Sailing Mystic Hearts

While we were a little sad to leave Urbanna behind, we knew that other new and exciting destinations were ahead of us. Just 23.1 nautical miles back out of the Rappahannock River and up and around the southeastern tip of Virginia’s Northern Neck lies Little Bay. A large anchorage with protection on three sides, marshes to kayak, and even a beach with a wooden shack and pirate flag, what’s not to love?

Little Bay’s close proximity to Deltaville and distance from our home port make this destination not just an easy stop on any cruise north up the Chesapeake Bay, but is close enough that we could make this an outing for any holiday weekend we want to get away and spend time in nature. Our first night in Little Bay, we took the dinghy out toward the marshes past Oyster Creek. We noticed several skinny white markers in the waterway that marked the shallow channel and it seemed several locals passing through on small fishing boats knew how to navigate through the marsh, but we wouldn’t attempt this on one of those boats without local knowledge. We bumped the sea floor with our dinghy in the middle of the waterway and decided our best bet would be to kayak through here instead. So, we turned the dinghy around and headed for “Pirate’s Beach.” On the southern end, a wooden shack was erected with a roof. We noticed cruisers congregating here on the beach at sunset, which makes sense – the sunset views were pretty incredible.

The morning after our arrival, we kayaked back toward Oyster Creek and the marshes that we couldn’t bring the dinghy through successfully. (We later determined that we may have gotten through if we hugged the eastern side of the channel. The western side was shoaling.) Kayaking through the marshes was beautiful and reminded us of the kayaking we used to do on the Poquoson River at our old house. Once through, we pulled our kayaks onto a beach at North Point, which was on the Chesapeake Bay side of the water. Here we flew the drone and looked for arrow heads and shark teeth, which we found neither. We did see a largely decomposed turtle which we estimated to be about 4-5 feet long. We’ve seen these incredible creatures of similar size swimming out in the Bay and are always amazed by how large they can grow. We wrapped up our drone flying and kayaked back to the boat when we looked up and saw clouds to the north of us that started to produce thunder.

We loved our two nights spent in Little Bay and look forward to stopping here again in the near future to rest and relax in nature. This anchorage does tend to get crowded on the weekend. We arrived on a week day and were the first to drop the hook. At its busiest on a Saturday, there were only a dozen boats anchored overnight with plenty of room to fit more in.