patuxent river

before anything else -  as much as we've been enjoying cruising the upper Bay, tom and i both agreed that we really miss the open expanse of the southern Bay.  the upper Bay is narrower, more populated, and towns are closer to each other so you don't have to cruise long hours to get to the next place, which makes it great for weekend warriors with fast boats.  we are a slow boat at a 6-knot turtle speed so passage can be rather long and drawn out.   there is plenty to see and do in the upper Bay but then there are crowds and tourists and people who think they are driving cars, not boats, don't look back at what their wake is doing to everyone else, don't know how to anchor and have no sense of personal space.  we are always looking over our shoulders, watching our backs, etc.  it can be a bit stressful sometimes and neither of us enjoy the rocking and rolling with the wakes even though TADHANA, wide as she is, takes them rather well.  tom said:  "i need a 'little bay' day!"


battle creek.

which leads me to the patuxent.  solomons woke up kind of early on a sunday because it was screwpile regatta weekend.  the race committee boats don't seem to care that some people are still asleep!  and hello?  there is a 'no wake' sign in this creek!  never mind that it is apparently okay to get that close to anchored boats and try to give their owners a coronary.  i guess the bottom line is: too many people sardined in a little place.  i, personally, have always had a problem with that, having grown up the spoiled one child of two in a large, mostly silent house.  in any case, we pulled up the anchor, waved goodbye to mike and ann as we passed them and headed out into the patuxent river.  there weren't too many boats out so it was a pleasant cruise up to battle creek.  unfortunately, the popular anchorage there which has a nice white sandy beach was already populated.  granted, they are day people and will leave eventually but we opted for the next cove.  fortunately, we had the rest of the day to explore in the dinghy since neither of us had ever been that far up the patuxent river before.  it really is quite lovely with its high bluffs, and for the first time in a very long time, the night was pitch black!  i guess we'd been in the big bad city too long  :) 

not much of a wake

battle creek

cormorants

osprey nest

great blue

battle creek

exhausted consuelo

another osprey nest

corn fields

almost ready to eat

one of the patuxent's many beaches

 

let's check out this nest

the next morning, we pulled up the anchor and headed upriver to the route 231 bridge.  there is a department of natural resources office at hallowing point and our plan was to re-register TADHANA in maryland.  other than the hook not catching the first time, the whole process was pretty painless.  the tide was so high we probably could have taken the boat all the way up to the boat ramp!  in any case, we anchored, dropped the dinghy, motored over to the office, paid our $10 and got our stickers and that was that!  amazing.....  no lines, no hassle.

from there, we decided not to continue upriver even though there was plenty of depth. we pulled up the anchor, turned around and headed back towards the Bay.  on the way down, we passed an oyster farm that we had visited a couple years prior (by car) and decided to slow down and check it out and take some photos.  we must have been an unusual sight because two guys working at the farm got on a pontoon boat and came over to say hello.  in the end, we wound up with a box of about four dozen fresh oysters that they just GAVE us for free!  it certainly was a lucky stop - all washed and scrubbed and ready for market, too.  needless to say, we demolished the lot that night :)

with still no real clue where we were going to spend the night, we motored on and entered st. leonard creek which is just absolutely gorgeous.  again, high bluffs, stately homes.....  it really is a beautiful creek.  and then there is vera's white sands, which, unfortunately, seems to be a shadow of its former self now that vera is gone.  however, no anchorage appealed to us so we left.

oyster farm

all scrubbed and clean

st. leonard creek

vera's white sands

more vera's

vera's exotic-looking house

bon appétit!

mill creek.

we ended up in mill creek, just above the route 4 bridge.  what a fabulous anchorage!  well, except for the occasional jet noise as there is a navy facility nearby.  it turns out that we were anchored right next to the myrtle point county park so beach access was not a problem and there were walking trails in the woods, etc.  we did a lot of dinghying around - there were just so many prongs and nooks and crannies to explore.  on a ride up cuckhold creek, we stopped at the forrest landing ramp as consuelo wanted to stretch her legs.  two ladies were pulling their kayaks out.  one got off with no problem on the floating dock.  the other lady was not doing so well so she kayaked over to the ramp instead and her friend walked over to help her out of her kayak.  i could see the whole situation turning into a disaster so i yelled over, "hang on a minute and i'll come and help!"  they did not wait and the woman fell out of the kayak and into the creek.  oh well....   i did tell them to wait, didn't i?  tom and i helped them put their kayaks on top of their cars. i'm sorry, but kayaking has never really been my thing.  give me a dinghy with an outboard any time.  kayaking, canoeing, paddleboarding (which i REALLY do not get at all!) - it just seems like way too much work for a hot day, in my opinion.   in any case, getting on and off - it's really all about technique.  i guess that one lady needed more practice :)  oh, and her hat fell off when she went into the water.  she just put it back on her head and well, you can imagine....  all i can say is that she was not wet from the waist up until she put on that hat.  

one of the things that i failed to mention was the fact that when we were at havre de grace, we picked up some spiders from the dock.  i had been getting rid of them as i saw them but it seems that we were more infested than we originally thought!  well, at least the webs were snaring some of the other bugs but it was a constant cleaning up of dead bodies that we had to do - most annoying!  i'm thankful, though, that they are all on the OUTSIDE and not inside the boat.  if they were in here, i would totally lose it and go on some kind of cleaning rampage (as if that isn't what i do every single day anyway - between tom and consuelo, it is a never-ending chore).  in any case, we sat in mill creek an extra day, did some work, did some dinghy exploring and just had a relaxing time.  the patuxent river is well worth the exploration. there aren't as many boats creating wakes - i guess most people stop at solomons island and then move on from there and don't bother with the river.

sunset at mill creek

tadhana from myrtle point county park

consuelo enjoying a swim

little wicomico river.

the next day, we headed for solomons to fuel up and fill the water tanks and while there, consuelo got a much-needed bath.  she was starting to get a little ripe.  i couldn't, in all conscience, stop her from going swimming, she was so hot, and we didn't have enough water to rinse her off plus i had planned on the bath anyway.  from there, we went out into the chesapeake and headed south, crossing the potomac, which wasn't too bad although i think we got out of there just in time as the wind was slowly picking up.  we negotiated the narrow, shallow channel into the little wicomico river and wound up back at tommy and marie armstrong's place.  the last time we visited, we had anchored and then dinghied to the neighbor's dock.  this time, their new dock was in place - VERY nice!  we stayed a couple of nights and had a GREAT time.  conversation is always very fast-paced and witty with this intelligent, articulate couple whom we first met at an MTOA meeting and it was apparent from the start that we were "simpatico!"  about the only one who did not have a"swell" time was consuelo.  the armstrongs have a rambunctious 1-year-old brittany spaniel who just wanted to play.  consuelo, at nearly 14 years of age, has neither the time nor the patience for puppies and suzie was being dense and relentless.  tom helped tommy put caps on the pilings on the new dock and together, they solved the problems of the world. 

dixieland and tadhana together at the armstrong's new dock

sunset on the little wicomico

sunset on the little wicomico

little bay. 

we finally got to little bay for tom's "i need a little bay day" and as always, little bay did not fail to meet expectations.  surprisingly, for a friday night, we were only two boats anchored there.  unfortunately, that night, we got swarmed by midges again!  at least they don't bite but geez....  what's with the bugs???

ahhhhh....  little bay :)

sea beagle

kayak beach

sunset at little bay

deltaville.

we left little bay early to get to deltaville in time to catch the post office before closing time on a saturday.  we had been gone six weeks and needless to say, there was a TON of mail.  i had a TON of laundry to do and TADHANA seriously needed a bath after all that salt spray, the midge swarm and spider infestation, etc. etc.  what did i say in an earlier blog about marinas?  it is all about getting cleaned up!  this time, my ducks did not wait three to four days before making an appearance.  i was really glad to see my little brown hen.  the drake was molting - he looked terrible.  oh, and good to see all our other friends and neighbors, too.  but too many things to do and not enough time before we leave again for cape charles.  always on the move now.  the way it's going, before we know it, we are going to stop thinking of deltaville as "home." 

some things just don't change

st. michaels

mill creek.

from rock hall, we headed back to john and heidi's in annapolis for the next couple of days to hide out from the predicted bad weather: heat and thunderstorms -  and, boy, did we get some serious lightning, thunder and rain!  it is nice to be in a protected spot to get out of the weather but it is an added bonus when you get to spend time with good friends while you're doing the same.  not to mention that just before we left, we even got to see heidi's mom, sally, whom we hadn't seen in YEARS!  it was hard to leave but we did not want to overstay so that we can come back later :)  and it looks like tom is working the annapolis sailboat show this october (FINALLY confirmed) so, yes, we will be back!  i might add that consuelo got to spend a lot of time on land and very much enjoyed her grass fix where she rolls on the grass down the hill, head first.  don't ask...

st. michaels.

every cruiser loves st. michaels.  plenty to see and do, and easy access to all of it by dinghy if you are anchored, which we were.  the marinas at st. mike's are too expensive for our taste.  besides, we like to anchor.  the best thing was that we got there on a wednesday, the middle of the week, so it wasn't the madhouse that st. michaels usually is during the weekend.  we got a really nice spot in the anchorage, too.  some people sit and people watch.  tom and i boat watch and the chesapeake bay maritime museum at st. michaels has a fabulous fleet of workboats, including the WINNIE ESTELLE, a restored chesapeake buyboat with a wonderful story.  google winnie estelle - you won't be disappointed!  it was GREAT to see her running in and out of the harbor - purposeful, as all workboats should be.  as i've said, the museum has a collection of boats that they put to work but there are other boats to watch as well  - visitors, like us, who come by boat.  some are absolutely gorgeous like the re-done fishing trawler from the west coast in the photo below and some are just absolutely hideous!  there is no accounting for taste.  well, you know, tom and i are entitled to our own kind of entertainment and ours doesn't cost a dime :)

speaking of entertainment.....  we decided to stay until saturday and watch the weekend horde come in.  tom has discovered that the anchoring 101 FAIL syndrome runs rampant in these parts.  whoever is teaching these people the 3:1 scope rule and backing down on the anchor as an afterthought (maybe/maybe not) needs to be fired!  luckily, we were in a good spot to mostly watch and not be involved (remember the queenstown incident with the two-sailboat-raftup that swept by us in the middle of the night?).

the other thing about st. michaels is ice cream.  there are at least three ice cream places.  we favor jojo's.  the weather was lovely and the whole visit was just totally enjoyable.  we had let our museum membership expire since we had been living in VA so we never even got to go in to the museum but that's ok - we have been many times before.  we did dinghy around their docks though to look at their on-the-water collection.

to get to the public dinghy dock, one has to pass the crab claw restaurant.  you always got a whiff of Old Bay seasoning and fried something - mmmm....  :)  

bloody point light at eastern bay

selena II

sunset at the CBMM

CBMM's fleet

midnight lace

h.m. krentz and her push boat

THE winnie estelle

what a beauty, although i would do something about the biminis! 

solomons island. 

we left st. michaels about 10:00 a.m. and i think we met the saturday morning horde instead of the friday horde we were expecting!  rather than taking eastern bay to the chesapeake, we turned at the poplar island narrows and it shaved off some time for us.  then we caught the current running south on the Bay and rode it straight to solomons island.  this weekend is the screwpile regatta or something and we thought the place was going to be crowded, but friends of ours, mike and ann, were docked at solomons and said that the anchorage wasn't crowded.  we were originally just going to bypass solomons and head up the patuxent river but ann called tom and so that took care of that.  it's always good to see cruising friends - you never know when you'll see them again.  in any case, Facebook is very helpful in keeping track of people.  our cruising friends usually post where they are. 

and i still can't figure out how to put these photos where i want them to be!  grrrrr......

sharps island light, choptank river

drum point light replica, solomons

rock hall

when we got to the rock hall area, we circled around a bit looking for a good PFA for consuelo.  swan creek, unfortunately, was thin in that department.  well, we anchored anyway and then dropped the dinghy  and went into haven harbour marina.  tom has a long history with that place so he went into the marine store looking for the owner and wound up talking to the owner's grandson.  to make a long story short, we were given a free slip - yay!  well, that certainly was cool, and, yup, you guessed it....  MORE CLEANING.  at least all the dead insect bodies were off the boat.   you had to make sure that every little nook and cranny was hosed down - i swear, the corpses were everywhere!.  they gave us the floating dock, too - nice!   easy to get consuelo on and off.  the only thing is that we were given a slip at the head of the dock.  everyone has to pass through there to get to shore and haven harbour is a party place.  we arrived on thursday, and on friday, the pennsylvania navy arrived - a lot of the boats that have slips in rock hall have owners who live in pennsylvania.  summer weekend - what do you expect?  the place was packed!   

tom saw a lot of his friends from when he lived in rock hall a million years ago when haven harbour was just a concept.   we went biking and did a little grocery shopping and marina and boatyard visiting.  someone lent us a car and we went to west marine and then had lunch with an old friend of tom's.  i tried to work.  ten million people walked by the boat - i tell you, we have never seen more activity in a marina than we have here in haven harbour!  on friday night, one of the boats at the head of the dock had christmas lights strung all over it.  when i took consuelo out for the last time that evening, the boat was filled with people and there were three guys with guitars and everyone was singing "wild, wild horses.....  couldn't drag me away......"  hahaha....  like i said, a party place.  we also had dinner with the marina owner and some members of his family.  then we were invited to the marina's crab feast the next day so we were forced to stay one more day.  again, all these marina nights with unlimited water, A/C and wifi - we were getting pretty spoiled.  saturday, we took the loaner car and drove out to another marina - the sailing emporium - and then to the eastern neck island national wildlife refuge.  so lovely to see the marshes again but it is summer and it was hot and one had to be careful - ticks and all.  i didn't want us and consuelo tramping around out there too much.  we would have taken the dinghy but we forgot to drop it before the boat next to us arrived and docked.  with it there, there simply wasn't any room to get the dinghy through so we were glad for the loaner car.  rock hall really is a happening place.   we topped our stay with the marina's crab feast.  they had a live band (which is still going as i write this but tom and i are party poopers so we are back on the boat and he is already asleep!)  these crabs were huge and heavy and delicious. we sat with the marina owner's son and his wife and they didn't have any so the table's crabs were all ours.  tom picked and picked long after i had given up and we went home with two ziplock bags of crab meat which are currently in the freezer.

anyway, the events of the whole weekend were rather unexpected but that's the cruising life for you.  you sort of have a plan and then things happen and you just kind of go with the flow.  tom was very happy to see old friends.  i was very happy to have a clean boat and wifi :) 

this was also the weekend of the super moon and the moonrise view from my desk was absolutely spectacular!

super moon

the marshes of eastern neck island

heading out to the overlook

havre de grace.

we only stayed in georgetown one night because hot weather and thunderstorms were coming and we figured that it would be nice to be plugged in with A/C running.  i forgot to mention that there have been a lot of fireflies this year.  so fun to see them up in the trees - like christmas lights! 

in any case, we motored up to the susquehanna river to havre de grace.  tom and i had never been so we were kind of looking forward to that.  the entrances to tidewater marina's basins are very narrow  to help protect against all the river wake.  it was kind of disconcerting but slow and steady we went - there was plenty of room - but disconcerting nevertheless! 

we ended up staying three nights.  the thing about marinas is cleaning - wash boat, wash dog, change sheets, do gobs of laundry...  you are plugged in and have unlimited water running out of the spigot so you (well, i do anyway) tend to want to wash everything that can be washed.  and since you're plugged in and don't have to be stingy with power, you tend to break out all your appliances that you were avoiding using so as not to run the batteries down. and then you wind up cleaning even more stuff!  when we finally got out of the marina with the loaner car, it was to do grocery shopping!  this was getting pretty pathetic, but we did get around to seeing some of havre de grace.  there is a nice promenade along the river and a couple of museums and a lighthouse.  it was a hot day and we saw an ice cream parlor along the way so we had to stop there.  a really nasty squall blew in on our second night there and made the boat all dirty again after tom had hosed everything down, and then we got another thunderstorm the next evening.  it was nice to be tied up in safety for those.  in any case, we were CLEAN when we left havre de grace and then.....  somehow, as we were headed downriver in a following wind, we must have passed a swarm of somethings because before we knew it, the boat was covered with bugs!  UGH!!!  not just one kind of bug either.  some were midges.  some were tiny black things, i have no idea what they were and one at a time, you could barely see them, but a million at a time?  there were some little green bugs, too.  and it seems that we picked up a few spiders while we were at havre de grace because they had spun webs which initially we didn't see but as they started netting little bugs, they definitely became more visible.  in any case, neither of us dared to open any doors and we just let it be until we reached the junction of the susquehanna and the chesapeake where there was more open water.  tom turned the boat into the wind, hoping to shake some of them off - that didn't do much good.  i went out with a wet towel and proceeded on with a massive insect genocide rampage.  I HATE BUGS!   after going through the whole boat including the flying bridge, i went back inside and started going after the ones that managed to come in through the closed doors.  YUCK!  so that was our little souvenir from havre de grace.  i think what pissed me off the most was that the boat was clean and then it was no longer - just like that!  in any case, onwards to rock hall.

i didn't take too many pics at havre de grace.  most times, it was too hot to even be outside.  and i certainly didn't take a pic of the bug infestation either - i was just too stressed!

the lantern queen river boat

concord lighthouse

where the susquehanna meets the chesapeake

promenade