(This update will be photo-light for now, wifi at our pitstop is lax.)
Spending the 11th at anchor off Goat Island on the Pasquotank was a good bit of rest that also forced us to use more of our provisions. Tripp’s project was peanut butter cookies and mine was chili.
Observing Tripp stirring his mixture. "You got flour in there?" "Hey, I'm working off a recipe here. You can't just go throwing things in all willy nilly." "Yeah, you're right, if you're baking." "Well, I mean I haven't measured anything." "All right, well that's willy but not really nilly. Now this? This is a real willy nilly chili."
Which yields:
Swamp Cookin' with Chef St. Pierre: Willy Nilly Chili 1. Look through your stores and see what can satisfy beef and tomato. In this case, it was leftover pasta sauce, a can of Progresso Hearty Tomato Soup, and reliable beef broth. Then you got a bead. 2. Sautee onions and your last red bell pepper in olive oil. It has to be red and it has to have the desperation of being your last one; revenge is served cold, despair hot. Malaise, eh. 3. Add chorizo to brown with the vegetables. Black pepper, garlic powder, cumin, uh salt, I think I added oregano too. 4. In a pot, start boiling your black beans in the beef broth and weird tomato mixture. Taste it and see that it's too damn sweet and cumin the hell out of it. I mean, seriously. Go nuts. 5. Add your leftover kidney beans from the pita quesadilla you made the day before. Then remember you still have two actual tomatoes, cube those miraculously still pristine bad boys up and toss 'em in. 6. Dump in the meat and vegetables from the skillet. 7. Chili powder, chili powder. Show me the formu-oli. 7a. Oh yeah, I bought smoked paprika. Why the hell not? 8. Time. Keep taste testing and decide if you need more cumin or pepper or garlic or onion powder or chili or whatever spice floats your boat (Yeah, I did add oregano). 9. Eventually it's done and it's really good. Option: Take your second to last avocado and make some guacamole to toss it on top. Guacamole needs some kind of acid (generally I use lime juice or apple cider vinegar; here it was lemon juice). I always use fresh cut tomatoes and onion, then some combination of cumin, chili and black pepper, garlic powder, and hot sauce. Generally turns out good.
Aside from the cooking, our day was spent reading and relaxing and planning. As of this stage of the journey, the plan was somewhere between Beaufort, NC and Charleston, SC. Wherever Tripp could find the cheapest place to haul out Callipygia for the winter before we would part ways.
Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods offered some funny parallels to our own escapades. Particularly on provisioning (“You threw out the oatmeal?!” from Katz; “You bought HOW MUCH rice?!” from Tripp) and the presence of a grating fellow traveler (Mary Ellen stealing Katz’s ring ding out of his hand and our verbose chum with the egg snatching). Also, concern for black bears: could they swim to us at anchor? Would they like chorizo and summer sausage?
Tripp thought up a Looney Tunes scenario of us hauling up the anchor like Yosemite Sam with a fishing line for Bugs, just to find a black bear seated on the end of it.
“GRAWR!”
Tripp sets the anchor back down. “Yeah, we should stay another day.”
That didn’t happen though.
Other than the above hijinks, it was a day of listening to the wind and rain. Watching the cypresses sway. Not too shabby.
On the morning of the 12th, we sailed off the anchor at 0900 bound for Elizabeth City. Set the main and staysail, didn’t need the engine at all. Tripp considered motoring onto the free dock at Elizabeth City when we got there, but another “what would Sam Sikkema do?” ensured our first victory over reliance on diesel power. Tossed the bow line over a piling at Mid-Atlantic Christian University and scrambled off down the dock boardwalk for the call of nature. Involved some parkour around pipes and fences on the most direct route downtown.
On the way back, we scoped out the selections of free docks, one of which Tripp heard had showers. It did, but it also had a familiar aluminum-hulled sailboat carrying a shipment of our donated eggs. We decided to stay at the university campus.
Once back we were greeted there by Aaron, one of the ministers involved with boating, while we were tidying up the deck. He talked about his own boat and family plans with it, told us we could eat at the dining hall for $10 (“Does that sound like a man who had all he could eat?“). When he mentioned that they had had tons of French Canadian boaters coming through, I – possibly for the first time ever – chose not to talk about my French Canadian ancestry to spare Tripp having to hear the spiel.
Tripp and I immediately abandoned our plans to not eat out and went to two restaurants: Hoppin’ Johns (which was great) and one whose name escapes me (which was not), as well as Seven Sounds Brewery.
That evening, Tripp had settled on having the boat brought out in Beaufort (for a third the cost of Charleston), which meant that the remainder of our time would be spent on the Albemarle Sound and in Beaufort. Then, we startede butting our heads against the wall looking for how to get from Beaufort to a train station or airport without a car.
The 14th really showed the old Southern Hospitality. Just walking on the streets, I got wished a Happy Valentine’s Day by better than half a dozen people. Used the wifi at the Kraken Coffeehouse, then we went to the local museum on the Albemarle Sound. Split up to walk around town afterwards, with Tripp telling me he had a long pleasant chat with the ladies at the Singer Sewing store, likely the same trio that had asked me where their Valentine’s were when I went by. Spent the afternoon reading, updating earlier blogs.
But the day felt lazy in a not entirely pleasant way. Cape May and Norfolk had been good recovery spots after 2 and 1 1/2 day transits, but the Dismal Swamp Canal had been our favorite and easiest stretch of the journey so far. There wasn’t the same need to relax after just relaxing at anchor. And thinking about how this blog was about to become an account of day sailing or day motoring plus restauranting didn’t fill me over much with excitement.
Tripp and I met up for dinner at Mid-Atlantic’s dining hall, ate and then reconnoitered on Callipygia.
Independent of one another, he had come to the same conclusion about the second half of the journey: the prospect of tooling around the Albemarle and Beaufort, though certainly fun, was starting to feel a little too beaten path. Bar crawly motoring, aimless. Not really why we’d come out on the trip. So, since it’d be better for him to have his boat back in Rhode Island anyway, we decided that Beaufort would be the about face point where we’d head out of the Intracoastal back out into the Atlantic.
Renewed purpose dispelled malaise. The cold and the challenge of shooting back up to Portsmouth, provided the proper weather window, was now most the appealing choice. Bring on the delirium of a watch schedule, in theater’s near us, this coming week.
Oh, and we laid the bag of Goldfish to rest here. God speed, little doodles.
Hermit Thrush 