Monday 15 October: Leaving Edgewater, motoring to Herrington Harbor North in Tracy’s Landing MD.
Lapping on the stern last night. For sure we didn’t miss that sound. And we haven’t had any of it during our entire stay here in Edgewater, on Almshouse Creek. Till today. Maybe the stern lapping gods knew we are leaving today.
It’s raining again this morning. And looking at the weather forecast, it’s going to be the last warm day (22C) for a while. Busy morning indoors, with calls and emails, to confirm the last details, check timing for tides, tidy up, etc. When the sun pops briefly from behind the clouds, we attempt to fly the drone. Unsuccessfully though, due to an airport nearby we are not allowed to take off. First time we got this warning on the drone.
At mid-day it’s time to say our goodbyes to our hosts, Westbrook (the OCC Port Officer here) and Cindy (his wife). They have been very kind and helpful to us, and generously allowed us to moor up along their dock. Cloudy Bay spent 14 peaceful days here, well protected and looked after.
So it’s motoring out of the South River, towards Herrington Harbor. 18nm, it will take approximately 3 hours. The harbor entrance is quite shallow, and we timed ourselves to get there at rising tide.
Few minutes into our journey, and Glen gets himself busy on the deck, cutting new lines for the inflatable fenders, ready for next time we need to use them! Up till this summer in USA, we have only used this big fenders once, in Santorini, to keep Cloudy Bay at safe distance from a very rusty barge. But this summer we have inflated these fenders quite a few times, so now they will be folded back into storage with the proper length of lines!
Slightly boring journey, with nothing much to do other than watching out for fishing floats, keep an eye on depth, and take cover when the rain started. It is quite a bit of wind, 10-15 kts right on our nose, and Cloudy Bay is bouncing on a choppy Chesapeake River, with waves splashing on her bow. The cockpit feels so exposed without the bimini up. Overall, Cloudy Bay looks “naked”, without any sails or canvas.
And nearly 3 hours later, we round the red marker buoy to enter Herring Bay. Not exactly the rising tide we anticipated, only 0.4m deeper than chart measurements. We slowly approach the channel entrance, as we have been warned the shallowest bit is right here at the entrance, between the rock piers, and that we might have to push through mud to get through.
Sure enough, we see depth quickly going down from 4m to 2.8m. Then 2.5m. And then we stop. We are aground in the middle of the channel, exactly at the mentioned spot. A combination of few wiggles with the bow thruster and the 180HP in reverse gear get us out of the mud. Ooph, that was lucky! Then take two, slightly more to the middle of the channel. And few seconds later, we run aground again. Hm, maybe we should wait out here for a couple of hours, till high tide. Then we should have more water. Or maybe we should just have another go, this time very close to the green marker buoy. Veeery sloooowly. We see 2.5m alternating with 2.6m, every second. But looks like we are through this time. And depth gets slightly better, 2.7m and then 3.0m. Phew, we made it! Thank goodness it was light wind. The channel is only a boat length wide, so turning around here would be impossible.
As we were navigating through the channel, we see a deer swimming across the channel on a collision course with us! That’s a first for us. We give it right of way, of course, and it passes just in front of us. It’s managing quite some speed as it swims hard, head just above the water.
Few minutes later we spot pontoon M. That’s where we are supposed to moor up, right at the end of it. The yard confirmed us this spot and that it is deep enough here. But what a surprise, a boat is moored right there. And in front of it, another boat. Hm, any closer in, and it will be very shallow again. We go in anyway, and since it’s almost 3m we decide to moor up. Fingers crossed and hope for the best! We are right next to the slip where Cloudy Bay will be hauled out tomorrow morning.
After the rain stops, we have our late lunch in the cockpit. And soon after, Pete Goss stops by. His boat will also be hauled out tomorrow.
We go ashore for a walk on the grounds, and we are impressed with how impeccably clean this yard and marina area is. And it’s enormous! Nicely made foot paths, lawns, wild life, great facilities, and some amazingly comfy swing chairs. I suspect I’m going to have my coffee and reading in one of these seats, while Glen does the hard work in the next couple of weeks!
When it gets dark and mosquitoes start attacking, we return to Cloudy Bay for a bit of pottering. But we soon change our mind…there will be pleeenty of time for pottering in the next weeks, so let’s go out to the nearby restaurant. A couple whom we bumped into earlier mentioned it’s popular with bikers, and such bar is still to tick on our list. When we get there, is rather quiet, only few couples having their dinner. I guess we will have to visit again on Saturday night!
With my cocktail to go, we return to Cloudy Bay. And while I do some admin on the laptop, Glen, armed with head torch, is on deck cleaning the bow locker. It’s great to be moored up in a marina, with shore power and water hose! Anchor chain gets a good rinse off, the locker gets some bleach to remove the mud stains. And knowing Glen, he could carry on forever with that water hose!
After the locker is cleaned, he removes the hydraulic hoses to the genoa and cutter Furlex so that he can grease the lower bearings tomorrow. While doing so, finds quite a lot of corrosion on the hydraulic snap-fittings which need to be cleaned off with WD40. These fittings get the full brunt of salt spray up here on the foredeck. They will have to be well greased when we reattach them.
So much for the planned early night, we retire to bed passed midnight. Busy and exciting day tomorrow!
