to members of yryc; my name is bob Patterson and l found your web site and thought you might be interested in a bit of York river history you don’t have. In 1969 November l was the navigator in uss ruchamkin lpr-89  we were returning from a top secret mission off the azores where we lost our fast attack submarine uss scorpion ssn-589 with all hands 99 you probably know about that part of history,anyway we had departed little creek ampbib base in july of that year and  steamed to rendezvous with the white sands a deep water dry dock in her was the us navy deep submersible bathyscaph triestell, along with uss apache deep water tug the three composed our task force, sorry l’m making this so long but l will get to the York river. we operated for four months over the site where scorpion was lost using the azores as our resupply and personnel  base and in those days we were surrounded by top military brass, cia, nsa  , at that time we didn’t know what happened to the scorpion and the Russians had lost a ballistic sub in the pacific so lots of speculation  rran a bit wild and while we dove 2 miles down to find scorpion we were landing on the moon 20 july 1969 it was really  surreal and historic but filled us with a deep sadness ,we departed the operation and returned independently to our base in October but first we had to navigate up the York river to off load all our explosives before going into drydock for repairs, the ammo depot was at the very northern end of the river so we off loaded ammo for two days using all hands so every one was a bit tired, l had a really great chart l was using to transit up the river and had tracks layed out and courses and speed to return to little creek. Our captain not wanting to anchor out increased our speed heading south, l knew we had a couple of dog legs but due to our speed and other factors l failed to negotiate one course change about five miles southeast and ran theship doing 22 knots through a field of reeds onto a sandy bank and drove the bow into the river bank, lt took two navy tugs and a navy investigation to get us home, for myself l considered a good navigator  l decided  to return to ,l hope this was worth readingd?
 best wishes and sailing bob patterson