Monday 1 October: Beautiful upwind sailing on Chesapeake River – Leaving Betterton MD and arriving Almshouse Creek MD.
1st of October! Is it really only 3 months left of this year? How quickly time flies…
It was an overall peaceful night, except from some snoring and lapping on the stern. We wake up to another bright warm day, and looks like the next few days will be also dry and warm. Brill, such forecast lifts spirits.
After breakfast, which we are a bit late for, we up-anchor and start motoring towards Annapolis. Tide will be against us this morning, so it will take longer than normal to sail the 35 miles to our destination.
Wind would be reasonably good for sailing, but it’s dead on our nose and sailing would mean very short tacking through all the channel markers, shallows and floating logs. As a result, we settle for motoring. And with 10kts of wind in front of us and 1 knt of current against us, we are not exactly motoring fast. Only 6 kts SOG. At this rate, it will take us 6 hours to get to our destination.
Motoring in this brown water is not really exciting, and we keep busy to chase the boredom away. Glen places some more orders on Amazon, Alex reads and Oana does some google search on Annapolis Boat Show and other bits. We also book a hire car for few days, to go see the best sites before Alex leaves.
By mid-day Glen is fed up with this non-sense and wants to sail. We won’t probably be going nowhere fast, or in the right direction. But sails are out in no time and we start a thrilling upwind sailing, tacking back and forth across the bay. Beautiful sunshine and blue sky add to the excitement, and turns out to be an eventful afternoon after all! One moment we are heeling with the gunwale in the water, next moment we have a wave over the bow, and the next Glen is up on the boom, with the GoPro on the boat hook to capture as many angles as possible. He is quite a sight up there, against the main sail!
We do keep an eye under the genoa to lookout for other boats and marker buoys, one eye on the depth and one on the chart for the nearby shallows. All good, and before we know it we are across the bay and need to tack. Not our sleekest, but several minutes later we are on starboard tack. And the thrill continues.
All good and joyful, till Alex reads in the news that Primera airline announces bankruptcy today. His flight back to UK is with Primera. Too bad. So now he’s looking up alternatives and books himself on another airline for the return. Isn’t internet amazing!
We sail under the double Annapolis suspension bridge, and the wind picks up even more once we are on the other side. We are on the deck taking yet more video footage, when a boat calls us on VHF. GipsyDays. They were anchored next to us in Betterton last night, and now following on Instagram. It is a small world when it comes to sailing passions… and not only!
The sea (river) looks cleaner here, a green color instead of brown. In the far distance to our starboard we see lots of boat masts, that’s Annapolis.
We tack several more times, and as wind speed goes up to 16-18 kts, our SOG is constantly above 8.5kts. Now that’s more like it! We love such sporty speed. What a great sail. Almost as good as the one from Bristol back to Newport RI.
When we round Thomas Point Shoal, we ease off the sails, then put the main sail away and carry on sailing into South River with genoa only. Which is very slow sail, but calm and gentle feels nice, to wind down after all the adrenaline. Glen inflates the big Avon fenders, in preparation for mooring as we will be against 2 piling posts. Then we take advantage of the flat and peaceful environment, and enjoy our lunch in the cockpit, with the view of the pretty shores glowing in the golden light.
We switch the engine on right before we have to turn left into Almshouse Creek, and we find yet more peace and more beautiful lawns and houses. Each house seems to have its own pontoon. Here is where we will moor Cloudy Bay for the next couple of weeks, through the kindness of Westbrook, the OCC port officer for the area.
When we identify the dock we need to moor on, we also see Westbrook, waiting for us. We turn the boat around and few minutes later we are nicely moored up. Then the usual: tidy up the decks, tie the sheets, rinse the salt off the winches and stainless steel fittings. All under the magical sunset light. And when dusk comes, we also calm down, sip our late afternoon tea and discuss the plan for tomorrow.
Later in the evening, Cindy (Westbrook’s wife) comes over to meet us, and she also brings several very useful maps for Washington. We are certainly overwhelmed with their kindness.
A quiet rest of the evening onboard, sealed inside the saloon to save ourselves from the ravaging mosquitoes. They have attacked us even in the shower! Then early to bed, ready for alarm and road trip tomorrow. We will be tourists again!
