Put In Creek Anchorage (Mathews, VA)

So far, this has proven to be a wonderful anchorage! So peaceful and relaxing. Such friendly people. The only sounds, besides occasional small boats launching from the nearby boat ramp (but always showing consideration by waiting to get on plane until they’re past me–something you’d NEVER see in Florida) are birds, fish jumping, and an occasional lawn mower or chain saw off in the distance.

The one band from TS Helene that we got most of the day on Friday brought a lot of rain and strong winds, but this anchorage was very protected, so no issues. I woke up to this Saturday morning:

The very small town of Mathews is about two miles north of where I’m anchored. I’m having some things sent GENERAL DELIVERY to me at the post office there, and also will need some produce by the time I leave (there is a Food Lion), so I wanted to check the place out today.

There are two ways to get there: dinghy over to the boat ramp which is about 500 yards away and walk or bike the two miles into town, or try to either dinghy or paddleboard up the actual Put In Creek, which ends right in downtown behind a fire station (and which has a little kayak dock there).

The problem with the latter is that it dwindles down to basically a ditch at low tide, and the reviews disagreed about whether it was passable in a dinghy even at high tide. (The tides here are about 2-2.5′) They are also semi-diurnal¹and the high tides right now around 7 pm and 7 am. So, I couldn’t really test it out unless I got up early or was willing to try it in the dark (not!). So, I decided to go for the first option and use the road and check out the ditch from the town side.

I debated pulling out my folding bicycle, but since I planned to only be here a few days (and only visit the town one other time), I didn’t think it was worth the trouble, and I’d just walk the two miles one-way. So, I dinghied to the boat ramp, tied off, and started walking with a large bag of trash².

The walk was not very fun. The main road was a very narrow, two-lane highway, with virtually no shoulder (and no sidewalk). To avoid getting hit by side mirrors, everytime I car would approach, I’d have to walk off the road into the knee-high weeds. And there were a lot of cars on this Saturday morning! But eventually I made it into town where I saw the small “Mathews Maritime Museum” and decided to pop in and check it out. The sole employee/docent, Dennis, gave me a personal tour, which turned out to be surprisingly more interesting that I would have imagined. This tiny county of Mathews, VA, has played a surprisingly large role in U.S. boat and ship building and the merchant marines.

Dennis was nice enough to describe the different restaurants in town, and offered to take me back to my boat if I returned when the museum closed at 2:00 pm. I told him I would be sure to be there! Checked out the town (which took five minutes!), had a very good pizza at Southwind Cafe, checked out the Food Lion (surprisingly large and nice), then headed back to the museum where Dennis (who had himself cruised for 15 years) gave me a ride back to the boat ramp.

By this time I was actually pretty hot, it being in the mid-80’s and very humid, so I decided it was the perfect time to try to dive on and clean Serendipity’s bottom. So, I pulled out all the tools, put on the snorkel gear, and jumped into the refreshing, 70-degree water.

But, cleaning the hull turned out to be very unsuccessful. 🙁 A combination of nothing to hold onto (although I had purchased a suction cup thing that turned out to be disfunctional and eventually fell off and sank in the mud bottom), not being able to see very well, having to constantly kick to stay down 6 feet and apply pressure against the hull, and being out of shape, holding-my-breath-wise, meant that it was just not going to work. It was exhausting, and I was getting almost nothing done each time I went under water. After 20 minutes of struggling and feeling like I was about to have a heart attack, I surrendered to the fact that without some kind of underwater breathing system, this wasn’t going to work for me. So, I’m now going to have rethink whether purchasing a hookah rig or dive tanks (which would require me to get scuba certified) makes sense or not right now. Very disappointing.

With my core body temperature having dropped to a very comfortable level from my time in the water, I spent the next half hour just napping on deck in the sun.

Lastly, when it began approaching sunset, I decided to take a dinghy ride to get off the boat and sneak a peak at what Put In Creek looked like from this side at high tide. (It looked doable.) The sunset was spectacular, so I motored around for awhile just enjoying the scenery and getting some shot of Serendipity.

After a nice dinner, the hull cleaning exertions, the wonderfully peaceful surroundings, a cockpit shower, and an evening temperature of 68 degrees, I went to bed early and slept a long and hard 10 hours.

1. A change in the ocean water level that typically reaches a high and low twice a day, about six hours apart. ↩︎
2. Some of the fruit that I had gotten from either Sam’s Club or Harris Teeters had come with fruit flies, so I had an outbreak on my boat. The trash was mostly recently-purchased fruit that I was having to get rid of! 🙁 ↩︎