We set off yesterday morning, with our friends in their Lagoon not far behind, headed for St. Michaels, a popular town on the Miles River. We were aware that the strong winds we could feel in the Magothy would be even stronger once we got out on the bay. For this reason decided to put a reef in our main as we raised it. Almost immediately after we got it up and started to sail, we had an emergency situation… a COB. That’s Cushion OverBoard in case you weren’t familiar with this important nautical term. Don’t worry… the cushion was saved and, along with his companion, was stowed down below so as not to fall overboard again.

By this time our friends had radioed us to let us know that the winds were supposed to be even higher down the bay. With threats of gusts to 30 knots, we decided to put 2 reefs in the main and are we ever happy that we did. Although we saw some people out there with full sails up, we had all the power that we wanted. The combination of the big winds and large waves made for some exciting, bordering on scary, sailing. Because we neglected to put our dodger back on before we set out, both Rebecca and I ended up a bit wet from waves crashing up over the bow and spraying us back in the cockpit. Oops.

Welcome to St. Michaels!

Rebecca has been working on a new choke hold. It works!

Skipjacks.

Today we’re looking forward to exploring the town a bit more and seeing the log canoe races that we have heard about.

Shopping for replacement parts was a bit challenging. West Marine? Forgetaboutit. As previously mentioned, if it’s not a pink pirate flag or expensive deck shoes, we’re unlikely to find it there. We visited another Annapolis-area chandlery and although they had a fairly large selection of sailboat hardware, the best I came away with was some stainless eye straps to use for an emergency repair if necessary. Our last hope here was recommended by our friend Kirk. Bacons should have been the first stop on our shopping excursion. They have on hand a huge selection of used boat hardware and it took all of about 30 seconds for one of the staff there to pull out an entire bag of the clips we needed. The price, for the whole bag, was only 9 dollars! Sweet. Now we have some spares.

Hopefully our friends north and south of here fair as well as we did!

All sails were removed. We wanted to swap out that headsail for our jib anyway.

All of our fenders and boards were deployed.

We rigged our anchor bridle to a post on the adjacent property to keep us away for the dock. It worked so well we had to ease it to get off the boat.
It was funny watching Rebecca trying to tie that line from a kayak!

Everything was removed from the boat (barbeque, life-sling, etc.)
and the dinghy was deflated and stored.

Storm preparations completed, we were off to explore Annapolis.

Our visit began at Chick & Ruth’s Delly

Downtown at “Ego Alley”

Good food, drinks and music with friends… a great way to end the evening. And no storm!

• Tuesday – Sunny with winds 5-10 knots
• Wednesday – Sunny with winds 5-10 knots
• Thursday – Sunny with winds 5-10 knots
• Friday – Sunny with winds 5-10 knots – OH, AND THERE MIGHT BE A HURRICANE TODAY!
• Saturday – Sunny with winds 5-10 knots

WTF?

Tied safely (for the time being) at Kirk and Donna’s house we are, like everyone else in the area, paying close attention to the weather. We do have some time to kill though and thus, with a borrowed car, we’ll be exploring Annapolis. We received an advanced tour last evening when Kirk and Donna drove us into the city. We visited their yacht club, Eastport Yacht Club, for drinks and dinner and were able to see the end of the Wednesday evening races. That racing looks pretty serious!

By the way, in case you are curious why other “slightly crazy” people might want to head out cruising, check out the interview featuring our host on Beth and Evan’s Blog. I like his answer!

Watching the races from the yacht club’s terrace.

Just in case yesterday’s pics weren’t contrast enough.

Our trip up the Sassafras River was nice but uneventful. We stopped briefly at the Georgetown Yacht Basin for fuel and to visit their ship’s store. This marina was recommended to us by our new friend Kirk who, when it comes time to haul his Lagoon 44, uses their facilities. Even though we were only there for a small amount of time, we received some good info from one of their young employees, Austin, on where to anchor. The anchorage we had in mind, the previously mentioned hurricane hole, was above a bascule bridge, where apparently Austin lives. Not only did he give us some local knowledge on the area, he also came by our boat in his launch after his shift was over, just to check on us and make sure that we didn’t need anything. Georgetown Yacht Basin… if you are listening, give this kid a raise!

Although we have plans to visit some areas a bit further north, we decided that given the unknown nature of the pending hurricane, to head south a bit to the Magothy River, where Kirk lives. While on route, we noticed that the wind instrument on top of our mast appears to be broken. No matter which direction we want to go, it appears that the wind is pointing directly at our bow! How is that possible?

Seriously though, although the wind instrument is functioning (we are just having some bad luck with wind directions), we did notice that two of the 3 connectors which hold our wheel’s self steering mechanism on have snapped (one fell off completely into my lap)! This is not good. Not wanting to have the third one break off, we have been hand steering the last two days. We’ve come to the realization that, although both Rebecca and I still enjoy hand steering while sailing, hand steering while motoring sucks!

The 6 or so hour trip to the Magothy River went smoothly enough. We were able to break up the monotony of motoring by dodging the bazillion or so crab pots that litter the Chesapeake’s shallows. We found a quiet anchorage just inside the river behind Dobbin’s Island and set the hook for the evening. This quiet place is one of the areas where the above-mentoned Wi-Fi struggles have taken place. Oh well… you can’t have everything I guess. By the way, for those looking to follow in our footsteps, we have heard that this anchorage is anything but quiet on the weekends, so be warned.

This morning, just after mentioning to Rebecca that we should spend some time cleaning our boat before we met up with Kirk and his wife Donna, we got a call on the cel phone saying, guess what… he was right outside our boat in his dinghy! Even though we had never met Kirk in person, he not only came bearing some gifts of cruising necessities (ice and BEER!), he also offered us free run of his house for water, electricity, internet and laundry when we move up the river. Can you say “Awesome?” You don’t get any cooler than that!

Oh, by the way, in addition to the ice and beer that he brought us, he also presented us a gift of two custom t-shirts with his boat’s name on it, Ainulindale! Now we need to get some shirts made!!!

Our baby ZTC rafted up to Kirk and Donna’s Lagoon.

By the way, I’d just like to mention that yesterday’s post has to be in the running for the highest number of comments that we have received on a post to date, but only one of them mentioned my ukulele playing and that comment was “cute!” I guess this falls into the category of “if you can’t find something good to say…”

LOL

Like just about everything else sailing and cruising related, dealing with storms like this is way new for us. Fortunately we have at least half a dozen people looking out for our best interests. We have received numerous emails and phone calls from people, both in this area and abroad, offering us places to stay and intel on where to go and what to do.

Curious to see what a “hurricane hole” looks like (a place where one could safely weather a storm), we followed the Sassafras River almost to its end where Skipper Bob recommends anchoring in what he refers to as a hurricane hole. Well, we’re here now and I’m not entirely sure what would make this place so special. Perhaps our blog readers who are more educated on this subject could tell us what would make a secure and safe hiding place?

I guess it was a bit premature to be singing the following song, eh?

Yesterday’s trip didn’t go exactly as we had hoped it would though. To start, we were expecting some decent winds from the west which would have been excellent for sailing. With that in mind, we swapped our small self-tacking jib for our 150% Genoa, anticipating that it would give us some extra power when sailing. I’m sure the sailors can guess where the winds were though… right on the nose, with some nice big waves to add to the discomfort.

Challenge 1: Get under 55′ bridge. Not a lot of room to spare!

Another early start. We were off before sunrise. That is the Delaware Bay up ahead at the end of this canal.

Not to be dismayed, we decided to motor sail anyway, thinking that it would at least help to ease the boat’s pounding into the waves. This lasted an hour or so until I looked up and saw that the flap which holds our top batten into our main sail was open. The other day we saw this flap open and the batten partly out of the sail! We didn’t want that to happen again so we quickly dropped the sail to repair it. Ummm… the batten was gone! GONE! How the hell did we miss seeing the batten go flying out of the sail? Oh well, by this time the sails weren’t adding very much to the equation anyway so motoring the rest of the way it would be.

Happily, by this time, the wind and waves had dropped and we had started to reap the benefits of the current. We were making such good time that we decided to bypass our planned anchorage and head right through the C&D Canal to Chesapeake City. Sunday afternoons are really smoking here in Chesapeake City. We are on a free dock right beside the Chesapeake Inn which had a live band seemingly competing with the live music right beside us. Just our kind of place!

Salem Nuclear Power Plant.

Three things about this photo: 1. There are a lot of these crab pots in the bay. 2. This one is well marked with a good orange float. Some of them are marked with hard-to-see black floats! 3. Look at the current flowing past it. Fortunately, by plan, not by luck, we were going with the current.

We made it to Chesapeake City and grabbed the only spot
available (at that time) on the town’s free dock.

Immediately after arriving we set to work to make a replacement batten for the one we lost.

Chores done so it’s time to go exploring (the nearby pub).

We were docked right beside some good live music and an old car show.

This coast guard tug pushed a barge (not shown very well in the pic) right up beside us into the very busy bay and “anchored” it by dropping large vertical shafts from the barge down into the water. We’ve never seen that before!

One other super cool thing is that we have received multiple emails from “internet friends” and blog readers in this area, not only offering to meet up with us but also offering us a free place to dock, use of their cars and hot showers in their homes. Completely awesome!

Woo hoo! We made it.

We enjoyed the facilities at Utsch’s Marina. Let me tell you, Hub at Collins Bay has some serious competition for the best bathrooms and showers!

Rebecca running back to the boat for the key, which we forgot. This was the second trip back to the boat from the laundry facility. Yes, I made the first trip back!

Glamourous!

With that off my chest, we still had a great day today. First, we were “interrupted” in the middle of our chores by internet friend and fellow PDQ 32 owner Drew Frye. He previously told me that he would be in the Cape May area but we never expected him to just show up at the marina. I even forgot to ask him how he knew we were there (at Utsch’s). I was very happy to chat with Drew as he has a lot more knowledge of the whole boating thing than I do. He gave me some cool tips that I’m sure will help us in the future. Drew’s daughter Jessica, who is frequently mentioned in his blog and his cruising guide, also dropped by to visit which was very cool. Thanks very much guys! We were very happy to finally meet you in person.

After leaving the marina, Rebecca and I set off across the small bay to anchor in what we knew would be shallow water. We are still coming to grips with the whole tide thing but we knew that once low tide came around, it would be REALLY shallow. How does 0.1 feet under the keel sound? I actually got in the water to touch bottom to verify the depth. Yes, the depth gauge was about right! Good thing it’s soft mud!

Good bye marina…

Hello (free) anchorage!

We were anchored just in front of the Coast Guard station, just in case.

It doesn’t get much more shallow, unless you are aground! FYI, our boat draws 3 feet and the depth gauge is offset for that same amount so when it reads zero, we are aground.

In addition to meeting Drew, we were also visited by another gentleman, Angus, who told us that he is one of our blog readers also. Too cool! Angus had a boat on a mooring nearby and also owns a condo in the area. He gave us the scoop on where to tie up our dinghy which was very helpful because of course, we just had to do our 5 mile hike to nowhere! Thanks for coming by to visit, Angus. It was a real pleasure to meet you!

Out for a tour in our dinghy.

Yes, the cormorants are here too!

The nice yacht club which Angus suggested we tie our dinghy up at.
They didn’t seem to mind (no one noticed actually).

Today’s journey will involve going from the bottom to the top of the Delaware Bay. We’re leaving here at 6:00 AM to make it through the canal and be ready on the other side to catch the flood tide. So many things to consider!

After two long days of (motor) sailing, we made it Cape May. Although we’re definitely not trying to rush our trip south, we were trying to get this run completed as quickly as possible. For this reason, we chose to run our engines even though the winds were favorable. Motor sailing with both the main and jib up allowed us to keep an average speed of about 8 knots. When the winds picked up to the point where we would be doing over 9 knots, we would throttle down or turn them off all together. When the winds died, which they did for a portion of each day’s traveling, we would run both engines (Typically while traveling we only run one of our two engines to conserve fuel, etc. We switch the engines every hour to balance the load).

From Barneget Bay we “could” have stopped at Atlantic City but even though we had an anchorage picked out in case the weather forced us there, we opted to bypass the casinos and head right to Cape May. Last night was spent at Utsch’s Marina and we took full advantage of their services (electricity, water, showers, laundry, nearby* shopping). Today we’re off to find some place to anchor.

This is as close as we came to Atlantic City. Sorry Mr. Trump.

*Nearby is relative. The store seemed much closer when we weren’t carrying 200 lbs. of groceries!