October 18, 2020
Sailing down from Deltaville, we had good wind to start at 15 knots, but right on the nose, healing over 20 degrees, so I was not loving it like some of our recent sails. It gets annoying spending the day on your ear. By afternoon we were able to fall off as we cleared a headland, and wind on the beam was much better. The wind dropped off, so things were slow – only 4 or 5 knots, but much less sporty, which I think I prefer. We anchored in the York River, a mile short of Yorktown itself, by 4 pm.
After a leisurely breakfast and waiting for a heavy dew to evaporate from the decks, we dropped Fluffy, and rousted out the bikes for a day of exploring. We followed the Yorktown Historic Trail, and had an awesome day. The weather was perfect – brilliant sun, cool air, and everything just looked gorgeous. There were two trails, one seven and one nine miles, and we rode them both, stopping to read about a hundred signs along the way, describing the events of the siege of Yorktown during the revolutionary war. The road was beautiful, through fields and forests and glades, along streams and up and down ravines. The trail itself was paved, but everything else was so natural. They had worked hard to leave things as they were, so there was no Disney Land feeling at all, just a window into the past, and some nice quotes from people that were there to describe the battle and local conditions. Jeff loved the original artillery. The brass cannon and mortars were really well preserved in spite of being out in the weather all this time.
We finished our ride at Mobjack’s Coffee House. Great coffee and perfect chocolate quoissants. The guy even came to our outdoor table to say he didn’t think we’d had enough sugar, so he wanted us to try his macaroons – four fabulous little sugar bombs. Yum. Oh, and they had a fire pit with burlap coffee sacks to use like blankets if you were chilly. It was warmer than it has been, so we didn’t need to huddle by the fire.
The second day, we slept in in a thick fog, and watched 8 coast guard boats do some sort of training exercise. At noon, we went on a dinghy expedition up Wormley Creek, and hung around at the marina waiting for the end of lunch hour to get gas for the dinghy. We checked out all the boats, and met the friendly marina dog, which made it ok to wait, because I always need more dog time. The afternoon was spent just walking around the Yorktown waterfront and lunch at the Waterfront Café. We finished the expedition with a walk up the hill to the Mobjack Café to get some coffee beans. That evening, another fog rolled in before sunset. It was cool the way it blotted everything out in just a few minutes, and then, like a ghost ship, the three masted schooner that does river tours started to materialized out of the fog. Very cool.
