We awoke at about 5:30 after a restful night on Worton creek. A breakfast of Sausage and eggs with a blob blueberry muffin and apple juice got us off to a great start. We cleaned up the boat and pulled the anchor and motored over to where Rolph and Robyn were moored and said our “so longs.” Robyn had evidently been taking pictures of Panache and us and yelled that she would be sending them via email.
We motored out of our little cove and directly to the Green Point Landing Marina where we were assisted in our landing by a young fellow who had been working on his really beautiful 36 foot boat. Once tied up, he and I struck up a conversation about his beautiful boat and what he was doing. He and his girl friend who was originally married to the original owner of the boat had bought to previous guy’s interest in the boat and were hanging around the Chesapeake in a situation that appeared that they were working to earn more money to continue cruising. We spent time talking about his boat and their activities in the Bay.
We bought Ice at the marina and I jumped on their WiFi to send out yesterday’s blog. On the dock outside of the office where I was connected, a group of old guys were sitting telling lies. The main attraction for me, however, was a large black lab that had his own special stick. Someone would throw the stick out into the water. The dog would run at top speed in a somewhat complicated path to the end of a finger dock and fly off into the water. He would swim to his stick, retrieve it and then swim over to a launch ramp, run up out of the water and back onto the dock. He would drop his stick at the feet of one of the guys then stand back and nervously watch in eager anticipation for the next fling. If he got no response in about 10 seconds, he would pick it up and drop it then again concentrate on the potential flinger. After several of these cycles which produced no results, he would take his stick to another of the dock philosophers. Finally, someone would sent the stick back into the water and the process would start again.
We motored out of Worton Creek and once on the main part of the Bay, we plugged a course that would take us to Cabin John into the GPS. Creek Cabin John Creek, which is directly across the Chesapeake – Deleware Canal (Elk River) from where we will be pulling the boat out of the water tomorrow. Once we were finished dodging the crap pot buoys, we unfurled the sails and tapped the following wind to carry us up the Bay. The wind was light and we were traveling around 2 mph. Our GPS estimated the time of our arrival at Cabin John would be about 1:00 am tomorrow if we continued at the same speed during the entire trip. It was another of the “Heat Advisory Days” that was supposed to reach 105 on the heat index scale so we thought that as the day progressed and we would start the motor to provide us with a bit of a breeze. As it turned out, the wind did pick up a bit and we actually got to our anchorage at about 5:00. It was hot but we drank a bunch of water and enjoyed the opportunity to be sailing.
Whole in Baltimore, we had bought a “book on CD” by John Grisham and helped pass the time of day in the heat by listening to the first portion of that. We knew we would not finish it but we had plenty of time to get through to the end on our trip back to Ohio in the truck.
Cabin John Creek is a medium sized cove that is fairly well protected on three sides. It open to the C-D Canal to the northwest and has a fetch of about 2 miles. A wind blowing over 2 miles of open water can kick up some fairly significant waves, however, since during the early part of the evening, the winds were from the south and dying, we assumed that this would be a good anchorage. It is a shallow cove so we pulled up our centerboard and cruised into about 4 feet of water. The tide was at low tide so we were in as shallow of water as we would see. We set our anchor and began taking the boat apart in preparation for the haul-out tomorrow. We removed the sails, all of the lines and set up the genpole tht is used to lower the mast. We had planned to lower the mast while in the however, it really clutters up the boat when down so we decided to drop it in the morning.
We fixed our last evening meal on the boat. It consisted of a Killians predinner beverage, chicken Alfredo and Bob Evans Sausage patties. We had an apple dessert cup to wind this fine meal up. We turned on the weather radio for our overnight forecast and found that there were thunderstorm warnings around us and the southerly winds would be changing to northwest later in the evening. As we were sitting and relaxing after dinner, we watch dark clouds pass over head, the wind swung around to the northwest and began to blow more strongly. I took my handheld compass and took a sighting on a tree on shore. That would be my benchmark. Later sightings, if they were different, would indicate that we were dragging anchor. I also set the Dragging Anchor Alarm on the GPS. The winds continued to build as the storm clouds passed over us. The waves caused the boat to buck; however, my observations of the tree on shore indicated that the anchor was holding. We decided to put out a second anchor as a safety precaution so we started the motor, moved upwind, and dropped in the backup anchor. It quickly grabbed and tied it off giving us to well set anchors and security for the nights rest.
We had been sweaty all day and felt that a freshwater shower was a must! All along the trip, I have refused to use our freshwater from our water tank for showers. However, since this was our last night, I filled the Sun Shower Bag full. We waited until it was fully dark, and wandered onto the cabin roof for a wonderful freshwater shower. It really was delightful. We dried off, listened to a bit more Grisham and were in bed by about 10:00.
Cabin John Creek to Elk Neck State Park July 30, 2011
It was a restless nights sleep. The wind continued to blow through most of the night and the waves kept the boat bucking and swinging from side to side all night. Really, this is the first time on this trip that we have had a bumpy night sleep. We got up at about 5:45 and fixed coffee and prepared our last breakfast food. We had one package of blueberry muffin mix, a few fresh berries, one egg, two sausage patties, and two patties of SPAM. The plan was to make the blob muffin, fry the sausage, fry the egg (for Janine) and fry the SPAM for me. As I was getting out the ingredients from the cooler, I lightly stepped on the egg! I checked it and the only damage was a crack in one end of it but the contents were still all intact. I prepared all of the rest of the meal and when it came time to cook the last egg, I hit it on the water spicket over the sink as I was swinging around to get to the stove. It exploded in my hand and dropped into the sink and disappeared down the drain. I offered Janine one of my two patties of SPAM, however, she respectfully declined my generous offer. Go Figure!
We worked around the boat finishing up preparations for loading and headed for the Elk Neck State Park launch ramp at about 8:30. Bob, Janine’s brother is to be there between 9:30 and 10:00.
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