we didn't really have a plan after we left mill creek - north was about the extent of it. tom called a friend who lives in queenstown on the Eastern Shore and it turned out that they were planning to anchor out that evening with their neighbors so we headed up past the Bay bridge and turned into the chester river. we wound our way up to langford creek and anchored off cacaway island, a very popular anchorage since it has a beach. surprisingly, it was not too crowded. this is all relative, of course. coming from the southern Bay, we are used to being the ONLY boat in an anchorage, however, toto, we are not in kansas anymore. this is the upper Bay now and there will be boat wakes, irate people on the radio saying all kinds of outrageous things, and usually more than just four boats per anchorage on a weekday, especially on a holiday week. it is what it is and everyone has the right to enjoy the Bay in whatever manner they please. jet skis, water skiers, wakeboarders, and other annoying noisemakers and peace breakers included. sigh....
it looked like it was going to be another hot one. there wasn't much in the way of a breeze on our way upriver but the wind sure kicked up that night making for outstanding sleeping! tom did let out more scope though. that evening, we dinghied over to visit our friends, mike and carmen, who were anchored at davis creek. it was a nice reunion as it had been some years since we'd last seen each other. the first comment as we pulled up next to them was "WHITE FACE!" this was in reference to consuelo. mike broke out a photo he had taken of consuelo back in 2002 when we first met. gosh, you'd think her markings had been painted on! the borders between the colors were so distinct. oh well, we all get old. there is, by the way, a heron rookery on davis creek. it was pretty neat to see the great blue herons' head sticking out over the tops of the trees.
the next day, after visiting mike and carmen in the morning, we spent the afternoon just holed up at home, avoiding the heat of the day, but in the late afternoon, we did our usual dinghy exploration and headed up the western branch of langford creek on the suggestion of our friend, dave, who used to keep his sailboat at nearby lankford bay marina. as we motored up the creek which seemed to go on forever with plenty of deep water, we were delighted to discover many alternative anchorages to the cacaway island one.
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| headed north past the Bay Bridge |
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| chesapeake buy boat |
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| cacaway island anchorage |
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| sunset at cacaway island |
chestertown.
the chester river is just lovely with its pastoral farmland scenery and houses few and far between. we made our way to chestertown and anchored in the river just below the bridge. the current is very strong here and because the next couple of days were pretty windy, we experienced a phenomenon that neither tom nor i were used to in our anchoring experience. ordinarily, when you anchor, the bow faces into the wind - that's pretty standard - but this time, we faced every which way and sometimes, the anchor rode was slack while the boat hovered, suspended between the current and the wind. she also did slow 360s as evidenced by the snubber wrapping around the chain several times. sometimes, i would be sitting at my desk in the pilothouse and out of the corner of my eye, i would see the dinghy float by on the starboard side! it was all very odd and a bit unnerving in the beginning.
chestertown is a cute little Eastern Shore town that is not dead or dying. it might be because it is a college town (washington college) but in any case, the storefronts are not boarded up and there were actual live bodies walking around even in the heat and boy, was it hot! we stayed a couple of days just because it's a nice little town to poke around in. i even bought a new hat at one of the stores. i love hats but, unfortunately, they do not love me. it's hard to find one that doesn't make me look like a dork. some people wear hats really well - like tom - but i just don't seem to have that kind of face. and i can't keep them on for long, they just make me too hot. it might be a filipino thing - an umbrella is better for shade except that around here, everyone gives you strange looks if you have an umbrella and it's not raining. but i have gotten so old that i'm beyond caring about what people think, thank goodness! in any case, i have a new hat :)
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| sunset at chestertown |
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| a buyboat and a skipjack |
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| the "martha white" |
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| sultana at chestertown |
queenstown.
we had promised to visit our friends, mike and carmen, at their new home in queenstown so that was our next stop as we made our way down the chester river back towards the Bay. however, we made a small detour into the corsica river first. i guess that's a cruise we're going to have to save for next time. the chester river has many creeks that we haven't poked into yet. we thought we would do the chesapeake this summer before heading south for the winter but the fact of the matter is that there are so many places to go, we just can't do it all in one shot! quite frankly, why would anyone want to leave the chesapeake anyway? except for winter, of course. we've cruised the chesapeake quite a few years and we are nowhere near done with it. it boggles the mind that so many snowbirds just blast through the chesapeake on their way north in the spring and on their way south in the fall. they don't know what they are missing.
in any case, when we finally got into queenstown creek, we headed to mike's community marina first to fill our water tanks and then to the anchorage. there was only one other sailboat (black) anchored there but by the time we dinghied back to the community marina to meet up with our friends, three more sailboats had come in. it was about 6:30 p.m. and i remember thinking as i saw the last two sailboats come in (filled with a bunch of little kids) and raft up - damn it, DO NOT park in front of us! which, of course, they did. anyway, we got to visit our friends' new home and from there, we walked to queenstown's popular pizza place and then back to the house for ice cream. by the time we got back to the boat, it was past 9:00 p.m. and hotter than hell. the air was completely still. i took a shower in cold water and it still wasn't cold enough. i wondered when tom would cave and it came soon after. he said: "i have an idea." i said: " run the generator and turn on the A/C?" he said: "would you go down to the forward cabin and close all the open windows?" you bet i would! so that was really nice because the thought of trying to fall asleep in that heat was just inconceivable! however, we were expecting some weather and we figured that we would have to close up the boat anyway to keep the rain out so might as well cool off the interior first, the rain would cool off the exterior and then we could open her up again and it would be nice sleeping weather.
well, we got weather all right and was it ever nasty! we don't know for sure what the maximum wind speed was but on one particularly strong gust, tom checked the anemometer and it said 46 knots! yikes.... prior to that, there was just lightning everywhere so we knew something big was coming and went about preparing for it. what we were NOT prepared for was that two-sailboat raft-up with all the little kids dragging anchor and coming down on us the way they did, still rafted up, heeling over and moving sideways, making them seem bigger than they already were. it was scary. there was a lot of profanity going on in TADHANA that night. tom had the engine running and he let out more scope on the anchor chain and moved us sideways to get out of the way of that runaway raft-up. i had gone aft to shorten the painter on the dinghy so that if we backed up, the line would not have a chance to be caught up in the propeller. it was pitch black with horizontal rain and screaming wind and this THING swept by us, totally out of control - two sailboats and two dinghies all tied up together. you could hardly see anything in the dark except for their one anchor light and then flashes of light here and there indicating people scrambling around with flashlights. tom turned on our searchlight - we just wanted to make sure we knew where they were. at the same time, we were also keeping an eye on the other two anchored sailboats. the black one never moved. the other one, if he moved, was not going to come at us. i don't think i'll ever forget the sight of that whole mess sweeping by. i sighed with relief when they were finally behind us. apparently, they managed to separate and the bigger sailboat, the one whose anchor had been holding them (or not) motored back up past us and then tried to re-anchor in the same spot! the smaller sailboat kept circling around and i thought, surely, he's not thinking of trying to raft up again??? and i thought about all those little kids on the boat - it must have been terrifying for them, heeled over like that and careening out of control. it was terrifying for US! anyway, when it was over, tom went to bail out our dinghy. i saw a flash of light out in the bushes across the creek and what had happened was that the group had lost one dinghy so someone was on the other dinghy off looking for it. apparently, it had flipped over and they lost all their gear. tom went over to check on them. we never moved from our spot - we were well dug in. the sailboat behind us never moved either but i wonder how aware he was of the raft-up that had dragged. the last sailboat anchored kind of beside us had put out more scope apparently because in the morning, he was aground and listing. anyway, what a night - certainly not one to ever forget! no one was hurt, thank goodness. we didn't get to bed until 2:00 in the morning. all of this excitement happened around midnight.
the two sailboats did not raft up again but the occupants still seemed to be talking to each other the next day. well, at least they left together. i was glad to see them go. late that morning, we went off to the grocery store to re-provision. mike had very generously lent us a car. it was another hot day and hauling those groceries from the car to the dinghy and then from the dinghy into the boat and putting them away.... what a production! tom took a nap and i half-heartedly went back to work and tried not to fall asleep. i think we both felt pretty beat up still - that whole thing with the dragging could have all gone so badly.
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| dark and stormy |
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| ominous clouds |
for the Fourth of July week, we normally cruise around chasing fireworks but this year , the whole east coast had Hurricane Arthur to contend with. we were pretty dug in at queenstown creek, it was too hot, it was very windy and even the chester river was rough, let alone the Bay, and, well, we just didn't really feel like doing anything or going anywhere. and this is KEY here - we didn't HAVE to be anywhere. we could come and go as we pleased. this hits us every now and then because all our lives, we've had some kind of schedule or other and tried to fit the play in with the work. there are still some limitations but not as much as there used to be. it really is kind of neat that except for a PFA (pet-friendly area) for consuelo and an aircard signal for me, we can sit damn near anywhere we please for however long we like. works for me.
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