Hampton, Blue Water Marina to Riverwalk Landing, Yorktown VA

Day 21 Saturday, May 6, 2017

You can monitor my trip at the link: Little Star's Progress Live

We awoke early, fixed a quick breakfast of bacon and eggs, checked the weather forecast and decided to move on.  The weather guys said that it would be blowing 10 to 15 knots from the west which would be a great sailing combination.

We pulled out of the Hampton River at around 7:30 and moved into Hampton Roads.  We raised first the jib and then followed up with the main.  The wind was

It was cold

Yes it was

blowing at a steady 15 knots so I reefed the main at the first reefing point and furled the jib a bit. But, we were still making over 7 knots and at one point I say 7.6 knot speed over ground.  The boat was driving hard and heeling significantly as we began to pound in the larger waves of the open Bay.  I decided that this was a bit much so we dropped the sails and motored on.  It turned out to be a good decision because the winds continued to build to over 22 knots steady and in one puff, it reached 30 knots.  We were heading directly into the waves so it was quite a pounding.

We made the mouth of the York River on our way to Yorktown at around 11:30. Although the wind continued to blow hard, the fetch was much shorter and the

Wire tie art at the Art Festival

waves became light.  We called the Riverwalk Landing (Yorktown marina) and they confirmed that they had room for us although we would be moored on the opposite side of the dock from a cruise ship.

Once tied up at the dock, we headed out to the commons area near the water front where there was an art festival with artists from all around southeastern Virginia.  It turned out to be quite a high class gathering of all forms of art.  There were probably 40 tents of artists displaying oil, watercolor, pottery, jewelry, weaving carvings, etc.  It was great.

From there we went to the Ben and Jerry’s shop across the street where we met a

The Lafayette Gun

little girl coming out of the shop and asked what kind of ice cream she had. She said that she had the salty caramel blondie and it was the best.  So, without even looking at the list of flavors, we each had a “blondie.”  We were not disappointed.

Interesting history about the above gun

The village of Yorktown has a free bus that travels around in a circle passing most of the historic sites so we climbed aboard and made the complete loop.  We decided to start our tour at the National Park Visitors Center where the bus driver pointed

out that a walking tour was in progress and we might want to join them.  We did and were thoroughly entertained by a professional guide.  He was dressed in period attire and was very knowledgeable about the battles that took place in which

Yorktown Victory Monument

General Cornwallis was defeated by General Washington and French general Lafayette.  He had a number of interesting facts about the campaign which I somehow missed in Mr. Settles American history class at Bonne Terre High School. 

From the battle field, we went into the small visitors center/museum and then on

The Cole Diggs house, Circa 1730

to the Yorktown Victory Monument that was erected by an act of congress to commemorate the famous decisive battle and campaign.  We then strolled down Main Street of old Yorktown where virtually all the buildings have been restored to close to their original state.  I ended up taking a bunch of pictures of the signs and houses so that I could read them when I got back to the boat.  

We returned to the boat around 5:30 and found some tiny ice cubes in the bottom of our refrigerator.  The refridg. is cooled by an engine driven compressor so when the motor is running for a long time, the ice box can get really cold and sometimes it will freeze ice.  Using the mini cubes, we made and enjoyed one of Jim’s special

The Dark & Stormy

“Dark and Stormy” cocktails.  These drinks are made with Goslings (Since 1806) Black Seal 80 proof Bermuda Black Rum and Goslings (since 1806) Ginger Beer, (which is the official ginger beer of the 35^th America’s Cup) and a wedge of lime.  The dark rum is floated on top of the ginger beer giving the appearance of a storm cloud over the light ginger. It’s good!

Since we were on a public dock next to a huge cruise ship, we opted to take advantage of the boats oven and bake our marinated chicken thighs.  The thighs, along with cheesy grits made for a wonderful meal.  We read until bed time which arrived at 9:00.