High Seas Adventure

OK, a bit of an overstatement. The missus and I just got back from 4 delightful, unchallenging days motor-sailing on the Chesapeake. Joe: Here is evidence that I was on a boat and it was under my control. As you can also see below, when the old lady is at the helm, the Wind God blows for us. We chartered a well-equipped "Beneslow" 34 from Annapolis Bay Charters,a very good outfit managed by a funny English American guy (we are a great breed). It had an AC and a microwave!!!!!! but no bloody GPS, not that you really need one on Chesapeake. Thankfully she motored well as we had bugger-all wind. That said given the weather we had the week before we were glad that it didn't rain. In fact, the weather was beautiful all 4 days. The Bay was empty for most of the time. Other than commercial and recreational fisherman trailing lines, there was hardly a boat in sight. The fishermen were a pain in the neck. They have rights and they know it. We snagged one recreational fishermen's lines and he yelled after us to give him 10 bucks. I asked him where he wanted me to leave it as we were sailing in the opposite direction. On Sunday, we sailed and motored from Annapolis south down the Bay, hung a louie up the mighty Choptank River to Oxford. Zephyr has blogged about this place and I can see why. It's a wonderful place for sailors (On the right is a shout-out for Zephyr, this is the Tred Avon Yacht Club. A damn fine looking place it is too). It's historic (I actually mean older than 1952) and a lovely place to stroll around. Lots of Victorian and Colonial homes, blabla. The best bit is the Ted Avon River. This is right of "House and Garden". One spectacular house after another along its banks, including some new monster palaces with their own dock along a winding river with opreys nesting on the daymarkers. Day two, there was no wind. Well no wind of course until we started to dock and then it blew 15 kts for an hour. We motored to Cambridge, further up the Choptank. I would give this a big miss. It's a weird place. It has a big, new and mostly empty marina that is a long way from the main part of the Bay. Secondly the town is a bit of a dump. It has the feeling of a beautiful Victorian town that become completely run down BUT has a big new marina and a lot of investment is going into the place. Who knows, it may turn around. On Tuesday, we motored back up the Choptank, out into the Bay and sailed across to Deale on the West side of the bay. Deale is basically a collection of big marinas, mostly full of sailboats not motorboats.  You really have to pay attention to the charts in Chesapeake Bay. Deale is at the north end the large'ish Herring Bay. A shallow-draft vessel can just head straight in at the North end but anything with a keel has to follow the markers for a mile from the south end of the Bay and then follow a tight channel into Deale. There is a long shallow bar in the front of the bay. You have to be bloody careful. We weren't in the dead middle of the channel and we grounded briefly. This was the closest thing to high drama we had all 4 days. On Wednesday, we had an uneventful motor-sail back to Annapolis.