First Stop: Smithville Station

Altogether we had 6 boats on our cruise, although a couple of boats joined us on day 2.  The town of Smithville is situated on Pagan River, just off the James River.  Smithville is, of course, named after John Smith  (explorer and founder of Jamestown).  In fact, Smithville is very near the land that was given as Pocahontas' dowry when she married John Rolfe in 1613.  Smithville is most famous for producing the Smithville ham, derived from peanut fed hogs.  Smithville is so very proud of its ham that they have the world's oldest ham on exhibit in their little museum... of course its petrified by now.  Once a year the town celebrates the "birthday" of their Guiness Book of World Records worthy ham.  We missed the  birthday by one day and I was sorely disappointed! (not really, not even a little).  I had no desire to see a 112 year old ham.

The group stayed a the Smithville Station Marina complex which had an inn, several cottages, a great restaurant and a pool.   When we weren't eating at the restaurant, we were lounging or having cocktail hour at the pool. The weather was a bit overcast but that actually was a good thing as it was hot enough without the beating sun.  Almost all of our boats had some sort of airconditioning which is not common for C-Dories on the West Coast... but out here it is a necessity.  Our airconditioner had been purchased two years ago (after reading the suggestion on the C-Brats site), but we had never used it.  We've been dragging it with us since February and, finally, it was moved from the truck to the boat for its inaugural voyage.  It looks ridiculous but worked very well.

Several of the C-Dory's employed this same size window airconditioner... we call it the "red neck" version.

There were three kinds of airconditioners in use:  Most of us had the little window airconditioners which could only be used when docked (or, if anchored with a generator).  One of us had a marine water cooled air conditioner (where water is pumped into the boat hull and through the air conditioner).  This could be used while underway.  The third airconditioning solution is a cabin top model (Coleman makes one for RV's and a more rust resistent marine model).  This solution can be used underway if you are running a generator.  The advantage is, you aren't hauling around a window airconditioner in your limited cockpit space or having to install it each time.  We don't have room for this because of our solar panels.... Why is there always a compromise?