…really wasn’t all that exciting.
We decided on anchoring after the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal that we wanted to “get up early” and get going, since it was still a ways to Annapolis – somewhat over 50 (nautical) miles. Which is a decent day’s trip when you are only covering seven or eight of them an hour.
Some time which is often referred to as “Oh-dark-thirty”, Kathy shook me awoke and said “We need to get going.” I grunted back at her that it was still, technically, not light outside which was in fact the reason we didn’t press on the night before. So we went back to sleep after I looked out the window and noted 1) the absence of light and 2) the glassy water and the total absence of wind.
When we awoke a few hours later we just seemed to…forget…the whole “get going early thing” and spent a relaxing morning having breakfast and puttering about. When we finally hauled anchor, it was around 10:00 in the morning and we saw the friends that departed Montauk, NY the same time we left Block Island pulling into our anchorage. We’ve got about 10 feet of waterline on them, which equates to a fair amount of speed so they had a longer trip down. They were coming in to sleep as we were leaving. In between the time we woke up and the time we actually left the wind went from none to a firm 15 or so knots directly from the place we wanted to go.
The primary reason we were pressing for Annapolis was to join the Seven Seas Cruising Association “Gam”; a meetup of cruisers scheduled for September 28-30 just South of Annapolis on the Rhode River. We decided we would head straight for the Rhode River on Tuesday since we didn’t have anywhere else to be, and the anchorage looked like it might be shallow and perhaps crowded with other cruisers arriving for the Gam.
After motoring into the wind and chop for a while we rapidly got tired of running the engine. Evenstar is a sailboat and we enjoy sailing her. Motoring is loud, dull and expensive – we burn two to two-and-a-half gallons of diesel per hour at “cruising speed” which equates to about $10.00 for every hour we motor. Not a lot pulling into a harbor, but a full day or two of motoring adds up and we were still a little chafed at having to run the engine twice as many hours the day before on the Delaware than we had run it traveling the 500 miles or so from Maine. So we sailed.
The sailing was actually nice, it was blowing and we reefed to keep the boat flat but we were making faster progress through the water under sail than we were pounding into the waves under power. Since we were tacking and zigging and zagging all over the bay though our actual speed made towards Annapolis was a fair bit less.
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| Some of where we were zig-zagging |
The upper part of the Chesapeake is fairly narrow with a shipping channel running up it. This channel is infested with tugs and barges which small boats do well to avoid. It is clear of crab pots, however. Outside the channel there are crab pots, shoals, lights, some Federal prohibited zones (like the Aberdeen Proving Grounds) and a few other similar obstacles. These didn’t bother us much though, and we zigged and zagged around them while trying to time our crossing of the channel so we would neither interfere with or get run down by the numerous barges.
As happy as we were sailing will started to look at our watches and realize a few things. First, we wanted to stop and take on water before arriving on the Rhode River, so we started the week with full tanks. The water is a bit…chunky…around here for using the water maker. Second and most important, if we stopped for water we would NOT have time to make the small, narrow passage into the Rhode River while it was still light out. Not a wise thing to do.
Down came the sails, on came the engine and the long motoring upwind faces. As it happened we decided to take on fuel and pump out the heads in addition to taking on water while we were pulled up at a marina in Eastport. By the time we finished we knew even with the extra motoring we weren’t making the Rhode that night. We didn’t even manage to find a comfy spot to anchor in Annapolis harbor for the night, we ended up moving to the nearby Whitehall Bay for the night.
Wednesday morning was clear, with the wind shifted enough so we could make the sail to the Rhode River with easy. With a quick breakfast we weighed the anchor and finally sailed to the Rhodeto wait for the Gam.
