Of menhaden, crab cakes, and flies

We left Stutts Creek at 8:15 with a beautiful blue sky and the promise of a 10-15 k breeze. Almost immediately we noticed a slight burnt rubber smell which turned out to be an engine belt that needed adjusting. That taken care of, we headed north with our main sail up and a 5 k southwest whisper of wind. Unfortunately, the most we saw that day was 8 knots until we started in the channel to Reedville, when it picked up to 13. At least it wasn't on our nose. And we saw lots of dolphins along the way.

Reedville at one time was the menhaden processing capital of America. The fish were caught in huge quantities in the Chesapeake and turned into oil, livestock feed, fertilizer, and cosmetics. They now also press the oil for the health food industry as omega-3 fish oil. There is still one operating plant in Reedville and you smell it before you even get close to town. I don't think I could live in this town if I had to smell that all the time.

We motored around a bit looking for a nice little cove to give us some protection from the 20-25 k and possible thunderstorms forecast for the night (and the smell of dead fish). Found a very serene parking place surrounded by homes and good sized trees, odor free. The anchor dug in immediately in 9 feet of water, so after tidying up a bit we headed into “town” for the crab cake lunch we had been dreaming of. Pulled up to the Crazy Crab's dinghy dock and walked in only to find it was closed on Mondays. Drat!

Instead of crab cakes, we walked down the main street of town. Lots of very interesting Victorian homes built with menhaden money. According to our guidebook, it was referred to as “millionaire's row” in the early 1900's. Although it was a pleasant, if very hot historic walk, we found nothing else of interest. One marina that didn't look open. One ice cream store that also wasn't open on Mondays. One other marina that looked like it was mostly working boats. And one seafood market/deli that was across the creek but which we didn't investigate. Many nice homes on the water. Wonder where the present residents work.

So we came back to our boat, checked the weather, swatted some flies, plotted our course for the next day, read, played dominoes, swatted some more flies and still the wind was lighter than expected. Saw some distant lightening and hoped it was going to stay way to the north. As it turned out, the weather remained mild and we slept fairly well with only a few anchor checks during the night. But the flies were thick as we weighed anchor and left in the morning. Will be swatting them for some time to come.