Wednesday 29 May, MD day 4: Lovely upwind sail from Annapolis to Herring Bay, where we remove the head-sails ready for haul-out.
Today’s first objective is to contact CBP (again!) to get our clearance. This time we get through to the supervising officer, and he has no record of our prior calls or the info we provided. What a surprise…not. Plus, he says we have been misinformed (by his officers). They don’t come to Annapolis to inspect and complete the clearance, we have to go to Baltimore. Well, that’s not what we’ve been told for the last 3 days.
Long story short, we book a hire car for a week starting tomorrow, drop the mooring buoy, fuel up, and leave Annapolis for Herrington where we will have to anchor in Herring Bay, because the marina has no place for us. That’s fine with us, saves us money plus we don’t really need to be moored to get our jobs done.
And by 11am we are sailing into the Chesapeake. Wonderful to have wind in the sails again. Our last sail of the season.
We want to rinse the salt off the head-sails before we put them away for the summer, so with the deck flush pump we squirt our pure boat water along the bottom of the genoa as high as we can reach. Now let’s hope that this 7-9kts wind will stay with us long enough to dry the starboard tack side! Then we’ll tack and do the same on the other side. And while at it, we put out the cutter sail too, offering it the same treatment. Having both foresails up doesn’t really add any speed (it actually slows us down, as it interferes with the wind over the genoa), but saves us time drying them at the same time. Now we are close hauled with all sails out, doing 5kts in 9 kts of wind. Not bad I might say, as we steam passed a J105! Oh, we are racing…! So we sit back, enjoy the ride, and look out for the tankers around us.
We needn’t have worried about the wind dropping. On the contrary, it builds up, gusting 20kts occasionally. And what an amazing sail we are are having! We haven’t had such short tacks in a long time. Last time we sailed upwind like this was between Bristol and Newport in New England. We tack 7 times till we get to Herring Bay. Some of the tacking angles on the plotter look rather strange as the wind backs or lifts us, but we have some perfect 90deg tacks too.
At one point we are sailing at an angle of 27deg to the wind (unheard of!) as we point high to spill wind in the gusts, to reduce speed and risk of spray in the sails. With lots of wind in the sails and bright sun the sails are now perfectly dry and we need to keep them as such till we anchor. No splashing on them Mr.Chesapeke!
Coming into Herring Bay and seeing the depth quickly dropping from 5 to 3m we have a deja-vu of last time we came here (when we ran aground!). Now we just follow our previous track and anchor in 3m of water, with the view to a beautiful green shoreline and pretty houses with manicured lawns scattered among the trees.
There is a massive thunderstorm due at 5:30pm so we need to get our dry sails down and packed straight after we anchor. This is a massive job for just the two of us – especially the genoa which is made of very heavy stiff laminate material, plus barely fits on the deck. It’s not a job we ever look forward to. In between the gusts, we drop each of them in a pile on the deck. The cutter is relatively easy (a smaller and lighter sail) but the genoa is quite a task.
This time we do it a bit more methodically and after the usual massive physical effort we finally get it flaked and rolled into the smallest bundle we’ve ever done. With a halyard they are both lowered through the saloon hatch onto the saloon floor, where they will remain till October. The deck is then cleared of all lines and sheets. It looks so tidy without all that spaghetti everywhere!
Late-afternoon we start getting weather alerts on our phones: “extreme storm, 60kts gusts, coin size hale”. We raise en eyebrow in disbelief. But as caution Glen lets out more chain, and then dinghies around with the hand-held depth sounder to check the depths around us. We are currently sitting in just 2.8m, at low tide.
Meanwhile I take advantage of the last hours of internet hotspot to load all the blog posts and pictures, and I finish just on time before internet run out.
After 5.30pm we brace ourselves for the “extreme storm” which is forecast. No sign of it coming our way yet, but we do see very dark sky north of us over Baltimore.
And since it is still warm (or we feel very warm after the physical exertion fighting with the sails) we jump in the brown water for a swim. It is sooo refreshing. While down there, Glen notices some rust spots on the hull and rubbing strip. And Cloudy Bay is already building up to having a “brown mustache” on the bow. That’s it, cleaning is needed. So armed with polish and boat wash, he gives Cloudy Bay a once around in the dinghy, cleaning most of it off. Hopefully the on-coming rain will give it a nice rinse. It’s amazing how quickly this water leaves brown stains on the bow and the waterline. Horrible!
During the evening, in the distance we see lightening flashes, but here in Herring Bay it remains peaceful and quiet. Just out of the bay about 20 small yachts are racing. It must be a Wednesday evening race series. So nice to see.
The sun goes down behind more dark clouds on the horizon, as for us it looks like the storm completely missed us. We spend the rest of the evening relaxing in the cockpit in our incredibly peaceful surroundings, making lists of things we must get done before we leave.