're on our trip to the Azores. We're there now, checking it out to make sure she'll be safe while we're gone.

We arrived near high tide and could see a lot of barnacles exposed on the dock pilings (you don't usually see barnacles at high tide), but weren't concerned since our friends had assured us there was plenty of depth in the slip. We had barely squeezed in, however, when we felt Rachel touch bottom which is, luckily, just mud and sand. We gave our friends 'the eye'.

"Wow it's an unusually low high tide!" they said.

That evening at low tide we noticed that our waterline was higher than it usually is - we could see several extra inches of bottom paint in the stern. Walking around on deck did not produce the usual swaying that we love when living aboard. We gave our friends another 'eye'.

"We've never seen the river so low!!!" they insisted.

So here we lay - sitting in the mud waiting for the river to rise, doing boat jobs that didn't get done in Deltaville!!