Day 25 Wednesday, May
10, 2017
You can monitor my trip at the link: Little Star's Progress Live
I realize that for the
last number of days I have been whining about the not so
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| One of our permanent neighbors in our anchorage |
perfect weather. Too cold, too windy, seas too rough,
etc. Well, all that changed today. It was a beautiful day.
We started early with
pancakes and bacon. We slept well in our
little anchorage with a full moon shining in our bunk through the glass hatch
above our heads. The wind had died down
so the water was absolutely calm. When I
got up, the temperature was 50 degrees as compared to the 37 that we
encountered in Yorktown. We knew it
would be a great day!
We pulled the anchor at
about 8:00 and headed out into the big waters in route for
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| A waterman wS |
cake
for Maryland. I wanted Janine to see
this unique place, however, as we were approaching, I got out our guide book
and noticed that the main channel in the village is dredged to 4 ½ feet
depth. Little Star has a depth of 4 ½ and since it is not my boat, I
decided not to attempt it.
At about 5 miles from
the island, we swung north and set our course on the Solomons. The area where we turned was a field of crab
pot floats and for the next
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| Smith Point Light |
5 miles we dodged these things. The seas were quite calm with a few left over
rollers from the windy days and there was a light breeze blowing at about 8
knots. Since it was still early in the
day and the Solomons were only about 25 miles away, we decided to hoist the
sails. We had a following breeze that
moved us along at between 3 and 4 knots.
It was great moving along without the noise of the diesel.
The wind began to drop
off at about noon and the water became glassy so we had
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| One of three big freighters that passed us today. I think it's ugly! |
to drop the sails and
start the motor. We had motored along
for a couple of hours when I noticed that the winds had again returned so we
again raised the sails. The air was warm
and we finally got to travel in our shirt sleeves.
As we approached the congested waters of the Patuxent River, I again dropped the sail and motored
the rest of the way into the
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| And another. Also a bit of ugly! |
busy marina area.
In the creeks around the Solomons, our guide book lists 16 marinas all
packing together.
This is quite the
boater’s paradise.
We pulled into the first
marina that we came to and took on a load of fuel. This boat is really efficient. I calculated that on this tank load, we
averaged about ¾ gallons of fuel for each hour that we travel. From there, we traveled on up Back Creek to
the Zahnhiser’s Yacht Center where with Janine at the helm, we snagged a
mooring ball on which we will spend the night.
I was surprised that we were the only boat in the mooring field but
right next to us were
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| A little stowaway that joined us for a while. |
probably 5 or 5 large boats anchored. They wanted the protection of this area but
didn’t want to pay the $30.00 that accompanies the mooring balls. With that fee, however, one can dump his
trash for free, use their dinghy dock and use their showers for free. For those who chose to anchor out each of
those services or facility carry a fee, all be it a moderate one.
 |
| I had to show another view of him. |
The marina was closed
when I went to check in so I didn’t have the code to get into the shower
house. I ran across a young lady who
obviously was a racing sailor (I could tell by her clothes) who was willing to share
the code with me. After our dinner of spaghetti and meat sauce, we both rowed
the dink to the dinghy dock and hit the showers.
On the way to register
earlier, I noticed a 944 Porsche that looked identical to ours except that it
was a newer model, was a turbo, and had custom wheels. I took Janine back to see the car after we
showered and as we were looking at it, the owner came out and as you can
imagine, we had a great interesting conversation.
We rowed back to Little Star, read for a while and went
to bed at our usual time. Wow, what a
great day!
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