Saturday & Sunday Oct 24 & 25th: Oxford to Solomons and into the Potomac

     Right after breakfast I looked out the pilothouse window and there perched on the pulpit was a little bluebird.  Hope it’s an omen for us.  He spent long enuf for us both to see him, and he was off.  And so were we, off to cross the Bay once again, this time heading SW for Solomons Island.  Not much breeze, and a good thing as most of the way it was right on our nose. A chilly day, but still good enuf to be outside.  We had some company on the Bay, but even tho it was Saturday not that many boats. We recognized several South-bounders as they passed us.  Most turned into Solomons with us, where we rafted  up with Bill and Kathi of the  sloop Jarana, folks we had met in June on the St Lawrence River.  We had been playing cat and mouse since then, finally caught them.  We shared a drink and some cheese and crackers and compared notes of our summers’ trips.  At suppertime we broke off and headed up the Back Creek to anchor off the Calvert Maritime Museum.

     Sunday we dinghied ashore to the Calvert Maritime museum dock first thing in a light rain.  The Museum was not open yet so we ventured up the road to West Marine in hopes of finding a propane sniffer, part of our repairing boats in exotic places routine.  No sensor.  We then walked the road to “town” of which there is very little aside from the numerous marinas.  I can’t even begin to count them, or the boats there-in.

     The museum was very well laid out, and besides the ever present screw-pile light-house, the small boat collection, the working “2-sail” oyster sloop and the powered “Buy Boat”, much of the museum was dedicated to the marine life of the bay and the fossils found locally in the  Calvert Cliffs.

Calvert Cliffs

Calvert Marine Museum

     Back at the boat we took advantage of the afternoon to run down the bay 20 miles to the mouth of the Potomac River.  A little choppy at first, but it calmed down as we went.  Fall is definitely in the air, but we saw more pelicans, so feel we are moving in the right direction.

     Very quiet traffic-wise on the bay, altho we were flanked by a tug towing a construction barge and a smaller barge with a tugboat on it.  We also passed a jack-up barge which was servicing a lighthouse.  we saw a tug pushing a two barge load of concrete bridge beams.

    We ended our travel day at Point Look-Out Marina, on an almost deserted pier where we had our pick of slips.  After supper we made a bee-line for the laundry, two washers!, and showers.

Sunset at Point Lookout Marina, Smith Creek

Friday Oct 23: Annapolis to Oxford

     The bascule bridge on the Spa Creek closes from 0730 to 0900, so either you get out before that or you wait for the morning traffic.  We planned to be out at 0700, but when the sun doesn’t rise until just after that, you tend to sleep late.  We hustled to get out during the last opening, and were the last boat out of the creek before the bridge closed down at 0730.

     The water was a bit choppy and the SW winds didn’t help matters, but it was a good cruise across the bay through the picturesque Knapps Narrows to the little town of Oxford. 

     We passed by many different fisherman.  Some were tending their crab pots, some were tonging for oysters, and some were dredging for clams.  We also came across some duck hunters who had deployed a raft of decoys behind their vessel.  Duck season began recently,  and we hear that goose season starts next week.  We gave them a wide berth, though probably not wide enough to their liking, and a short time later heard a couple shots from their guns.  Up until today we had thought duck hunting happened in marshes, or at least close to shore, and we’d seen a few duck blinds although no hunters.  Now we know.  

Crabbers setting their traps.

Clam dredgers.

One of many duck blind.  Didn't get a picture of the duck hunters and their decoys - we were too busy avoiding them!

     We got to Oxford a little after noon.  Oxford is a small, charming but depressed town with cute little houses on narrow streets and not much to offer the transient boaters beyond the marinas.  Still, we enjoyed a walk through, and as always, the people we met were very friendly.  It was our 27th anniversary today, and we celebrated with a pint of moose tracks ice cream purchased from the tiny general store in town.  

Thursday Oct 22: Annapolis

     Wednesday afternoon, with a heavy heart, we bid farewell to cousins Denny and Laura and Rock Hall, and to Tommie, may she have found a wonderful new home with people who love her.  Our crossing of the Chesapeake was fairly uneventful, and the sun setting as we went under the Memorial Bridge was colorful, heralding the warm day we would have in Annapolis.

     We dropped the hook up in Spa Creek, arriving at the bascule bridge just in time for the last opening.  Annapolis is known for boating;  to accommodate boaters, most streets that dead-end on Spa Creek have a dinghy dock.  So handy!  On Thursday we rowed over to Market Street and tied up for our walk into town.

     Annapolis is Maryland’s state capital and also home to the US Naval Academy, where we spent much of our day.  They welcome visitors.  Dan and I watched the inspirational fourteen minute movie of the academy students’ fours years, then set off to explore the campus on our own.  Only a handful of the buildings are open to the public, including the Naval Academy Maritime Museum, housed in Preble hall.   The elderly volunteer at the museum desk asked if we were interested in Noon Formation, and advised us to turn around and go to watch the students gather in companies before we entered the museum.  Good advice!  We went over to the parade grounds outside Bancroft Hall as students began to form up for their noon inspection.  Every day at noon all the students on campus (some 3,000 +) stand with their classmates while the Naval Academy band plays cadences.   When the swordsmen had sheathed their weapons and all the students had filed into the Hall (presumably for lunch), the band marches to the center and played the Navy theme, the Marines theme, and God Bless America.  It was quite impressive to watch.  We thanked the volunteer at the Museum for making sure we got to see it.

     The Museum too is impressive.  The first floor is a historical overview of the role the Navy has played in America, from its conception in the Revolutionary War to present times.  The second floor contains an incredible collection of models, very intricate and some of them over two hundred years old.  There is an entire room devoted to the models and other art work produced by French POWs held in England prisons in the nineteenth century.  The POWs, using materials found in the their prison yard or gathered from their daily rations, built ship models, cases for glasses, and other small works of art and their captors encouraged their sales at open air markets.  Some of the ships are entirely made from the bones leftover from their meals.  Really something to see, if you ever get to Annapolis.

     After our tour of USNA, Dan and I walked across the bridge spanning Spa Creek, to the town of Eastport, where we met up with my friend Janie Meneely.  Janie is Annapolis born and bred, a local folk musician who also works as managing editor for Chesapeake Bay Magazine.  We had a great evening together.

Oct 19-20-21:  Still in Rock Hall

     If there is anything more frustrating than not being able to figure out why there is an alarm going off, we don't know what it could be.  On our approach to Rock Hall on Sunday an alarm suddenly started sounding.  It was windy and rough, and we'd been bouncing along for about an hour when the noise started.  The only light flashing was the alarm light.  We lost the tachometer temporarily but everything else was working just fine.  Logically, it seemed to be that all the motion had jarred a wire loose somewhere.  We weren't in a position to check it out just then, and put up with the noise as we made our way into Haven Harbour Marina in Swan Creek.
     Since then, Dan has been shoulder-deep in the engine.  Loose wire?  Couldn't find one.  Alternator?  Nope, seemed to be doing its job.  Batteries are charging.  Engine starts just fine.  The instrument panels shows all readouts working fine.  It's just that every time the engine starts, the alarm starts too.  (Since we're a motor-sailor, we'd kind of like to make sure this problem is fixed for good.  We don't move without the engine running.)  There were many calls to Beta Marine, who suggested it might be a faulty regulator. We are in a full-service marina at which both my cousin and his wife work, so we have access to consults who concurred and a new regulator was ordered and delivered in record time.  However, it turned out the new regulator did not shut down the alarm.  More calls to Beta Marine.  Ground wire, they suggested.  Check the ground wire at the bottom of the engine.
     Now, the engine schematic that came with the new engine (put in only a few years ago) has never been accurate.  It calls for wires that aren't where wires actually are, wires with different colors than actually exist, and other anomalies.  Yet Dan patiently (and not-so-patiently) traced and checked wires as he sought out the problem.  At one point it seemed things were fixed, but that proved not to be the case.  He is still working on it as I write this.
     In the meantime, we've spent some time with my cousin Denny and his wife Laura, explored a little bit of Rock Hall by bicycles (supplied by the marina) as we visited local marine and hardware stores, and we've been looking for our cat Tommie.
     Sometime on Sunday evening she decided to go walkabout and hasn't been back since.  There have been possible sightings in the extensive marina grounds, but she has remained elusive.  We are staying positive, believing she is actually wandering the grounds and finding comfortable accommodations in the millions of places to hide, as well as plenty of food in the nearby marshes. We have since heard several missing cat stories where cats eventually returned to their owners, sometimes after a couple of months! and we hope this will be the end to our story too.  We miss her terribly and hate the thought of moving on without her.  My cousins, the other employees of this marina and the people in the very friendly town of Rock Hall are all helping us keep an eye out.  We've placed posters, notified vets and shelters, walked the docks and the yard several times.  In the meantime, we wait, and hope, and Dan takes out his many emotions on the engine chasing down that alarm problem.

   

Oct 16 - 18:  Severn River to St Michaels and up to Rock Hall

     Friday the 15th we left Baltimore after a nice walk through the brick-paved streets of Fells Point where we admired the early nineteenth century architecture and read all the billboards about the history of the area and its contributions to the War of 1812.   We hoisted sails and cruised back down the river and under the big double bridge that connects the Western Shore with the Eastern Shore, en route to the Severn River where we'd been offered the use of the McGeady family dock.

Annapolis

     We passed by Annapolis, where the US Powerboat Show was in full swing, and up the quiet river almost to its end.  "Big Joe" McGeady was waiting on the dock for us.  What a lovely quiet cove.  The trees were just starting to turn.  They must be spectacular in peak season.  We spent two nights at the dock and enjoyed our time with Big Joe, who found a laundromat for us and chauffeured us there on Saturday and to do other errands, entertaining us with anecdotes about his past working on the water in marine construction, his present various volunteer jobs, current history and climate of Baltimore and the area, and his extensive family.  It was fun getting to know him, and we really appreciated his hospitality.  He and his wife Emily also allowed us into their home for hot showers.

Willie Dawes at the McGeady dock

Nightfall with crescent moon.

     We decided to bypass Annapolis until the boat show was over, so we bid goodbye to the Severn River and crossed the Bay to St. Michaels, where the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is.  What a fabulous town and what a nice museum!  Admission gives you two days' entrance, much needed to see all the exhibits.  We spent all afternoon exploring the various buildings and returned again in the morning to make sure we didn't miss anything they had to offer.  Saturday night we had dinner out at a boater-friendly ("we welcome shorts and boat shoes") restaurant.

"Screw-pile" light house - moved from Hooper Strait to the CBMM.  Pilings were screwed into the sand for a more secure footing and the house built on the platform above.  Ice destroyed many of these lighthouses.

Mitchell House at CBMM. Eliza Mitchell was the sister of Frederick Douglass.  The left portion of the house is original; the right portion is a replica of the addition.  The Mitchells raised nine children here, though not all at the same time.

      Sunday we set out up the Bay, cruising through Kents Narrows, to Rock Hall where my cousin Dennis and his wife Laura had reserved a slip for us at Haven Harbour Marina.  The winds were strong from the North, and the seas were some choppy, bouncing us around a lot.  So much so, something jiggled loose in the engine and alarms buzzed steadily for the last hour of our trip.  Alternator, Dan thought, or a battery wire.  Something electrical.  Good thing this is a full-service marina, I thought; if this turned out to be something major that Dan needed help or parts for, he'd surely find it here.  Turns out it's more of a frustration & headache than a major problem.  The engine is fine, the alternator is working, the batteries are charging.  We just have a buzzing alarm going off when the engine is turned on.  Dan will track it down.  We planned to be here a couple of days anyway, as I haven't spent much time with Dennis and Laura in a very long time, and Dan had never met them.  They had us over to their house last night for a wonderful home-cooked meal and sent us home with goodie bags for our fridge.

Oct 14: Parade of Sail in Baltimore

    We had a leisurely morning in Bodkin Creek, about as urban a cove as we have ever seen.  At every house a dock and boat, but just as still as a mill pond.

Great Blue Heron and Bald Eagle keeping an eye on each other from their perches.

Baltimore Skyline

     Underway at 1030 for a trip against the wind to Baltimore.  We toured the inner harbor then stopped to speak Capt Jessie Briggs of the AJ Meerwald. The AJ Meerwald was built in 1928 as an oyster dredger in Delaware Bay and survived 15 years of oystering, years commandeered as a fire boat during WWll, then a career as a surf clammer, before being sunk in shallow water as was a common way to hang onto a vessel that you had no use for, but thought you might someday.  In 1988 she was sold for a dollar, hauled out and rebuilt back to near original and is now used for training and Bay awareness.

     Capt Jessie invited us to raft up for a while, so we did, then invited ourselves aboard the AJ for the Schooner Parade of Sail, the kickoff event in the weeklong Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race, that Jessie’s father Lane had started 27 years ago. We quick anchored the Willie Dawes off the marina then rowed to the marina to join the Meerwald. Up and back thru the inner harbor,  25 schooners, cannons blazing, generally milling about, all with a great sense of comraderie, Capt. Jessie handled the schooner like the pro he is.  Thanks Jessie!

     Once back at the Willie we had our supper and were just about to settle in for the night when I heard engines reversing close aboard.  Once on deck I was blinded by blue strobe lights flanking the Willie Dawes.  The nice Baltimore Police were here to inform us that we were in a no anchoring turning basin, and they showed us another place we could anchor.  Very nice, no problem, we thank them for not towing us while we were in the parade.  We upped anchor and quietly moved to the other side of the marina.  

Willie Dawes in the wrong anchorage.  Oops.

     Of note, Baltimore is an exception to the rule reserving and allowing visitors several places where it is OK to anchor, as opposed to many that allow none.  Thankyou Baltimore.

Oct 13: Through the C & D Canal and Beyond

     We knew the current in the canal wasn’t going to be favorable until after eleven am, so we spent a leisurely morning before setting off.  The Reedy Island anchorage might be handy to the canal entrance, but it had a strong current and was not all that protected from the big ships that went up the Bay to Wilmington and Philadelphia.  We felt every wake.  Dan set our flopper-stoppers, and that helped some.

Entrance to the C & D Canal

     The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal is fourteen miles long.  We entered just before eleven, with the current against us.  By the time we got through it, the current was giving a steady push, something that continued right into Chesapeake Bay.  

Schooner AJ Meerwald

     The schooner AJ Meerwald was right behind us much of the time, and Dan being Dan, picked up the radio and struck up a conversation with their captain, letting him know we’d sailed in company with the Meerwald back in 2000 when we’d taken the Lewis R French to the Boston Tall Ships Sail-In.  The captain responded “Oh, you sailed with Danny!”  To which Dan replied “As a matter of fact, I am Danny.”  It’s a small world amongst the schooners captains.  The AJ Meerwald is the New Jersey flagship, built in 1928 to harvest oysters.  Now she does PR tours to help raise awareness of the ecology of the Bay.  We sailed with them through through the canal and into the Chesapeake.  They were Baltimore-bound, getting ready to rendezvous with all the other schooners entered in the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race.  

     We were also Baltimore-bound.  Well, heading for the mouth of the river that leads to Baltimore.  My brother Ralph, who lives in Georgia, just happened to be in the DC area attending meetings.  He contacted us, asked if we could meet for supper.  To make it an easier drive for him, we decided to push toward Baltimore instead of calling it a day someplace nearer to the end of the C & D Canal.

It was a pretty day, though the wind was was right in our teeth.  We had a fair tide  and it wasn’t too choppy with the wind against it.  We chased the storm clouds, and got caught in a couple showers, but they didn’t last long and were over and gone by the time we reached Bodkin Creek where we’d arranged to meet Ralph.  

    We took longer than we’d hoped, because the tide turned and slowed us down, but it turned out our travels were still faster than the greater Washington DC traffic.  We were half an hour late to the Cheshire Crab, Ralph got there about fifteen minutes after that. The food was good, and the time spent together was even better.  Thanks Ralph, for getting in touch. It made our Chesapeake visit even more special!

Sunset Bodkin Creek