In July 2011, we were looking for opportunities to volunteer. We tried to get into Peace Corps, Greenpeace, and all of the other volunteer groups you could imagine, to no avail. Then we found the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, located in Sugar Grove, Virginia. We arrived there on my birthday, July 27, to be welcomed with a home made cake from people we literally had just met.
We spent two and a half weeks volunteering. Hiking to our work sites which one was an hour hike up an immensely steep hill, digging up roots, smashing boulders in order to build new and/or repair trails. It was an amazing experience and as badly as we wanted to return the next year, circumstances had led us to the opposite end of Virginia.
The next summer we were looking into sailing. Being from Wheeling, West Virginia, there wasn't much offered by means of sailing. We decided to head south to Deltaville, Virginia to take our ASA sailing intro course at Stingray Point Sailing. Our teacher, Bill Simpson, was a great mentor who let us live aboard the boat we were learning on, which was an amazing experience, yet we were spoiled because he had A/C.
As much as we'd of liked to take more classes, it was between that or purchasing our own boat, and without a boat of our own, our classes would have been irrelevant. With unbelievable luck, we found a boat for sale on eBay just 30 minutes north of Deltaville, in Reedville. It was a San Juan 7.7. We contacted the seller and bought the boat for a very good price.
We stayed at Smith Point Marina for about a month where we met some more amazing people, Ray and Paula Reuter. If it hadn't been for them, we wouldn't have been able to get to where we are today. Literally, because they gave us a GPS. But more so than that, they have just been a huge help and some great friends to us.
We intended to set sail for Florida, so we followed Ray and Paula out one morning around 6 a.m. The day before, we had charted our entire trip. Found anchorage spots all along the Intracoastal Waterway. After getting running aground, Ray and Paula turned around to pull us off the shoals, and we made it out into the Bay on our first big sailing voyage. We planned on getting into the Rappahannock River and docking there for the night, but we ended up coming into Indian Creek. It had taken us 12 hours to sail 15 miles (suffice to say we weren't making it to Florida this year) and we ended up docking for the night at Indian Creek Country Club. We looked terrible walking in there, but we had also had a very tough and long day. Lucky (again) for us, the first night was free. The next morning we set our bearings for Deltaville again, but after fighting to get around Windmill Point (which still proves difficult to us,) we came back into Indian Creek and found Chesapeake Boat Basin (http://www.chesapeakeboatbasin.com) in Kilmarnock. We tried to radio in at least six times, but our broadcasting signal was not a very strong, and they received none of our calls. Luck struck once again, as we pulled in to dock, a very generous gentleman named Tim Henry dropped what he was doing to help us tie off.
The folks at Chesapeake Boat Basin have been so great to us. They've done so much to help us. I think they like seeing a younger generation trying to get into sailing, seeing that most others our age are into power boats.
Towards the end of the warm months, we decided to head home for the winter. There, we took SCUBA diving classes from a very knowledgeable dive instructor, Ted Velas (http://velasdiving.com) Taking our diving exam was frigid despite wearing 7mm suits. Water temperatures were 55-65 degrees, but we pulled through and became Open Water certified divers.
We returned to Kilmarnock this summer to begin our diving business (http://bebritton.wix.com/hull-cleaners) in which we clean hulls, running gear, search and recover, anything dive related. Our first customers were a lovely couple, Tom and Doris Sanders (http://cruisingonsecondfantasy.blogspot.com) They gave us our very first experience with diving and working in the Bay, which is extremely dark and murky. Thanks Doris for the picture.
But seeing that it's just the beginning of our venture, we have not been as busy as we'd like, but we know that in order to become successful in this, we need to push through the hard times. We're hoping by next year our phone will be ringing non stop, and this is highly anticipated.
This was a long first blog entry, but I felt it necessary seeing that it covers basically the past three years of our lives. Virginia is not what I expected it to be. Whether we're in the Mountains, or along the Bay, people all over Virginia have been so amazingly nice and helpful. A whole different breed than the people back home. We love it here, and luck has really been working in our favor, despite the rough times. We love the life we're living here despite the simplicity (but that's really the best part.)
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