Topless fireworks

We are underway downbound on the James River, the Chickahominy finally behind us after over a week waiting on our spiffy new top. We are glad to be back under way, and, as much as we enjoyed the Chick, glad to have finally left it.

Shortly after I last posted here, we dropped the hook in Cobham Bay, a wide spot in the James across from Jamestown (map). We pulled in as tight to the western, windward shore as depth would allow, and were very comfortable for a two-night stay. Nearby was Chippoke Plantation State Park, and we might have tendered over to the beach there, save for all the park amenities being closed due to the pandemic.


Fireworks over the Chick, across from River's Rest.

We did see folks using the beach there on a pleasant weekend, and a handful of small boats anchored near the park for the day. It was otherwise quiet, and felt very remote, even though we could see the Jamestown ferries running back and forth across the river all day. I used the day of downtime to clean up a few projects around the boat.

The canvas shop had initially estimated that the top would be ready for a test-fit by sometime Tuesday, and so Monday we weighed anchor with the tide and cruised back up the Chickahominy. Instead of going all the way back to River's Rest, we dropped the hook across the neck, at the junction of a small crossover channel called The Thorofare (map), reasoning that, if we were going to do the whole process by tender, we'd save the extra 2.5 miles (round trip). We had a quiet night.


Our view from the dock of the River's Rest Motel and the Blue Heron restaurant. Docks are in bad shape.

Tuesday morning I texted Jeff-the-canvas-guy to let him know we had arrived, since we were not all that obvious from across the neck. He called me on the phone to say that he had been unable to get everything he needed from what was left of the old top, and could we come around to the dock for some more measurements. He was able to tell me that the Thorofare was deeper than charted, so we cut across, with a foot under the keel at high tide.

We pulled up to the T-head at River's Rest (map) and spent several hours at the dock. Jeff brought the rough-cut top out, and we unrolled it onto the frame and clamped it in place. After a couple of hours for the material to relax in the sun, Jeff returned, stretched it out a bit further, and marked the perimeter with soapstone. He carted it back off the boat, leaving behind ladders and clamps, and we shoved back off to anchor nearby.


Vector at anchor just north of River's Rest.

For reasons that are not clear to me, or to Jeff either, for that matter, the marina here charges $2 per foot, even on weekdays when they are not busy at all. That's pretty high for a place with few amenities, in the middle of nowhere, with aging and decrepit infrastructure. Not only did we not want to spend north of a C-note per night to stay, we were afraid we'd damage the deteriorating docks with each passing wake pushing us into them.

We dropped the hook a few hundred yards upriver (map), not quite as far away as we had been when we stopped to make the arrangements initially. We splashed the tender, having found out that the Blue Heron restaurant at the marina was actually open daily starting at 4. We tendered ashore for dinner on their outside deck. The food was surprisingly good, and we felt relatively safe, with the staff properly masked and the place uncrowded.


We strolled the grounds each time we had dinner, and we always saw these guys, who would vanish into the woods as we approached.

It was pretty clear that the original completion estimate of Wednesday-Thursday would be, at best, toward the end of Thursday, and so we settled in and I got some things done around the boat. That included going up on top of the frame with a Scotchbrite pad to clean off years of accumulated corrosion and embedded grit from the weave of the old top. This roughness would abrade the new top prematurely and I wanted the frame as smooth as possible.

I also took the opportunity to replace two of the six LED downlights that I had installed back in Charleston. Water managed to work its way into these two allegedly sealed lights, causing them to prematurely dim. They can be replaced with the top on, but accessing the wiring from above with the top off is much easier. We had a nice dinner on board.


Our view downriver on the Fourth. Boats everywhere. On the right the party is in full swing at the Blue Heron; just downriver you can see some private fireworks going off, which happened all around us all evening.

Thursday morning I checked back in with Jeff, who allowed that it was slower going than he had expected, and it looked more like Friday sometime. We had a relaxing day on board, and returned to the Blue Heron in the evening for another meal. We were disappointed that the masks had disappeared from the staff and patrons were sitting at the indoor bar; apparently the rules here were relaxed on the first of the month. We positioned ourselves at a well-ventilated outdoor table, and minimized our interactions with the server.

Friday I again checked back in ... I am sure you can see where this is headed. Eventually acknowledging that it would not be done Friday, Jeff told us he could not work Saturday because he's the guy who does the fireworks show. Hmm. We had checked the Coast Guard notices and the local news and found out that fireworks had been cancelled all over Hampton Roads, and the only notice was for a small show at the Two Rivers Country Club.


The full moon, left, was also on the Fourth. This was my best shot of the moon and fireworks together.

Friday was also a holiday, and the river got busy. Some heavy rain in the evening I think kept it from becoming too bad, but Saturday well earned its reputation as the busiest boating day of the year. It was nonstop boat traffic all day long, and while there were plenty of wakes, these are mostly pontoons, bass boats, ski boats, and jet skis, a mild annoyance at worst aboard Vector.

The Blue Heron was a zoo. They had a series of four bands on the lawn, with people everywhere, and doing a land office business. People come from miles around for the annual event, mostly by car, but the docks were full as well, and a fair number of folks were picked up along the river by the restaurant's own water taxi. We never left the boat, but we enjoyed the music, and we had great people-watching. I made brats on the grill and Louise made Spanish rice to complete the holiday experience. And, of course, we had the best seats in the house for the fireworks.


The view upriver just before the fireworks We really had the best spot. Only two other boats spent the night.

That turned out to be over $2k worth, launched from a float just a few hundred yards from us. Boats had arrived from all quarters to watch, which was entertaining to us in and of itself. The show lasted nearly a half hour, even though some of the shells detonated prematurely just a few feet off the launcher. We watched from the flybridge, our view unhampered by any pesky soft top. At the end, many boats sounded their horns, and Vector's substantial Kahlenbergs garnered a round of applause.

Jeff had actually finished the top Friday night, and so yesterday we weighed anchor right after lunch, as soon as the big SeaRay, which had spent the weekend on the T-head, departed, and we headed back to the dock. Jeff got the top up and zip-tied in place, and then we again had to leave it to relax in the sun for a couple of hours. Toward the end of the day he came back aboard to start the lacing.


New top in place and fully laced. We opted for a two-tone material: white on top, and a light gray underneath. This blocks more light for a deeper shade and less glare, and we think looks better behind the dull aluminum frame.

We agreed to finish the lacing this morning after a much needed break, and we shoved off the dock and headed back to the same spot to anchor. We returned in the tender for one final meal at the Blue Heron, especially since, having spent several unexpected days, we had run completely out of fresh food items aboard. I should mention here that we did all of this moving back and forth from the anchorage to the dock with the tender hip-tied

I got a number of projects done around the boat in our copious time on the Chick, including finally filling in a piece of missing trim in the master bath necessitated by the great vanity shortening that I did almost four years ago in Chattanooga. I'll never catch up, though, because new projects pop up daily. Our time here was no exception, starting with cleaning off the mess made by the ospreys, who decided our now-naked top frame is a great place to perch whilst eating their crab and fish dinner.


View from the flybridge helm looking aft. It came out nice.

One morning Louise woke me to say the bedroom fans were spinning at a mere fraction of their normal speed, and I found the boat's 12v system down to just 5v, even after starting the generator. It turns out that the Vanner battery equalizer has an LBCO in both directions, and once it had cut out, even though the 24v side was charging, it would not charge the now-depleted 12v side. I had to bump it up with the genny alternator to get things working again. Before coffee.

The other, much bigger problem that happened later the same day, was the master head quitting. Now anyone who has ever worked on a toilet, whether in a boat, an RV, or even a house, knows that they never break just sitting idle. They break when you use them, or in this case, have just used them. And unlike a household commode, where you can effectively flush it just with a bucket of water, our heads can not be emptied unless they are fully operational.


Potted control board for the head. Rectangular block is a $4 relay that likely stuck.

I will spare you all the gory details, other than to say that the defective component is a proprietary control board that is completely potted. I have reason to believe it is nothing more than a stuck relay, but with the potting I can neither confirm that nor fix it. In the end, I added my own relay in series with the bad one (which is stuck in the closed position), which will get us by until I can source the ~$220 control board, comprising, most likely, $7.95 in parts.

One of the reasons the river was so busy on this holiday weekend is that temps here have been in the 90s, and the water itself is bathtub-warm at 88°. I thought several times about going for a swim, but the river here is actually not all that appealing. We did, however, need to run the generator more for air conditioning than to charge batteries. We averaged about 4.3 hours per day, nearly double our normal at-anchor use, but still only about ten bucks a day in operating costs.


As we passed the ghost fleet this afternoon, these two Navy Seahawks were practicing some maneuvers near one of the mothballed ships.

Tonight we will be anchored somewhere along the lower James, and in the morning we'll head back to Newport News, where I need to get ashore for groceries, hardware, and yet another printer cartridge. At the moment, it looks like we might have a brief weather window to run outside to New York, in which case we would leave tomorrow afternoon for the Chesapeake Bay entrance.

Update: We are anchored in Burwell Bay, off the James, near what once was the ship channel, long bypassed by a shorter dredged channel, and mostly shoaled in (map). To get here we passed the ghost fleet as close aboard as allowed (regulations mandate a 500' separation), earning us a close look by the contract patrol boat. We dropped the hook right at dinner time, having taken advantage of a favorable tide as long as we could. In the morning we have just an hour's cruise to Newport News.


Tonight's Red Rubber Ball sunset over Burwell Bay.