Story By JOHN HOLUM
Four hundred years ago this year, Capt. John Smith and a
small crew sailed and rowed their unnamed 30-foot shallop up
the Rappahannock River as part of Smith’s remarkable 1608
exploration of Chesapeake Bay. This past spring, with
considerable help from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation,
Kadey-Krogen Yachts in Annapolis assembled a small armada
to retrace some of Smith’s route up the river as part of its
second annual Treasure the Chesapeake cruise.
The Rappahannock fairly bursts with the history of Smith’s
expeditions. Smith found the Rappahannock, which marks the
southern border of Virginia’s northern neck and roughly
parallels the Potomac, to be “an excellent, pleasant, well-inhabited, fertile, and goodly navigable river.” It’s still all of that,
but now, sadly, it is fertile in a different way: overloaded with
nutrients from farms and lawns in the watershed, which
extends all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Those
nutrients feed blooming algae that block out the sun that sea
grasses and deeper-dwelling creatures need to live. The
creatures die, decompose, and sink, creating a black muck
bottom where crabs, oyster beds, and fish don’t have a prayer
of surviving.
The University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental
Science gives the Rappahannock a grade of D+, just slightly
better than the D- awarded to its neighbors, the Potomac and
York Rivers. On our journey, the farther we went up the river,
the more the water resembled weak chocolate milk, bearing
the runoff from the spring’s abundant rains.
Even if the water itself is not of the best quality, the
Rappahannock easily meets or exceeds the Chesapeake’s
high standards for scenic beauty and glorious cruising. The
shoreline is a visual treat and is heavily wooded despite the
pressure of more and more people favoring grander homes
with a water view. Happily, many who live on the riverfront
have chosen natural plants and grasses instead of long lawns
to trim, fertilize, and add to the nutrient runoff. In one spot,
the banks climb to 150-foot cliffs, and bald eagles—as
RA P PA H
common here as osprey are elsewhere—soar overhead.
Much of the land along the shore is preserved as part of the
Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge, and as
you travel upriver, you find more uplands, fewer houses, and
wilder scenery.
