ICW-bound

We are underway southbound in Chesapeake Bay, on our last open-water segment until the Albemarle Sound. It's good to be moving back into more temperate conditions. We are on schedule to make our Thanksgiving flights in Myrtle Beach, with a two-week buffer, which we will whittle down as we get closer.

Monday we dropped the hook just after 5 behind Reedy Island (map), enjoying dinner aboard and a quiet, calm night at anchor. We weighed at 7 Tuesday morning for a fair tide to, through, and out of the canal. We whizzed right past Chesapeake City, normally one of our stops, and continued down the Elk River until we ran out of tide.

Entering the C&D Canal at Reedy Point. The canal was so calm I just had to snap this reflection of the bridges.

Underway I went back and forth with Dave about my impending car trip back to NJ. It turned out that he had a pair of Victron inverters he needed to drive up to Point Pleasant, just ten minutes from my folks, for carry-in service, and he had a car booked for a Wednesday trip. Seeing as we would be docked together in Pasadena, it seemed ridiculous for us to get two cars for trips to the exact same place two days apart, and so we worked out the logistics to share one car. I had booked a single day, planning to leave right from Enterprise, but he needed a two-day rental to get an early morning start. We ended up splitting the difference on timing, and I moved our marina reservation up one day.

Sunset over Aberdeen from Worton Creek.

We ran out of tide at Worton Creek and dropped the hook in a familiar spot there, tucked in tight to the north shore (map). We had the hook down by 12:30 for a short day. In hindsight, we might have been more comfortable stopping even sooner, in the Sassafras, as it became a bit lumpy in the morning, but we were comfortable enough. With a whole afternoon free, I finished up the project to replace the junction box under the new sat compass, as the previous one had some holes exposed from the last compass, covered with tape as a stopgap.

"And I thought they smelled bad on the outside."

Wednesday morning we had a good push downriver through the Poole Island Flats. As we were crossing the ship channel we could see what looked like a USCG cutter doing donuts in front of us, and as I was noodling what to do about that they called us on the radio as "the Hellenic Navy vessel formerly the Coast Guard Cutter Brant" to tell us they were doing steering tests. The Greeks have been buying a lot of retired USCG cutters to use as naval patrol craft.

Once I got the BMS out the damage was obvious. This trace burned clear through.

We were docked at the Maryland Yacht Club (map), a familiar spot, by mid day, and met up with Stacey and Dave. Enterprise was late picking Dave and me up for a 2:00 rental, and they were even later getting us a car due to an inventory shortage. We ended up walking next door to Bahama Mikes for a beer while we waited the half hour or so. We all went to dinner at Anthony's, a decent Italian joint that was the shortest drive from the dock.

Wider shot of the whole BMS with the wires removed.

Thursday morning Dave and I were on the road at 6:30 am. We pulled up to Tekris Power Solutions just a couple minutes after they opened at 10, where we were met by the lone tech on duty, who immediately set to working on the pair of inverters. We hung out for maybe a half hour for Dave to answer his questions, and then left, expecting to have most of the day until closing time to do other errands. We drove right over to the Brick Diner for brunch, having eschewed any stops on the way up. We ended up at the same table Louise and I had a week or two earlier.

A view from the other side.

In short order we drove down to Toms River for me to check in on my dad, who has improved greatly over the last week and has become something of a handful for the staff, then back to Brick to check in on my mom and drop some things off at the house, and then back to Tekris to check in on the work. They had made great progress but were still a couple of hours from done, so we went and camped at the public library to use the Internet and have a comfortable place to sit. I dropped Dave back at Tekris for the home stretch while I ran one more errand at a local bank, and we were loaded back up and done at Tekris by 4:30.

The cells were not penetrated in the event. The black mark is soot from the smoldering board.

That put us in traffic, of course, and it was a long slog home. We ended up making a dinner stop at Firebirds in Newark, Delaware, while Louise and Stacey just walked to the yacht club for dinner. It was around 9pm when we finally rolled back up to the dock. It was a long day but we checked off all the boxes, and it was great to have company on the drive.

Cheers from Firebirds Wood Fired Grill.

We had the car all Friday morning and so we all piled in for errands and brunch. We stopped at the Amazon locker to pick up a few items, and Aldi to provision both boats. Brunch was quite good at Johnny's Family Restaurant. My plan was to drive everyone back, then return the car and catch a ride back, but we literally drove past Enterprise right after we were done at Aldi, and on a hunch I stopped in to ask if they could run us all back to the yacht club if I turned the car in early. They were happy to oblige, saving me a 45-minute round trip.

We had only taken two nights at the dock, to cover the car trip, and so we dropped lines and headed just 500' away to the anchorage (map). I spent the afternoon tearing apart the failed battery, so that I could be sure there were no cell breaches, disconnect the BMS to ensure it could not do further harm, and get the very stinky burnt  case, BMS, and wiring off the boat. At dinner time we tendered back to Stinkpot, where Dave made us a delicious pot pie. I just finished the last of the leftovers for today's lunch.

Triple threat. Left to right, an LNG tanker, the LNG storage facility, and the nuke plant.

Louise had been sneezy all day Friday, we assumed due to bad allergies, but Saturday morning she woke up sick. She was so miserable she had to wave off boatswain duties for the day, and I ended up decking the tender, weighing anchor, and getting underway single-handed. We had a pretty short day to a new stop for us, Selby Bay off the South River (map). That was really the last anchorage before the long stretch to Solomons, which was out of the question for the day. It was a comfortable spot, and we might have been able to go ashore, but with Louise down for the count we just stayed on board. With our battery capacity down by a third, we had quite a bit of generator run time after sunset.

The cells were damaged enough that they have to go to hazmat disposal. This portable heater bit the dust a few days ago, and I used its heating coils as a load to drain all the cells down to zero for safer transportation.

Even with the extra runtime, the inverter went offline at 5:30am Sunday morning, making for a rude awakening. I think the state-of-charge meter had still not caught up and we had shut down too soon. We had a dawn start for as much fair tide as we could get for the long run to Solomons. It was a perfect day on the bay, with little commercial traffic, and we even were lucky enough to arrive to Cove Point just after an LNG tanker cleared out. We dropped the hook in our preferred spot near Molly's Leg (map), and by dinner time Louise felt well enough to tender over to the Island Hideway for dinner.

The Reedville water tower and the Market restaurant from the free dock.

Monday was another near-perfect day on the bay, with an easy cruise to Reedville, where we tied up to the free dock at the Reedville Market Restaurant (map). The restaurant has reopened under new management and we made a reservation for dinner. The food was quite good and they had a few nice draft selections, but it was very spendy for this neck of the woods. Before dinner I had a nice walk around town, my first in a while and I felt it.

We had a neighbor but only for a few hours. I guess they came just for dinner. They ran their generator the whole time.

Tuesday morning we had another early start for tide, which gets earlier as we progress down the bay. It was a short day to our planned stop in Deltaville, where we came in to Broad Creek for the first time ever. We normally anchor on the other side of the neck, off the Piankatank, where there is plenty of depth for us. By contrast, Broad Creek is just six feet deep at low tide. We arrived close to high tide at 11am and had a little over a foot under our keel. There is no place for us to anchor in Broad Creek; instead we tied up at Norton Yacht Sales (map) after first using their pump-out. Norton is trying to bolster their limited transient business and dockmaster Ian pulled out all the stops to make our stay pleasant.

Oversized skeletons to go with the oversized Adirondack chairs in front of the ice cream joint. Which is closed for the season.

We chose Norton because it is just two doors down from the Jolly Skipper Boatyard, where our friend Tim is having his sailboat, Paquita, worked on. The Jolly Skipper does not have enough depth for us, so this was as close as we could get. Tim dropped by right after lunch and we spent an hour catching up, and somehow he managed to borrow a car for the evening, and at 5:30 we rode over to The Galley, the only joint in town open on a Tuesday evening, for dinner. The food was decent, the prices reasonable, and the company superb. We are only sorry that we missed his wife Crisalida, who is in NY visiting family.

Moonrise over Cockrell Creek.

This morning we waited until 9am to shove off, so we would have enough tide to get out without drama. We had no trouble at all, and in hindsight we could have left a half hour or so earlier. Conditions were worse than forecast and we had a choppy ride for a couple of hours, but things have flattened out some. We've also had the tide against us most of the day; I have a little reprieve right now but it will be against us in the Elizabeth River.

We passed this bald eagle on our way out of Broad Creek this morning. He was unfazed.

Normally we'd end our day at the Phoebus anchorage in Hampton, but, just as happened this time last year, all of Hampton is overrun by the Salty Dawg rally, with 80+ sailboats taking up every available spot. Depending on when we reach the Thimble Shoals Light, we'll either try for a new-to-us spot in Willoughby Bay, or else press on to Hospital Point.