Sunday 26 May, Passage to USA day 10 / MD day 1: Up the Chesapeake Bay and arrive in Annapolis MD. Back to civilization!
At midnight we are continuing to weave our way along the channel up the Chesapeake Bay under genoa only. There is quite a lot of marine traffic and we keep out of their way on the east side of the channel. We did cut a corner at some point in between two markers, and immediately we saw two fishing floats. Not a good idea, so got back on the marked channel.
At 2am the thunderstorm is coming our way, still very active, looking like disco strobes. So time to switch on the engine and put all gadgets in the microwave. As it passes west to east above us, there is lightening everywhere, and we could swear that one struck about 1nm between us and the cruise liner in front of us. By 3am we are out of it, phew. The wind is gone and we continue to motor.
Dawn is a special moment of the days we are sailing, when everything seems to come back to life. And today was a particularly special one. The red sun comes up from behind pink clouds and the wind springs back to life. Sails are out in no time and we have a cracking shy reach in 13-15kts of wind. Perfect for drying the sails out! And to give us one last thrill.
I am off my shift and normally I would go to bed as I only slept 3 hours. But there are now only 35nm to go till Annapolis, and I don’t want to miss the last hours of this trip. And what a wonderful way of finishing our passage with this fast windward sail in flat waters.
We spend the early morning on the deck, enjoying the beautiful view of Cloudy Bay steaming along at 7kts, with both sails hauled tight in. It will be 4 months till she will sail us away again. And as usual in moments like this we fly the drone over. She is so beautiful … just what did we do to deserve her? Well, we both feel a bit sentimental today and sad that our passage comes to an end. What a grand finale for our exciting trip. It will certainly leave a nice memory to entice us back in October.
But the moment is marred when I climb back into the cockpit carrying the drone to safety, lose balance and bang my foot on the wheel. The result is more damage to the same foot and toe that I previously injured in Turks & Caicos (falling into the bilge). This time, my second toe is distinctly twisted and pointing towards the little toe. Looks like it’s broken, but not painful to touch. Tut-tut, I am now in competition with Glen for the most injuries this month. Normally I don’t even stand a chance to enter such a race, but this month I am winning by far!
After breakfast (and some ibuprofen) the sun soon gets very warm. And as the wind dies (to the extent that we are just bobbing around at 1-2kts) we receive unwelcome “landlubber” visitors – insects! Thousands of them, daddy long legs, house flies, horse flies, dragon flies… you name it, they’ve all come to say hello. How do you land people put up with this invasion of privacy? We discuss that we haven’t had an insect problem since leaving USA last year. Time to get some air moving!
So sails are furled away for the last time and we motor the last 8 miles to Annapolis. Being a holiday weekend the river is streaming with boaters. As are the VHF airwaves. Channel-16 is a non-stop chitter chatter. Quite annoying after a while. We are again amazed at how many boats are taking on water, have a fire, man overboard and sightings of red flares. We don’t think we heard a single VHF emergency situation all season in the Caribbean. In fact we often did a radio check to see if our VHF was even still operational! This morning we rather wish it wasn’t 🙂
By 1pm we are in Annapolis Harbour where we pick up a mooring buoy. Our passage from Turks & Caicos to the USA is now completed: 1,300 miles in 9 days and 15 hours (out of which we had one day and two nights at anchor in the Bahamas). Hm, 9 days without alcohol and without spending any money…we have some serious catching up to do!
And we have officially arrived into USA. Which brings us to the forever tedious task of checking in. We call Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office in Baltimore to announce our arrival, but same as yesterday they don’t seem to be too bothered. They are very busy with a cruise-liner and ask us to call again later in the afternoon. We do call again just before their office hours close, and again provide them with the information they need. The outcome is they will let us know if we need to do anything else and worst case scenario we need to go to Baltimore Airport to check in. But as far as we are concerned, we have checked in. Three times in fact.
There’s hardly any breeze and it is very hot and sticky. We are melting! Normally, we would jump in the water for a cool off. But here, surrounded by this brown-greenish water, do we really want to swim in it? Yes we do, it’s too hot. And without thinking twice, in we go. At 23degC feels VERY refreshing.
The rest of the afternoon is spent between relaxing in the cockpit while commenting on the highlights of our trip, and tidying the deck, packing the Parasailor away, etc. The usual routine after a long passage.
In the evening we dinghy ashore (shhhh we haven’t been cleared in yet!) where the town is absolutely buzzing on this Memorial holiday weekend. We spend some time listening to the wonderful Annapolis Swing Band – a 25 people brass band with singers. It all feels so civilized after all those Caribbean islands. We had the same feeling last year when we arrived into St. Augustine (Florida) after our passage from Antigua.
We wander around the town – or more like hobble the town in my case, as I can hardly walk. Even though everywhere is lively and buzzing (and have to catch up on alcohol intake), we only have an ice-cream then head back to Cloudy Bay where we retire to bed relatively early. Neither of us remember even hitting the pillow. We are asleep like exhausted babies, too tired to even cry!