[Rhodes22-list] A Better Glorious Cruise

[David Bradley]

Richard, a good conclusion and nice note. Thanks for the nice picture.  We should get Chris Cowie to paint it and Joe Camp to make it rhyme. I'll play blues harp. Enjoy your cruise and your great new boat. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 8, 2012, at 12:46 AM, Richard Arking <richard.arking at gmail.com> wrote:

> I want to thank everyone who wrote so many helpful notes after I broadcast
> my overly ambitious intent to pick up my recycled R22 in Edenton and
> somehow have a relaxing cruising experience while also delivering the boat
> to Brooklyn under deadline pressure to return to work.  Even after weeks
> spent plotting legs on charts of the entire route and reading far too many
> details in Waterways Cruising Guides ( I also had been enjoying  the
> Chesapeake Guide you mentioned, Mary Lou)  I did not immediately grasp the
> magnitude of such a delivery trip. Nor, until the List responded did I see
> what was plainly in front of me- that a fine cruise could be had by ending
> up where one started and so being free meanwhile  to go here or go there,
> see this or do that and really just mess around in a boat, getting to know
> it and our own capabilities.  I realized why I had been awakening at three
> AM with dream intimations of disaster- 'got-to-get-there-itis'- on a rushed
> delivery trip could lead to taking stupid weather-risks. I'm sleeping just
> fine since deciding my brother Bob and I will launch from Edenton to cruise
> and gunkhole in Ablemarle Sound,  Pamlico too maybe, and end back at
> Edenton.  Thanks for helping me realize that long distance small boat
> deliveries are for trailers.
> 
>    What I really want to create with my R22 are moments on the water like
> an October 2008 sunrise when I sat ,coffee mug in hand, in the cockpit of a
> Chesapeake bare boat charter we had overnight anchored in a tributary of
> the Chester River not far from Rock Hall,Maryland, looking at the growing
> light play over the flat water and marshlands. It seemed so pristine I
> wondered if this was what The New World had first looked like,  if
> Jamestown or the Roanoak settlement could be right around the next bend. As
> I watched the dawn I shifted on the bench and realized that two mature bald
> eagles were watching me, sitting like bookends in a dead tree three boat
> lengths away.  I felt so contented to be allowed to float into their world
> for awhile.
>     Donna and I enjoyed a short daysail out of Edenton with Stan in his
> R22 in 2010.  I will ask Stan to help annotate my Ablemarle chart with
> local knowledge. Meanwhile,  has anyone sailed/explored these Carolina
> Sounds?    (I'm saving your Chesapeake recommendations for another, longer
> cruise, thanks)
>    Thanks, Richard Arking, Brooklyn, NY
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