Day Two in Put In Creek, Mobjack Bay.

Mobjack Bay—what an adventure.

This morning since we weren’t on the run we decided to make a good breakfast of grilled English Muffins and scrambled eggs. That was extra super-duper yummy.
After breakfast an hour or so before noon we lowered our dinghy to go check out the town—that is until the motor on the dinghy didn’t start, and Dad had to spend 45 minutes cleaning out the carburator. But shortly we were in the dinghy again and motoring down the creek.

Man it was hot, but thankfully not humid. All the houses looked very pleasant and had a wonderfully cool feel to them. Lots of private docks stood outside of almost every house. We saw lots of egrets and osprey again.
When we reached the “end” the water became very shallow, and up ahead there was mud that looked very squishy. So apparently the tide wasn’t up yet. We looked at one of the docks and it looked like it was wet about four inches up, so we figured when the tide was up that we’ll go back, Dad figured a couple of hours. So we returned back to Ilira and made lunch and boiled some eggs for tomorrow. We decided to stay here in Put in Creek for rest of the day and would leave for Deltaville tomorrow.
An hour or so later three boats came in: two Trollers and a Catamaran. We were excited maybe they’re heading north too and we could be buddies.

But the tide looked about up, so we decided we would head into town and say hi when we came back and they were settled. Off we go a mile in by dinghy. We saw an egret up ahead and it looked like it was standing in mud. Oh great we thought. But we made it this far again mind as well keep going and see if there is another way. We looked back and there was dinghy a ways behind us. We recognized the dinghy to be the Cat’s. They looked like they were trying to get into town too. We kept going in further. They seemed to be “pacing” in indecision. Then they turned around.

We headed into little channels if you could call it that, it was only as wide as the length of our dinghy the long way and only about 8 inches deep. We tried to see ahead if there was even a place to tie the dinghy, but so far we could see none. We should've tied up at someone’s dock and asked if we could leave it there while we walked into town, but quite frankly none of us were near bold enough to do that, and none of us thought that it was that necessary.
But none the less we kept going. Now the engine was completely out of the water but still running. It was getting shallower and shallower. The back of a building that we suspected was town was still a ways off. Shallower, and shallower. Narrower and narrower. Dad had to turn off the engine. We drifted. We bumped. We stopped. “Uh…” we think. Dad takes out the oars and half rows, half poles us along, trying to see if we can go further.

Yes! We are over the bump. We were floating now, but barely. Dad kept “rowing.” It was now very narrow. Dad brought the ores in so only the paddle was outside the boat. This was working, almost there. Finally we were there. Land ho! We rowed the dinghy into the marsh grass. We looked up to see where we had arrived, at a… trash dumpster, sewage pipe, and an old building surrounded by barb wire.

But it looked like we could cut through a parking lot and the main street was right there. The dinghy was a yard away from solid ground, everything else was in mud. We couldn't pull the dinghy up any further without getting out and pulling it up. So Dad told Victoria to get out and pull us in. But she couldn't, there was no solid place to step and it was questionable if she could jump it. So Dad said that he’ll do it. He stepped out, one step on the reeds the second in “sinking mud” that started to engulf his foot, and the third onto safe ground. We all laughed at him. But at last we made it. We secured the dinghy to the dock (which btw is completely on dry ground) and cut through the parking lot which brought us to the fire department. And that’s where Dad discovered he had mud splattered all the way up his legs. So logically he walks over to the fire hydrant. But obviously we can’t get water from it. He wiped it away with his hand and tried to wipe his hand on the gravel. But this only made it worse, now both his leg and his hand were muddy.
And then at last I remembered I had Dad’s water bottle in my bag, and we were able to use that to clean Dad up.

Pictures of our "lovely" landing spot. lol




We walked past the fire department and soon found or selves on Church St.

We wandered down the street looking at the interesting town. It was a quaint town, and sort of busy at the same time too.


We waited for the traffic to clear before crossing the street.

:P

The town had a home-y feeling, and had some cute shops and stores.








We found a parlor, and thought that it would be a great idea if we got our selves some ice cream after going through that long never-ending canal.

The inside of the parlor reminded us of Andy's. It had black and white photo's on the walls, paintings of Marilyn Monroe, and an old soda machine.

We ordered our ice creams. I had chocolate ice cream with hot fudge, Victoria got vanilla ice cream with carmel, and for Dad strawberry ice cream with... butterscotch.

After the ice creams, (that were very good) Dad asked the waitress if there were any grocery stores around because we hadn’t seen any. She said there was a Food Lion at the corner of this street. I almost choked, “A Food Lion in this little town?” But sure enough if you walked to the end of the street that didn’t have much on it at all and turned the corner, there was a Food Lion, old looking but yet a Food Lion. So that was quite surprising and funny. After we picked up a few groceries and poked around a bit, we headed back to the dinghy hoping it was still there. …Which it was, thankfully.
The tide was much higher now and we were able to motor right out of the little channel.

When we were back in the main part of the creek we saw the dinghy from the Cat docked at one of the docks nearby to the entrance of the narrow channel.
We kept going and when we got the main creek we saw a man rowing his dinghy back to his troller. So we decided to say hi, why not? Apparently he made his wooden dinghy. It was very nice, only 3 weeks old. After about 8 minutes of chit-chat the people from the Catamaran came over to the troller to talk to us and the other man. They asked us if we were able to go to town, and we told them we did and told them the short version of our adventure, they laughed and nodded.

Apparently they go here all the time and they just tied up at a random dock with a house that did not seem to be occupied. They cut through their yard and walked the rest of the way to town. And we are pretty sure we saw them crossing the street in town too, but we hadn’t gotten a good look at their faces beforehand to tell. But this seemed to confirm that it was them.
They left shortly after, for thunderstorms were coming in. We left to, but said hi to the other sail boat that came in before we headed back. We didn’t talk for long with the lady. (The 2 troller boats and the mono-hull, were traveling together and were from the same town.)
We got back to the boat, and watched the storm. It was only a short shower thankfully because we wanted to go swimming, and go swimming we did.
It was warm again and beautiful. And then to our surprise and happiness the couple aboard Deeper Season (The Catamaran) came in the water too. So we swam, rather flapped, over to them on our floating cushions.
We talked for a long time in the water and then they invited us aboard. We were all wet so we didn’t see much inside, but we they were kind enough to show us (after we checked a dozen times to make sure that it was okay to go inside in our dripping wet bathing suits) they showed us the galley and the port hull. It was kind of cool, I haven’t seen many Cats. They showed us their gigantic shower (for a boat, that is) it had plenty of room to move around, almost the size of a house shower!
They were heading north too, only going much slower than us. They’re heading all the way up to the Cape and further, so we gave them our number and they might perhaps possibly call us and stay on our mooring in Mass some time.
We didn’t get their card since there was no way for us to bring it back without getting it wet, but they wrote down our information, and hopefully by some luck we will see them again. We swam back and ate dinner, and hopefully we’ll be going to bed soon. Long day.
Your friend and sister in Christ,
Zani