Tuesday, May 25th - Day 41
Anchor up at 7:30am on a nice morning after lots of rain during the night. There were many of boats joining us for the trip up the bay since the waves and winds were light today. As we motored onto Chesapeake Bay, I could see 7 sailboats and 6 powerboats within a few miles of us.
We turned north around Cove Point and put out our big jib and mainsail. The winds were behind our starboard beam, broad reach, and the apparent wind was only in the 6-10 knot range. I tried sailing a bit with the engine in neutral but our speed quickly dropped below 5 knots so I kept the engine running all day at lower than our normal cruise RPM. I took this picture shortly after raising sail. Seas were low and the ride was nice.
As we motor-sailed around Cove Point, I could see a large tanker on the huge docks that stuck way out into the Chesapeake. I've only seen a boat here maybe once or twice in over 30 trips so this was a treat. The ship had an unusual deck layout so I took a couple pictures. She was the LNG Carrier Gail Bhuwan. Very interesting.
It was a nice motor-sail up the bay. The winds increased a little later in the afternoon and went behind us. I tried jibbing the main to starboard for wing-on-wind but the seas were a little too high and kept flogging the jib. If he had a wisker-pole to hold out the jib it would have been nice but we don't sail downwind that often. Instead I rolled in the jib and turned back on course using just the mainsail to help.
Several hours later we approached the entrance to Annapolis and the Severn River. Our friends Dean and Sue had been in Annapolis for a few days anchored in Weems Creek. They had told us that this might be a crazy time in Annapolis because this was graduation week at the Naval Academy and the Navy Blue Angles were flying tomorrow. But, they were using today for practice so the harbor might be busy.
Holy Cow! As we pulled into the harbor I thought they had built a new marina or something. There were thousands of boats anchored in the large harbor and the Blue Angles were just starting their practice / show. It was pretty neat as they were flying right over us to turn and stage for another pass over the harbor. Here are a couple pictures Laura took while we were motoring into the harbor. Notice all the boats anchored in the first picture. This is Annapolis harbor.
She also took this nice fly-by video.
The harbor was really packed with boats. I made the mistake of keeping our mainsail up while motor-sailing into the anchored boats and it was very hard to find a place where we could turn up-wind for a couple minutes and pull in the sail.
Here is a picture I took of my RADAR while motoring through all the anchored boats. It's a little hard to understand because there is a large glare on the screen. But, if you look through the glare at the screen itself, all of the little dark dots are boats anchored around us as we are motoring by. The RADAR is zoomed way in to show just 1/2 mile around us.
Laura also took this short video of all the boats anchored around us as we motored around in the harbor. Check out all the boats!
I had called the Annapolis Harbormaster on my phone to see if they had any open moorings. I figured they would not with all this boat traffic but thought I would try. Nope. All the moorings in Annapolis were taken. I then called Dean and he said there was plenty of room to anchor around them in Weems Creek. Great! Here we come!
Not so fast.... We were yelled at by a Harbormaster boat that the Severn River was not open to boat traffic yet. So, I spent the next 10 minutes slowly motoring around all the anchored boats until I they announced on the radio that the river was open. Good news was we found a little open spot to pull in our mainsail. I navigated the 2 miles to the anchorage around many anchored boats and we dropped our anchor just behind Autumn Borne at 3:45pm. Phew. What a day!
But wait, it's not over yet..... Dean and Sue came over in their dinghy a short time later to "welcome us to the neighborhood." We had a cocktail with them and caught up on personal news. They left a short time later as we had dinner plans with our friends Chris and Bob who live about 45 minutes away.
Just before 6pm we met Chris and Bob at the Weems Creek boat launch which also qualifies as a dinghy dock. After dragging the dinghy up on the beach and locking it to a park bench, we decided to try a local Walgreens for Laura's second Covid shot (plus they have a great wine store). She really got lucky that the pharmacy was still open AND the last person scheduled for the shot had not showed up. Laura only had to wait a short time and then she was Covid-proof. Yea!
I purchased a case of wine at the same store mixed with several different bottles we like. The total came to $100 for 12 bottles. That's a great price for decent wine. We then decided on Mexican for dinner and drove a short distance to the Mexican Cafe. Food was so-so but the Margaritas were excellent. After spending a couple hours catching up and eating / drinking, we decided to try our favorite wine bar in downtown Annapolis. We actually found a parking spot and, after a short walk, got a table outside near the street at the Red Red Wine Bar. It was a fun ending to a great day as we sipped nice wine with friends while watching all the folks in downtown Annapolis during graduation week.
Bob drove us back to the dinghy and we said another sad good-bye. No problems as we motored back to Second Wind other then a few wine-caused configuration errors as I tried to haul up the dinghy.
Tomorrow is supposed to be stormy in the afternoon so we are planning on staying another day anchored here. Then maybe Thursday we will sail up to the Sassafras River and anchor for a few days or check out a new marina. It doesn't look like decent weather and winds for heading up the coast of NJ until at least Monday or Tuesday so we have several days to play in this area.
47nm today, 1,216.5 total trip miles.
Wednesday, May 26th - Day 42
I did not sleep well last night which typically happens with too much red wine. It wasn't until 10am that I pulled myself out of bed after my (sometimes) morning ritual of 150 sit-ups, crunches and leg-lifts then lots of stretching for this old body. That helped get me motivated!
After a small breakfast and coffee (which I've recently started drinking again) I decided to catch up the blog with everything that happened yesterday. Today will be much calmer assuming the thunderstorms scheduled for this afternoon are not too bad.
It's now 7:30pm and, so far, the thunderstorms have gone around us. It was a very warm day with temps in the high 80s and very humid. The Blue Angels show this afternoon was a blast. Here's one video I took of them flying passed the back of our boat and the U.S. flag we have up. Laura and I were getting stiff necks watching them fly right over us in Weems Creek.
This afternoon I practiced my flute a bit then read in the cockpit trying to keep in the breeze a little. We made burgers on the grill for dinner and I decided to cool down the boat by closing up and running the air-conditioning off our Honda generator. It's much nicer in here now!
I mentioned we might check out a marina in Georgetown, MD over the next few days. I called them this afternoon on the chance they would have a slip for us. It turns out they did and I booked the next 4 nights at Sailing Associates Marina in Georgetown. We're looking forward to staying at a new place! Just a note that we might have stayed in Annapolis for a few more days if we could have picked up a mooring in the harbor or Back Creek. Then we would have had much better access to town and I wouldn't have had to worry about our boat on anchor. Who knows? If we don't get a weather window next week for a run up the coast to New York City, maybe we'll come back....
Right now, the weather tomorrow looks good for sailing north to the Sassafras River but the next several days will have high winds and storms - not good for moving on. We'll hang out in Georgetown or go anchor on the Sassafras if we get delayed more than a couple days.
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