Fishing Bay, VA

[Kevin's Post] After spending 3 nights tied up at Jack and Jo's dock we left this morning to continue south. Not much wind today so we didn't bother to even take off the sail covers, we knew we were going to be motoring. Recently the boat hasn't been motoring as fast as it used to, so I swam down to check the propellers while were at Jack and Jo's and found that the propellers had a pretty good growth of barnacles on them. The antifouling paint that is on the rest of the boat underwater doesn't stick to the props, so stuff can grow on them, especially if you sit for a long time like we did at Solomons. I scraped them all off, and it seemed to make a difference. We were going about 1/2 knot faster today at the same engine speeds.

We motored south out the Rappahannock and into Fishing Bay. As we entered Fishing Bay, we noticed a very large sailboat that appeared to be anchored off the channel. As we got closer, we could tell there was no anchor rode, they were aground. I looked at them through the binoculars and they were waving at us trying to get our attention, apparently they didn't have a radio. We motored over as close as we could get without going aground ourselves, the charted depth was 4 feet, and it was exactly low tide. They said their draft was 9 feet, so they were just on the edge of the shoal. We said we would anchor and try to haul them off with our massive dinghy which probably has more horsepower than their primary engine. We were in the process of anchoring, and fortunately they managed to get off the shoal under their own power without our help. So everything worked out.

Where we are:
Location=Fishing Bay, VA
Lat=37 30.486 N
Lon=76 20.807 W