This week has been fun. On Saturday, we went to lunch at a Japanese restaurant, then went to the beach with Blue Heeler. The temperature was amazing, it felt like San Diego. For dinner, we went to a restaurant called Longboard’s, which is just across the river. On Sunday, we went to First Landing National Park with Blue Heeler and went for a three mile walk. We saw some big spider webs and a snake.
Cette semaine était amusante. Samedi nous sommes allés à un restraurant japonais, puis allés à la plage avec Blue Heeler. Le température était trop bonne, ça ressemblait à San Diego. Pour le dîner nous avons mangé à un restaurant qui s’appelle Longboard’s, qui était de l’autre côté de la rivière. Dimanche nous sommes allés à First Landing National Park avec Blue Heeler et allés faire une promenade de 3 miles. On a vu des grandes toiles d’araignées et un serpent.
Sunday, August 3 — The water here in Little Creek was 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27.2 degrees celsius). When water temperatures were this warm, we generally cleaned Kosmos’s bottom once a week. However, we’d just gotten new bottom paint, and with new paint, you were supposed to wait a full two months until it was fully cured before you clean it. We found out the hard way that cleaning it early just takes the paint off and significantly shortens the life of the paint.
The two months were just about up. Kosmos’s bottom was so full of growth that she looked like she had a bushy beard. We couldn’t believe the growth was so bad on brand new paint. Generally speaking, neither Christi nor Eric were willing to do the bottom in a marina, especially this one, which had brackish water from the creek (there was a possibility of electrocution if one of the boats were leaking electricity into the water). Maybe if the water in the Chesapeake were clearer, we might have taken Kosmos to an anchorage and done her bottom ourselves, but since the water was totally murky, neither Christi nor Eric wanted to do it. So we hired a diver. He charged $150 per hour and had estimated it would take 2-hours.
He came this morning. Instead of a wetsuit hood and goggles that divers usually wear, he wore a full head mask so his entire head was covered. He had lights attached to the mask to help him see. As anticipated, he said the bottom was really bad. It took him 4.5 hours to do the whole bottom, but he kindly only charged us for 3.5. And he confirmed there was a big crab living on the bottom. We’ve seen a lot of crabs in the marina around the boats and we’d suspected for a while that the crabs were living under the boats.
Since the diver was working, we turned on the AC, which had been running 24/7 since we’d pulled into this slip. The temperatures were so pleasant today that we left the A/C off even after he’d finished.
Once he finished, we met Blue Heeler at the Trail Center in First Landing National Park, which was a large state park that encompassed the tip of Cape Henry (where the Chesapeake Bay met the Atlantic Ocean). Karen had pointed it out to us when she’d given us the tour of Virginia Beach, but up until now, it had been way too hot to go hiking in the forest. But the weather was glorious today, so it was the perfect day for a hike. We apparently weren’t the only ones with that bright idea — the lines to enter the park were quite long, especially the beach entrance. The parking fee was $10. We miraculously found a parking spot. Next to where we parked was a Chesapeake burial ground. According to the sign, in 1997, the 64 bodies had been unearthed during excavation for a bridge in the city of Chesapeake, and the bodies had been reinterred here in a traditional ceremony.
Keith does not do well when his schedule is thrown off its normal routine. As a result of going to bed so late last night, he was a super grumpy pants all day today.
This morning, while the generator was running, Eric filled up the two air tanks he’d used yesterday. We were pleased to report that Eric did fix the dive compressor while we were in San Diego. It turned out to be an issue with the drive belt, but putting a new belt in was difficult because the frame had corroded. He also replaced a lot of other parts on it, and it seems to be working fine now. All the effort to fix it has finally paid off.
After we finished with morning chores and school, Eric and Christi both worked on cleaning the bottom and waterline. Christi agreed it was the worst that Kosmos’s bottom had ever been — and Eric had already cleaned a lot of it! Between the two of them, they went through two tanks of air. They managed to get the entire bottom and waterline mostly done, but they would need to go back in one last time to finish it completely.
After showering, we went over to the Cruisers Beach. Apparently, the cruisers regularly get together at this beach for social activities, but we haven’t seen anything happening there since we’ve arrived. The shoreline looking south.
The sunrise on Sunday February 9 almost looked like there was a fire in the sky that was giving off a lot of smoke.
Sunday was another quiet day. In the morning, Eric got dinghy down. He went for a ride around the marina, looking for crocodiles, but didn’t see any. He wanted to go out to the anchorage, but it was too windy. With the dinghy down, he turned on the wind generator to make sure it was still working properly. He ran it all day on Sunday and Monday and was pleased that it was working fine.
Some of the cruisers had talked about a secret beach behind the boat yard. On Sunday, Christi decided to look for it. She saw a trail along one of the fences.
Continued from yesterday…. We were shocked to see that there was even an area with a cemetery! This is one of dozens of headstones
There were more walkways that explored the outer areas of the gardens. We were warned that these outer trails were long and could be arduous.
First, we did the Vanilla Trail, which was a loop that had several offshoots from the main trail. We may have missed one or two of the offshoots, but we did most of them. There weren’t signs with plant names, so we weren’t sure if this was natural rainforest or if non-native species had been planted. It was hilly, with many sets of staircases and a suspension bridge.
