End of the Chesapeake

Here is one of the lighthouses on the way down the Chesapeake to Hampton Roads. You can kinda see how rough the water was although the camera always makes the waves look smaller.
When we anchored at Hampton, we were rewarded with a flaming sunset.
Here are John and Cheryl, owners of Kloosh, another Sceptre 41 with whom we travelled for a while. They are in the first lock of the Dismal Swamp Canal with us right behind them.
Here is Kloosh under sail - looks a lot like us, but Kloosh is much newer.

Sunday, October 28,2007
We anchored this afternoon in Hampton, VA which is right at the mouth of the confluence of the James and Elizabeth Rivers. All very close are Norfolk, Newport News, Portsmouth, and Hampton. We had a wild sail down here with wind up to 33 knots in the gusts. Fortunately, it was behind us so we were pretty level although the motion wasn't the best with the wind against the tide all day. We are glad to be here. Tomorrow we are going to meet another Sceptre 41, Kloosh, and go with them down the Dismal Swamp Canal. This canal was dug under the supervision of one G. Washington (yup, him again) who seems to show up everywhere around here. It is very primitive, but shallow.
We have spent a lot of time in rivers with Indian names - like Mill Creek was a tributary to the Great Wicomoco River and Jackson Creek, Deltaville was a tributary to the Pianktank River. I'm glad the indians got to leave something of themselves. It must have been a paradise for them with the oysters, crabs, and geese ready for the pot. Only the mosquitos were a plague. Fortunately, coming in fall, we missed those. We really could have spent a year exploring the Chesapeake. We saw some of the high points, but there are thousands of miles of shoreline and only about half of is is covered with rich people houses. If I had known there were going to be so many rich people, I might have tried harder to be one of them. I always thought that being middle-class was pleasantly comfortable. I am beginning to figure out that it means being poor with dignity.

The end of Indian Summer...

October 26, 2007 Friday
Well, we've had some lousy weather for the last few days with more scheduled. It has been raining, at times very hard with lots of wind. We sailed from Solomons, MD to Mill Creek, just below the Potomac and above the Rappahanock (on the west shore). We had lots of wind, so we went pretty fast. The Chesapeake being shallow, there were steep waves caused by the wind blowing in the opposite direction from the tidal flow. The motion was a little uncomfortable, but we were going so fast that it was tolerable. We got into Mill Creek and then put up with the wind howling all night long. We don't sleep that well when we are worried about the anchor holding. If it drags, we could end up on a beach or just aground on a mudbank, neither a pleasant alternative.
We woke up this morning to a dreary rain and too much wind, but by 10AM it had moderated a little, so off we went for Deltaville. After all, the wind was blowing in the right direction. And it was blowing hard, so we were hauling! The sailing was pretty nice, but the rain... And when it was time to enter Jackson Creek at Deltaville, the skies opened and we could barely see. Fortunately, my electronic navigation saved the day. With Andi on deck watching for the buoys and me following the channel (on screen) we got into this tricky harbor with its very narrow winding channel while the rain came down in buckets.
Now we are snuggly anchored and having eaten a quantity of gambas al ajillo (shrimp in a paprika and garlic sauce), we're going to get some sleep. We have pretty much given up on trying to see more of the Chesapeake. With this lousy weather, we're just going to make one more run down to Norfolk and then start down to Oriental, NC where we will try to find a car to use for the winter. I guess we will miss Halloween celebrations. Darn.
Write...phone, why not?

Even more Solomons, MD

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

This cute lady duck made a habit of coming by the boat every day to see if there were any tortilla chips. She didn't run with the usual pack of ducks - she was a loner, but too cute to say "no" to.
Here are Andi's swans - the white ones are the parents and the beige ones the children. They were getting begging lessons.
And this time of year, geese are constantly going overhead. Our Canadian friends consider them pests, but we are fascinated.
Here is Don and his son, Christopher. You can't see his wife Heesook (Korean) because she wasn't in the dinghy. They are Canadians travelling South and we have been with them in quite a few harbors now. We've done some dinners together and they invited us to a big Canadian raftup where 4 boats anchored all in one group and we partied for hours. They made us do flamenco and other musical things. Fun! They spoke English instead of French in our honor. There are lots of Canadians travelling South - more than us natives, actually. I don't know why there are so many - maybe because the US is so inexpensive for them.

Solomons, MD

Tuesday, Ocotober 23, 2007
We have been in Solomons for a few days now. It is getting late in the fall and the weather is starting to show the winter pattern of cold fronts every few days. That means more wind than we want, so we are hanging out here. It is a pleasant harbor with lots of marinas and anchoring space. The geese and ducks tend to be in the less travelled areas, but Andrea was tickled to get to meet some begging swans. They like tortilla chips. The cool air means that I've been wearing long pants for days now and even a heavy shirt from time to time.
We have good internet and phone connections, so have been getting some business things out of the way. I moved everything out of the stock market for a while. We will find out later if that was correct.
We had a great sail coming down here, hitting 8.5 knots at times. There hasn't been enough of that. We only have a few more stops before we will be back in Norfolk and heading back down the ICW to Oriental, NC for the winter. We'd like to see Jamestown, Yorktown, and Williamsburg - history is all over the place around here. If we had more time, going up the Potomac to Washington would be terrific, but it's getting late.
When we were anchored in Trippe Creek above Oxford, it was glassy smooth at sunset. And then a powerboat made some waves. It looked cool.
We went down to La Trappe Creek off the Choptank River (setting for Michner's "Chesapeake") and anchored behind this sandbar in a sheltered cove.
Here is the bottom of that cove. There were thousands of geese hiding back behind that island. We spent a few days here waiting out bad weather.
Here is a lighthouse we passed while sailing down to Solomons.
Just before we got to Solomons we were catching a fleet of sailboats. We mostly are alone, so the company was nice.

More pix from Oxford and the Tred Avon

After Oxford, we sailed up the Tred Avon to Trippe Ck. We took the dinghy to see some geese at the end of the creek. We scared them.
But, we got some pix as they flew by. I must admit, a lot of geese had their domestic affairs disturbed to bring you these pix.
There are lots of rich people homes along the shore - this is an older classic one.
And this is a newer, more expensive one. There is more money per capita here than anywhere else in the US. At least we are getting to use the internet by capturing the signals from their home networks. These pix are thanks to them.
Here is Saeta anchored in front of a big estate.

Pix from the Eastern Shore

Here I am in St. Micheals. We were on our way to the grocery.
Here is a traditional skipjack - the kind of boat used for years to dredge oysters ("drudge arsters")
We then sailed around to Oxford, MD. This was a boatyard specializing in rebuilding classic wooden boats.
A flock of geese came over in formation, just before sunset.
And, of course, the sunset.

St. Michaels, MD

October 13, 2007 Saturday
After a wait for bad weather, we were able to leave Annapolis in the throes of a powerboat show and sail to St. Michaels on the Eastern Shore. St. Michaels is a colonial town that has changed in the last 20 years from crabbing, clamming, and oystering to tourism. We actually got to sail most of the time (for a most welcome change) and arrived in mid-afternoon. We went ashore and found it to be a charming little town with grocery stores and good restaurants galore.
It has been a major change to get used to wearing long pants and heavy shirts as the chill of fall has arrived. I am getting the diesel heater ready as the nights can get into the high 40's. Of course, that is what makes the trees change their colors.
I am reading "Chesapeake" by Michener and it is so cool to be reading about the history of the places where we are now anchored. Today (Sunday) we went to the Chesapeake Maritime Museum, which had a fascinating collection of early Chesapeake relics. See pix later. The part of the museum about oyster harvesting was so interesting that we went directly to Big Al's Seafood afterward and had a dozen oysters. Coming from water that is only partly salty, they were sweeter than the salt water oysters we have known from the Pacific. Yum! This is a very pretty town and I apologise for not putting up more pictures. Our keel is so deep that we have to anchor pretty far from shore and because of that, the pictures don't show the detail well enough.
This traditional catboat came by our anchorage. This used to be a very popular style as the one sail was easy for a lone fisherman to handle
Here is a church that dates to 1691! The chimes ring every hour and we can hear them in bed at night.
At the museum, we visited a lighthouse and there was a lighthouse keepers uniform available. Andi tried it on. Our boat is anchored directly to the right of her.
Here is the lighthouse with Saeta framed underneath it.
And here is a traditional Chesapeake sailboat; the kind that they used to dredge oysters and for light shipping.

Cuted out in Annapolis

October 9, 2007 Tuesday
We got up early to catch the tide this morning. Although the wind was directly against us (What's new?), we made good time and by lunchtime were anchored off the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. Annapolis is one of the sailing capitals of North America along with Newport, RI and maybe Ft. Lauderdale. There is an incredible amount of nautical activity here. We arrived in mid-week between the big sailboat show and next weekend's big powerboat show. So it's chaotic on the waterfront. Still, with all the little creeks, there is a lot of waterfront.
We walked around town and found that it was terminally cute. Everytime we came around a corner or looked down a side street - cute! I am not making fun of it. It was like being in Disneyland, but it is really like this. I'm typing this while a cold front is coming through and there is lightning, rain and wind. So I'll just show you a few pix and and you decide if it is cute.
Here is St. Anne's Church in the center of a traffic circle.
Here is the South side of that traffic circle. You can see the State Capital Dome in the background. That building is the one in which Geo. Washington (yup, him again) resigned his commission as head of the continental army so that his presidency wouldn't look like a military coup. And the Treaty of Paris which ended the Revolutionary War was signed here.
Here is a back street that is one of the ugliest streets we saw.
Here is the North side of the traffic circle.
And here is a typical business street.

So, is it cute?

Two days in Rock Hall, MD

October 7, 2007 Sunday

We motored out of Worton Creek down to Rock Hall. It was only about 15 miles, but like every passage since we got into the Delaware River, our destination was directly upwind. So we motored. We love our motor, but this is a sailboat - but the bottom line is that it is a vehicle for two people to travel over water. The most important thing for us is the conservation of our energy - personal energy. If we fool around trying to sail and end up going in the wrong direction at 3 knots instead of the right direction at 6.5 knots, we also end up getting into the next harbor in the middle of the night, exhausted. Not fun! So while I might play with the sails when daysailing out of my home port, when we are going places, we do whatever it takes to get there quickly and easily. My old friends who remember how I was 30 years ago would be aghast.

So we easily got into Rock Hall with the tide pushing us along at about 2 in the afternoon. We had read in one of our many cruising guides that there was a free city dock so we went and found it. There were a few other boats on it, but it was mostly deserted. All the other boats had gone to marinas and paid $2/ft/night or more for the privilege of tying up to a dock. A few years ago, that privilege would have cost $20. Now, for a boat our size, it is $82/night. For that, I expect clean linen and a chocolate on my pillow. So the free dock was welcome.

The next morning we found out that the free dock had a commercial use. A big semi-trailer backed up to the dock and set up a conveyor belt and as the oyster boats came back into the harbor, they each pulled up to the dock and unloaded the days catch. They get paid by the bushel and a picture below shows the bucket they use to measure with. I was in Rock Hall 20 years ago and it was very much of a fishing village. Now, yachts and tourism are the big thing and the town has changed. But the fishing still goes on.

We set up our bikes and rode all over town - great fun, and ate seafood, of course.

Here is one of the Main streets in Rock Hall. There was a sign that George Washington passed through this intersection 7 times that we know of. Old George was all over this neighborhood. Rock Hall used to be a major landing spot when crossing the Chesapeake.l
Here is the buyer for oysters measuring and checking the oysters that the fisherman shovelled into the bucket. Another fishing boat is waiting for a turn to unload.

On into the Chesapeake

October 6, 2007 Saturday
Since you last heard from us, we motored up the Delaware River, through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and into the Bohemia River at the top of the Chesapeake. We did all that in one long day. I knew good things were in store because Andrea spent the day in the cockpit, alternately on watch and going through her Spanish cookbooks. The C & D Canal was only 12 miles long - a brain child of, among others, Benjamin Franklin. In the 1700's, the world wanted an easy way to get commerce from Baltimore to Philadelphia. The C&D Canal was the result. Once through that, the anchorage in the Bohemia River was the first one deep enough for our boat. Even then, we had to feel our way in with the depth sounder reading 7.4 feet. We draw 6.1 feet and the tide was still falling. Low tide was at 9PM, but after Andrea's Spanish dinner and some Tio Pepe sherry, I fell asleep and missed whatever worry might have been there. It was so calm that, if we touched bottom, we probably wouldn't have even noticed.
The Chesapeake is really the remains of the old Susquehanna River and its many tributaries make a fabulous cruising ground for exploration. Our first night in the Bohemia was magic. There were flights of wild geese visible in the setting sunlight and for hours we could hear them gabbling and fussing along the shorelines. The trees are just barely starting to show their fall colors, especially the maples. The water was perfectly still and the temperatures perfect for outdoor dining. While we are wearing long pants and sleeping under covers, it is still nearly perfect weather - mid 70's during the day and mid 60's at night.
After a day of exploring the shallow side creeks in the dinghy, we moved on to Georgetown, MD. But the side creeks were worthy of mention. In our dinghy, we can go into water a foot deep, so that opens a lot of water that the big boat can't get to. We took a picnic up winding Scotchman's Creek and, after getting to a remote area, let the dinghy drift into shore. We draped ourselves across the bottom and set up a lunch on the seat. Ah, could it get better than that? Time will tell.
The next day, we moved down to Georgetown, just 10 miles or so. Georgetown was founded during colonial times and was named after King George. Across the river is Fredricktown named after his son.
Today is a foggy morning in Georgetown. We needed some civilization to fill the water and fuel tanks. And we needed to get to a grocery store. So we took a mooring at the local marina and got to use their loaner bikes for our shopping. Now we are all stocked up and ready for the rest of the Chesapeake. In an hour, we are going to sail back down the Sassafras River and anchor somewhere - ready for a sail tomorrow down to Rock Hall, MD.
PS - We sailed down to Worton Creek and anchored just off a nice beach. We are going ashore to admire the sunset from the land. Maybe pix - who knows? Stay tuned - film at 11.
Don't forget to write.
Here is Scotchman's Creek where we went for a picnic in the dinghy. Other than a few duck blinds, there were no traces of humanity. Very mellow.
And here is one of us in full picnic mode. This stuff is hard to take. It doesn't look too fancy, but it was.
Here is the home of the family of Augustine Hermann, a native of Bohemia, who was commissioned by Lord Baltimore to map the region and later participated in the planning for the C&D Canal. Just shows, you gotta know politicians to be able to afford a fancy house.
At Worton Creek, we went ashore at the mouth of a little stream and Andi waded in to discover one of the celebrated Maryland Blue Crabs.
And so we bought some and ate our very first Blue Crab. Andi still prefers the Dungeness Crabs from Santa Cruz.