Burnin' down the house

We are underway southbound at the northern end of Chesapeake Bay. It's cold today; it was in the 30s when we awoke at anchor in Chesapeake City, and the mercury will not reach 60 today. Fortunately, the cold snap should break in a couple of days and we should have some nicer fall weather.

Oops. A bit of ohmic heating on the heaviest leg of the generator.

We had an uneventful night in Atlantic City, although by the time I turned in, three more boats had joined us in the anchorage. It was getting pretty bouncy outside by the time we had pulled in; I did not envy these three coming in after dark in the rough stuff. They had all taken the very conservative entrance route, keeping them out in it a full extra 20 minutes, and when we left in the morning one of them radioed us to ask if they could cut the corner.

We left on a fair tide, had a decent passage to Cape May, and entered on the last of the fair tide there as well. We had the hook down in our usual spot (map) before 4. I splashed the tender in a hurry and raced over to the Bree-Zee-Lee marina for gas before they closed right at 4. We tendered over to The Port restaurant for dinner and to get in a little walk after two full days on the boat. They still do not have their inside dining up and running, but we had a nice dinner on the deck.

I grabbed this sunset shot over Fort Penn out the pilothouse window just as we pulled in to the anchorage.

The anchorage was pretty full when we set the hook, but yet again another few boats came in after us and squeezed in to whatever was left. I figured there to be a half dozen of us taking advantage of the same two-day window around NJ, and we seem to have been traveling in the same group of boats from NY Harbor to Chesapeake city. With the tide unfavorable for most of the morning, no one was moving.

We took advantage of that time to tender to the boat ramp and walk to the marine supply house, where I was hoping to find sandpaper for my varnishing, but had to settle for just the 15' of line I needed for another project. We also walked over to the Wawa market for a packaged salad, as we had run out of fixings. We had the tender decked and were ready to go at the turn of the tide.

It's decorative gourd season, people. On our table at The Port in Cape May.

By that time, a small craft advisory had been issued for Delaware Bay for later in the day, and so we had a bit of a scramble to get through the canal and up the bay into the narrower part before things got too lumpy. We had figured on a comfortable day to the Cohansey River, but the forecast said we could be pinned down there for days, so instead we set our sights on the anchorage behind the Reedy Island dike.

That made for a long day, somewhat exacerbated by the fact that the tide predictions were a bit off, and we pushed into the current for a couple of hours when it was supposed to be behind us. By the time we pulled behind the dike, it was well behind us, and we pressed on to Reedy Island itself and dropped the hook just at sunset, abreast of Fort Penn, Delaware (map). We had a nice dinner on board.

Sunrise from that same spot, over Reedy Island.

From Reedy Island on a fair tide, we can easily make it well into the Chesapeake in a day's run, putting us somewhere around where I am typing right now. But Monday was Louise's birthday, and we wanted to end up someplace where we could get ashore for a nice dinner. So we weighed on a fair tide and raced through the canal, arriving at the Chesapeake City basin just three hours later. We had the hook down before lunch, west of the half dozen boats already there (map). Once again several came in after us, and we counted 13 boats in the anchorage by nightfall.

I tendered ashore for a long afternoon walk and to see what was new around town. In the evening we headed ashore for a nice birthday dinner at the Chesapeake Inn, which, apart from the high-zoot prime steakhouse, is the nicest place in town, and our usual haunt when we are here for one night. The young and inexperienced waiter managed to forget our salad entirely, and the dessert list was entire un-birthday-like, so perhaps the steakhouse might have been a better choice. Still, we enjoyed a quiet celebration together.

Our very crowded anchorage in Chesapeake City, as seen from the hill to the east. Vector is center-frame.

We planned to weigh anchor Tuesday morning to continue to the Chesapeake, but Monday afternoon I learned our friends Ashley and Tate aboard Andiamo would be coming into the basin Tuesday on their way home from a short cruise to Philly, and we opted to hold back a day to catch up with them. We keep missing Dave and Amy aboard Selah Way, who have now been in three anchorages with us, but one or the other of us has been committed each time; they left Chesapeake City Tuesday morning.

With the harbor recently dredged all the way to the docks, on Tuesday morning I kept an eagle eye on the three boats that had occupied them since we had arrived, and when room opened up Tuesday morning, we swiftly raised the anchor and zipped over to the dock at 8:30am. We were tied up (map) and plugged in to 50-amp power by 8:45. The dock, with a one-night limit, is free, but power is $15 and water is $10. We were happy to fork over the $25 at city hall in these temperatures. In a decade of stopping here, this is the first time we managed a spot on the dock.

I walked over to Cafe on the Bay, just a block from the dock, to pick up breakfast sandwiches. This guy beat me to it.

I went out for another long walk, returning to Vector just as Andiamo was arriving at the dock. They managed to grab the last spot, fortuitously arriving just a few minutes after the sailboat behind us cleared out After greeting them and helping them tie up, I changed into my work clothes for another fun day of sanding and varnishing.

After finishing work and getting cleaned up, we caught back up with them, exchanging boat tours before walking over to the Bayard House for dinner. It was Taco Tuesday, which seems odd for a fine-dining establishment, but they were quite good, and three of us participated. We lingered quite a while, and it was a very enjoyable evening of catching up.

Andiamo whizzing under the bridge, headed for the fuel dock at Schaefers.

Once again our plan was to leave Chesapeake City yesterday morning at the turn of the tide. Our intent was to turn right off the Elk and head up the North East River to the eponymous burg, where our friends Stacey and Dave have their boat on the hard for a bit of maintenance. My charts say we can just get up there at high tide to a nice anchorage right off their marina. While normally that might be true, we've now had a few days of north wind, and in addition to bringing these cooler temperatures, it has the effect of blowing the water south in the bay and dropping the level at the north end by 1.5' or more.

After a consultation with Dave about water levels, we decided to wave off trying to make North East. They have access to a car, and just as they did a few months ago on our northbound trip, they drove out to meet us instead. There's really no place we can get to that's any closer to North East than Chesapeake City; Havre de Grace would cut maybe five minutes off their car trip, at the expense of putting us in a miserable anchorage a 16nm detour from our route. And so it is that we stayed yet a third night in Chesapeake City.

We bid farewell to Tate and Ashley at the turn of the tide yesterday morning, and then we ourselves also had to leave the dock, having used up our one-day welcome. We headed right back to the anchorage, dropping the hook not far from where we started (map). Dave and Stacey arrived mid-afternoon and I picked them up in the tender. We had cocktails and conversation aboard Vector, wherein the flybridge ladder, still lying on its side in the saloon, became our cocktail table for the afternoon.

Our new cocktail table. No idea why the weird expression on my face, other than difficulty snapping the photo while looking at a very bright window.

We all ended up across the canal st Schaefer's Canal House for dinner, just as we had done in the spring. It was a lovely afternoon and evening of catching up. After saying our goodbyes, we headed to the Bayheads Brewing Company tap room, growler in hand, in hopes of scoring some porter or stout. This place has always been closed when we were in town, but my excitement at actually getting into the joint was short-lived. They were out of the porter, and I found the stout too bitter, so we left empty-handed.

More holiday decor at Cafe on the Bay.

This morning we decked the tender at slack, with the generator running for some much-needed heat. When I came back in I noticed the heater was no longer running in the saloon, with a blank screen that usually means the breaker has tripped. As it turned out, one whole leg of power was out, disabling two heaters and the battery charger, and sending me on a mad scramble to figure out what went wrong.

With no breakers tripped anywhere, from the main panel through both sub-panels, my worst fear was that it could be the generator head itself. That could waylay us in Annapolis or Solomons, possibly for weeks, tearing things down and waiting on parts. It could also have meant looking for a marina tonight, another bitterly cold night where batteries alone would be insufficient come morning.

The most heavily loaded hot leg is extra crispy.

Fortunately, the generator was fine, and the problem was instead in the transfer switch. Still serious, as both the switch and wiring had something of a meltdown, literally, from ohmic heating. But long-time readers will know that I designed and built this transfer switch myself, from industrial components, and so I know how to fix it, and I even have enough spare parts to get things working again by the end of the day. That knowledge let us weigh anchor and get underway on a favorable tide, and we've had a good push all day.

I had a whole contactor left over from the original project. This one has a lower rating but it will suffice until I can get more parts.

We're hoping to visit DC on this pass, if the weather remains pleasant. That's a long trip from here, and so today we are making it a little longer day, with our sights set on the free bulkhead at Rock Hall, Maryland for tonight, with another long day tomorrow, possibly all the way to Solomons.

Not something you see often in Annapolis. We passed the pocket cruise ship American Constitution in the anchorage.

Update: We had already made the eastward turn toward Rock Hall when I double-checked the entrance and saw that the Corps of Engineers had released a new survey this year showing the entrance has shoaled to five feet. We were scheduled to arrive at a tide of +1.25' (out of a high of 1.5'), but the same seiche that ruled out North East yesterday means we'd see much lower depths. Deeming it too risky, we waved off.

Coming home from dinner we caught the moonrise over Vector.

With winds out of the northwest, we decided to cross over to the western shore and have now set our sights on Annapolis harbor. That took our arrival from a little before 4pm to a little before 6pm, which will have me working on the transfer switch late into the evening in a hot engine room. We'll still be able to run ashore to pick up the milk we need and grab a quick bite before I start, two things we had intended to do in Rock Hall.

Transfer switch all back together and working. I had to cut about five inches off the cord.

Update 2: As usual, I got very busy at the helm with the sailing chaos that is Annapolis before I could position and caption all the photos. Lots of boats anchored here leftover from the big boat show, and we had to squeeze in to the south anchorage (map). As soon as the anchor was set we tendered ashore at the Third Street landing, grabbed a quick dinner at the Boatyard  Bar & Grill, and picked up milk at the c-store. We were back home by 7; it is now 9:15 and I spent the entire 2+ hours in the engine room swapping parts and rewiring the ATS. We have our power back, but I will need to replace some parts now that it has some 5,000 hours on it.

Headed to Joisey

We are under way southbound on Delaware Bay, bound for Cape May, New Jersey. As I begin typing we have about a knot of current behind us, but we also have 16 knots of wind on the nose, pushing the seas up into a frothy mess and making for a splashy ride.

Sunday's sunset over the Chesapeake City Bridge, from the anchorage basin.

Wednesday we had the anchor down in a new-to-us spot in the West River (map), near Galesville Maryland, by 3pm. It was definitely a quiet and protected spot, much more so than our usual digs in Annapolis. We splashed the tender and headed to the town dock at dinner time, walking next door to the Pirates Cove Restaurant and Dock Bar for dinner. They have their own dock as well, but we wanted to check out the town wharf for future reference.

We were expecting the typical waterfront fried-seafood tiki bar experience, but the place turned out to be more upscale than that, and we enjoyed our meal on the deck of the main dining room. The "dock bar" with the same menu is on the other side of the building and has more of the tiki bar vibe. After dinner we had a nice walk through town, but there's not much here. One other waterfront restaurant is a short distance away, but the liquor/general store seems to be permanently closed.

Just outside the Galesville Town Wharf we found this propeller garden.

We had to work our way around the Wednesday night sailboat races on our way home, but after that it was quiet. All in all, it was a comfortable alternative to Annapolis for weather or timing and we've made note of that for the future. Thursday morning we weighed anchor with the tide for the short run to Annapolis, with the forecast deteriorating into the afternoon.

Sunset on the West River.

Winds were forecast to be out of the south, and we figured we'd be OK in our usual spot in the south anchorage. But seas following us in and an an absence of other boats there were not good signs. We dropped the hook (map) just to test the waters, so to speak, but it was untenable, and we weighed before even setting the snubber. We knew that in high season, the limited anchorages up Spa Creek and Back Creek would be full to the brim, and the weather out on the bay was already too snotty to want to go back out.

With few options, we turned instead up the Severn, along the eastern edge of the United States Naval Academy, and steamed upriver to Weems Creek, a new anchorage for us. I held little hope there would be any room; a good part of the creek is full of hurricane moorings belonging to the Academy, and a handful of private moorings. Much to our surprise, we found only two other boats already anchored, and we worked our way into the creek to just shy of the USNA moorings before dropping the hook (map).

Honda has substituted this flange bolt for the pan head one I removed; that's what's left of the anode stuck to it. I had to call the dealer to make sure I had the right part.

Conditions out on the bay and in the harbor notwithstanding, Weems creek is very protected, and it was calm enough to get some work done. I spun the tender around on deck to install the parts I had picked up in Solomons. That included new spark plugs, the internal engine anode, and new gaskets for the water jacket cover and thermostat.

New anode installed and cooling passages cleaned up a bit.

The installation went smoothly, although I was mystified that the little spring-loaded flush valve under the cover was nowhere to be found. I had cleaned it up on the last pass and thought I was careful to ensure it stayed in place as I reassembled everything, so I spent the better part of an hour looking for it in the innards of the cowling and poking things into the cooling passages to make sure it had not somehow worked its way in there. My hope is that it popped out during the last service and then blew overboard, and I will just buy a new one.

Cleaned up jacket cover and fresh O-ring. Is it really an O-ring if it's this shape?

After getting it all back together and a quick stationary test tied up to Vector, we headed up the creek to see if we could get ashore. We headed to the public boat ramp at the end of Tucker Street, hoping to find a dock, but no such luck. Fortunately, the bank is quite steep there, making it easy to make a beach landing and then tie off to a post.

Our beach landing. A sign here says the city is planning to put in a float.

We walked about a half mile back over the creek, mostly on the shoulder with no sidewalk available, to Heroes Pub, a local joint if every there was one. Despite the stark exterior, it was very homey inside, reminding us of our favorite watering hole in Mamaroneck. Both the pub and our server have been there for a quarter century, and they offer 48 different beers on tap, from a massive row of draft handles. We're glad we made the trek.

Heroes Pub. Our kind of place; we'll be back.

The dinghy got us to and from the boat ramp OK, but it's still not running right. It's rough when cold and sporadically overheating when warm, so I definitely have more work ahead of me. The next things to test are the automatic choke and the temperature sensor.

Vector anchored in Weems Creek, as seen from the drawbridge. We're a ways back.

Friday morning we returned ashore and walked to the nearby shopping plaza. We stopped in to Naval Bagels for breakfast sandwiches and a couple of bagels to go, which were pretty good for outside of NYC. Then we stopped next door in the very nice Graul's Market, which we remembered from a previous visit, to stock up on a few groceries. In the evening we came right back for pizza and bottled beer at Bella Italia, which was decent but not spectacular. We brought raincoats, but made it home before the rain started.

Naval Bagels. Everything in this town revolves around the Academy.

Saturday the weather finally would have permitted us to make some progress north. But we'd made arrangements to connect with friends Stacey and Dave, from Stinkpot, as we passed through Chesapeake City, and the timing meant we had a spare day on the Chesapeake side. We were comfortable where we were, and so decided to just spend another night. I took the day off and walked all the way to town.

Navy–Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, with apologies to our Army families.

Rather than battle my way through the throngs of tourists downtown, I opted instead to stroll the grounds of the Naval Academy. It's a beautiful campus, and I spent a couple of hours just walking around, after clearing security and a quick swing through the visitor center and gift shop. After exiting I made a quick pass by Ego Alley before heading home, partly by way of the free Circulator bus, which did not really shorten my walk, but let me see some more of town.

Bancroft Hall, the enormous dorm at USNA. I lived here for a week in my otherwise misspent youth.

In the evening we returned ashore one final time for the short walk to Chessie's Wharf. This is basically a burger and sandwich joint, but it's also the tap room for nearby RAR Brewery. The drafts were quite good, and I picked up a four-pack of pints at the end of dinner.

The chapel. That's a tour group in front; I passed dozens of people walking in wedding finery and I assume from the midshipmen with swords crossed on the steps that a wedding was imminent.

Sunday we weighed anchor with the tide to make the run up to the Elk River and the top of Chesapeake Bay. I had my sights set on a familiar anchorage in the Bohemia River, for an early morning fair tide the rest of the way to Chesapeake City for our Monday evening meet-up. We made such good time that we ended up just going the whole way to Chesapeake City and dropping the hook in our usual spot (map).

Spotted on campus, by Dahlgren Hall. My first live Cybertruck sighting; they are just as cheesy-looking and impractical as you've heard.

They've dredged the basin since our last visit, and for the first time ever we could have gone to the free dock, but it was full when we arrived. This is our first visit in the height of the season, and oh, my, was it ever busy. We were glad to find a spot to anchor, and we watched the myriad boats coming and going for the day at the Chesapeake Inn. Fortunately, the day visitors, many in swim attire, were mostly going to the outdoor tiki bar, and we had no trouble getting a table in the main restaurant at dinner time, notwithstanding the Fathers' Day buffet still going on in the ballroom.

A giant pear outside of Evelyn's Cafe, a breakfast place we did not sample.

We had our mail forwarded to Dave and Stacey at their marina in North East, a place near the top of the Chesapeake where Vector can not go. It arrived yesterday morning, and when they let us know, we switched gears from a dinner visit to a lunch visit. We tendered across the canal and met them at Schaefer's Canal House for lunch. It was really great to catch up with them, and we hope our paths cross again later in the summer.

Stacey, Dave, Louise, and Sean at Schaefer's. Photo: Dave Rowe

The early visit let us get under way with a fair tide through the rest of the canal, and we dropped the hook in Anchorage Number 4, north of the canal jetty (map), where we had a bit of protection from the relentless southerlies. It was a comfortable night, other than the wakes of the occasional ships passing by a mile away, which would roll us for a few seconds. We know enough now to dog everything down when anchored in the Delaware.

"Ego Alley," Annapolis. Always a zoo on weekends.

It was pretty calm this morning until we rounded the corner at the Hope Creek nuclear station. Things have been getting progressively worse since then, and we are now bashing through 2-3 footers on a short three-second period, made worse by driving into them.  As I wrap up typing, we still have another hour and half of this before we make the protection of the Cape May Canal.

They're wanting to raise the seawalls at Ego Alley. We've been there with the dinghy landing well under water.

With the unreliability of these marine forecasts, we have no idea how long we will be pinned down here. We were hoping for a window to Atlantic City tomorrow, which is a better place to be pinned down for a while, but that's looking unlikely now.

The first time I've noticed dedicated, and apparently free, scooter parking downtown.

Whenever we get a North Atlantic window to get past New Jersey, we will continue directly on up the Hudson and into the New York Canals to head up to Lake Ontario. That will push off any repair work in Mamaroneck on the paint job until the end of the summer, so that we can be in New York City for some other items we've put on the calendar. That should give us about a month in the lake, if we don't get waylaid before then.

Jersey boy homecoming

We are under way southbound in the Delaware Bay, bound for Cape May, NJ. That will have us poised for the home stretch, the run in the north Atlantic up the NJ coast to New York Harbor. It has certainly been quite the ride, and this is the earliest in the year we've ever been this far north.

Thursday after I posted here we continued our excellent run -- right up until we were east of the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, at which point we wolfed down our dinner just before driving right in to a line of severe thunderstorms, which the weather radio had been screaming about for an hour. 35 knot winds, driving rain, hail, and, most concerning, "continuous cloud to ground lightning," as the forecast put it, stayed with us around the corner into the Patuxent and nearly to Solomons.

Passing Hope Creek (left) and Salem (right) nuclear plants after sunrise this morning.

Louise was all geared up and braced for anchoring in driving rain, but we got a reprieve just before we arrived at the harbor, and we anchored in a dry spell with the sun trying to break through. We had the hook down by 7:30 in a familiar spot near Leg Island (map), the closest spot to both the town dinghy dock and a trio of waterfront restaurants with docks, on the theory we'd be there a couple of days.

Friday's sea conditions were better than forecast, and, in hindsight, we should have just weighed anchor and set off in the morning. But a multi-night stop in Solomons had taken root in our brains, and we remained firmly in place. I knocked a project off the list, repositioning, securing, and caulking the flooring I installed nearly two years ago but never got around to finishing after letting it fully relax into place.

Light show at our anchorage in Solomons, courtesy of the storm we had just driven through.

The system we had feared did move in, albeit with less bite, and it rained all afternoon, which convinced us we would be donning our foul-weather gear to sprint to the very nearest restaurant dock for dinner. But once again we got a reprieve, and when we saw a gap in the rain we quickly splashed the tender and went ashore at the Lighthouse Restaurant. Still the closest place, thinking it might well be raining again on the return trip.

It was great to get off the boat, and dinner was good, at least right up until my very last bite of crab cake, where I found a human hair. The manager was quite apologetic and took my dinner off the tab, but much time will have to pass before I am ready to return. It was still dry after dinner and we strolled a couple of blocks before heading home. Had we known the whole dinner excursion would be anything other than a waterlogged and hurried affair, we might have tried to connect with some friends who spent the season here, but we figured there might be time for that later in the stop.

The view from our dinner table.

Encouraged by the better-than-forecast conditions on Friday, Louise checked the weather Saturday morning, and it looked like we might be able to get a late start after the worst of it in the morning and just make Annapolis by sunset. We had already decked the tender Friday night, "just in case," or I would have headed in to the dinghy dock for more of a walk in the morning.

It looked like a noon start would be best, but circumstances conspired to drive us out of the anchorage more than an hour sooner. That would be the nesting pair of osprey who decided, at 10am, that Vector was absolutely, positively in the perfect spot for their nest. After the third time climbing precariously atop the soft top to heave their nesting material, and even a freshly dead fish, overboard, we decided they would not be deterred until we left the area. I even tied a streamer on the VHF antenna, which worked back in NY the last time we had this problem, to no avail.

We could have moved to another spot in the harbor, but with just an hour or so to our intended departure, we opted to just weigh anchor and slow-roll our way out of the harbor. A half hour later, we reached Drum Point, where the Patuxent empties into Chesapeake Bay, and we could see the conditions were not yet favorable. We dropped a lunch hook off the beach just behind the point (map), where it was completely calm, to wait it out.

Sunset over Chesapeake Bay and the western shore from our anchorage off the Little Choptank.

And wait we did, a full two hours, before things settled enough to venture out. We could still make Annapolis, although we'd again be eating under way. The forecast had told us that conditions would improve throughout the day, and certainly they had while we waited at Drum Point. We expected seas to get a bit bigger as we left the protection of Cove Point and faced the full fetch of the bay, and that proved true.

After making the turn and settling in to our new course, however, seas continued to build. A re-check of the forecast revealed that it had changed completely. What should have been steadily improving conditions throughout the afternoon were now forecast to be steadily worsening conditions. Now, however, we were in the middle of the bay, with the nearest protected anchorage in any direction hours away.

We briefly considered turning around and running the two hours back to Solomons, but ultimately decided to press on ahead and find shelter on the eastern shore. After another hour and a half of bashing, getting salt spray all over what the storms had so nicely rinsed, we were finally able to turn onto the Little Choptank River. Another hour got us to Hills Point Cove, west of Ragged Island and Hills Point Neck, where we would be protected as the winds clocked around to the east overnight. We dropped the hook as close to shore as we could get (map).

The only traffic we passed in the canal. This skipper said he sails the Caribbean on his Island Packet sailboat, which coincidentally is the same boat our tugboat-skipper friend sails.

It was a bit bouncy through dinner, but then the winds shifted and we had a calm night. We got an early start Sunday morning to take advantage of the calm, but the tide cycle had us driving uphill the entire day. Annapolis was no longer in the cards, and we passed on by, hugging the eastern shore. Once past Rock Hall there are not a lot of stopping options, and we pressed on ahead to an old standby, Whorton Creek, where we dropped the hook in a new spot off Button Beach (map) right at dinner time.

The long day had us perfectly positioned to have a fair tide through the canal, and yesterday we weighed anchor at 8:30 for a fair tide all the way to Reedy Point. We whizzed right past a favorite stop at Chesapeake City, where we would have had the anchorage and dinghy dock to ourselves, and shot out the eastern end of the canal with a knot still behind us.

Not a great view from our anchorage. Reedy Island at left and a downbound ship at right.

Without starting mid-canal, as we usually do, it's not possible to have a fair tide in both the canal and the Delaware River. So as soon as we made the turn were were facing over two knots against us. Rather than push against that kind of tide for three hours, only to get a dozen miles downriver to an unprotected anchorage, we opted to make it a short day and hole up behind Reedy Island and its boat-eating dike.

We came in at the north end, a new entrance for us, dodging a sailboat and a couple of fishermen, and then spent the better part of an hour clawing our way just three miles downriver to the anchorage, where we dropped the hook squarely between Reedy Island and the historic community of Port Penn (map).

The waterfront that made this a port had shut down by the early 20th century, and has long since been reclaimed by the river, with the town now separated from the water by stands of reeds and dense foliage. A boat ramp 3/4 mile away would provide access to the town, which I would like to explore, but with both water and air temperatures in the 50s it was less appealing. The map says there are two restaurants here as well, but we ate aboard.

Sunrise over Reedy Island this morning as we were getting under way.

This morning we were up before dawn to take advantage of as much ebb as we could get. We threaded the needle through the small navigation gap in the dike and angled across the river. At one point we had over three knots behind us and the speedometer read 9.7 knots, which is lightning fast for us. We ran out of tide mid-river and now I am pushing uphill at 5.7 knots.

Normally we would anchor in Cape May, but we need water and 240 volt power to do the laundry. Things just get more expensive going north from here, and so we are biting the bullet and shelling out $3.25 per foot for a marina tonight. Tomorrow we will move to an anchorage to wait for our outside window to Atlantic City.

Finally relaxed, in Maryland

We are underway southbound in Chesapeake Bay, finally more relaxed after a whirlwind transit from New York City. While the bay can get pretty rough at times, we are essentially now in inland waters and will be for the foreseeable future, with plenty of anchorages and no impetus to keep moving. We're glad to have the Atlantic Ocean behind us, at least for now.

Seas got progressively stiffer after dinner Friday, and I had a bit of a bouncy watch. Louise was able to get some fitful sleep, and with conditions tolerable, I opted to run right past our bail-out options at Barnegat Light and Atlantic City. Barnegat Light (the lighthouse) has been extinguished since January, distinctly changing the character of passing these shoals.

Sunset over New Jersey, before the seas built.

The lights of Atlantic City are visible for many miles, and were quite helpful in seeing the horizon on a moonless night. We seldom pass this close in the wee hours, and I was surprised the animated light display on the Ferris wheel runs all night. The "golf ball" atop the Ocean Resort is normally an animated display, but it was solid magenta all night, I presume in honor of breast cancer awareness.

Even though I reduced rpm at the beginning of my watch, our arrival time got progressively earlier throughout the cruise. The forecast had called for at least a knot of adverse current the entire cruise, but that proved to be wrong. I had to set an earlier alarm when I turned in, and I awoke even earlier than that, coming back on watch at 7:40am. With seas much calmer, we increased to cruise rpm and had the hook down across from the Cape May Coast Guard Station (map) before 8:30.

Atlantic City. The best my phone could do on a pitching boat from three miles away.

The early arrival let us get some much-needed rest, and we decided to weigh anchor with the tide to continue up Delaware Bay in the calmest conditions we'd see for days, rather than spend the night in Cape May as originally planned. We had the anchor up at 1pm, picked our way through the shallow spots in the canal at low tide, and rode the flood all the way to the Cohansey River, dropping the hook in Cohansey Cove (map) just at dinner time.

That put us in a great position yesterday morning to weigh anchor at the perfect time to ride the flood to the C&D Canal, and then whizz through the canal with plenty of current behind us. We bypassed our usual stop at Chesapeake City in favor of continuing to take advantage of the current, proceeding all the way to the Sassafras River and a new stop for us at the tiny town of Betterton, where we dropped the hook a short distance from the town docks (map).

I picked this stop, rather than the more comfortable anchorages on either side of it that we've used in the past, because there is a very well-rated pizza place, Marzella's by the Bay, just a half mile walk from the free dock. We were looking forward to pizza so much that we splashed the tender and headed ashore even though it was drizzling, bundled up and carrying our umbrellas.

Seldom is Delaware Bay this calm. Cape May behind us in the distance.

Imagine our disappointment, then, when we arrived at the restaurant a bit wet to find a sign on the door that the dining room was closed. They have apparently been getting by since the start of the pandemic on delivery and pick-up orders. Of course, we did not have with us our whizzy water-resistant insulated pizza carrier that we bought at the start of the pandemic, but we went inside anyway.

The octogenarian proprietor, Mr. Marzella himself, and his lone employee, Justin, were extremely accommodating, and when they learned we had a long, wet walk to get there, offered to let us order at the counter and sit at one of the tables while we ate our meal. They even had a fridge full of cold beer. It was all very tasty and we are grateful they allowed us to stay. Mr. Marzella chatted us up while we waited for the pizza. While we were eating he took a phone call from a waterfront friend who wondered if he had seen a pair of boaters who wandered up the hill. Small town.

As if that was not enough, after we finished, Justin, who not only makes the pizzas but also does the deliveries, offered to run us back down to the dock. En route we saw the remainder of the tiny town that we had missed on our way up the hill. And here I thought we had left this sort of kindness behind in Canada. For anyone coming along after us, the restaurant is happy to deliver to the town dock, which is free for 72 hours. It's too small for Vector but many cruising boats will have no trouble there.

Sunset over Delaware from our anchorage in Cohansey Cove.

Winds overnight were higher than forecast and it was a little bouncy this morning. Thus we weighed anchor as soon as the tide turned and are en route to our next stop, a familiar anchorage off the Riviera Beach neighborhood of Pasadena, MD. Since our hasty departure from NYC, I've been scrambling to find a place to get our boosters, as well as a place to get the old Starlink back to FedEx. There's a Walgreens with a FedEx ship center just a half mile from the marina there.

Once our errands are done in Riviera Beach, we officially have no agenda, and now our cruising will be much more relaxed. Our friends Dorsey and Bruce aboard Esmeralde are just a little ahead of us, arriving to Annapolis this evening, and we hope to connect there for our next stop. After that we'll be easing south to warmer climes.

Our friends Stacey and Dave aboard Stinkpot are having engine troubles in Southport, and we've extended an offer to help as we pass through, so that will keep us moving steadily through the Chesapeake and past the Outer Banks. It's also 20° warmer there, and the numbers are telling us we need to get back to outdoor dining posthaste.

Harbor of Grace

We are under way southbound in the Chesapeake Bay, making tracks on a good travel day before we are once again pinned down by wind. We just wrapped up four days in Havre de Grace, Maryland, where we were also pinned down by wind.

View of the Concord Point Light this morning as we weighed.

When last I posted, a week ago, we were northbound in the Delaware Bay. We squeezed in behind the Reedy Island Dike, a training wall in the Delaware River that extends south from Reedy Island for three miles. We pulled up to a spot with favorable depths, abreast of the south warning light (map), and dropped the hook. As a side note, the dike is fully awash at low tide and just a short distance below the surface at high tide -- hence the warning light and a phalanx of buoys -- and it has claimed numerous inattentive vessels over the years, including a very nice Nordhavn a few years back.

Our view from the Reedy Island anchorage, dominated by the nuclear station across the river in NJ. In the foreground can be seen the warning mark for the dike, just below the surface.

We had a relaxing afternoon, a nice dinner aboard, and a calm night. Friday we did not weigh anchor until the tide was favorable on both the Delaware and the C&D canal, about mid-day, and we left the anchorage via a marked gap in the dike. The flood was running hard enough that we crabbed through at a considerable angle, making the narrow entrance seem even smaller.

We had a nice sunset from Reedy Island.

We raced up the Delaware on the flood and turned into the C&D just as the tide there was turning. The confluence always has confused eddies and I steered by hand. Soon enough we were whizzing westbound, arriving at Chesapeake City nearly mid-ebb. We normally anchor in the basin here, but we needed the facilities of a dock, so we spun around and pulled alongside Schaefer's Canal House, a familiar stop (map). They put us up next to the restaurant, and as I docked from the flybridge I was eye to eye with the lunch patrons on the patio.

Vector at Schaefer's. We had only one neighbor overnight.

The main reason we needed the dock was to do laundry. We do have our own machines, but they use a lot of water for wash and power for the dryer, so other than an occasional emergency load, we only run them when tied up. I started the water filling and Louise started the first of several large loads of laundry as soon as we were settled in. Unfortunately, the power here is only 208 volts rather than the normal 240, meaning everything takes a third longer to dry.

Sunset from our dinner table. Some boat nearly in the way.

We had a nice dinner on the deck at Schaefer's, where my view was dominated by Vector. The canal was relatively quiet during our stay, but the enormous RoRo Hoegh Trident did pass by at night, with the pilot boat Breakaway kissing her side. This is where the Maryland pilot disembarks and the Delaware pilot embarks, or vice-versa. In the morning we dropped lines right at slack and moved over to the fuel dock, where we bunkered 1,200 gallons at the best price we could find in the entire region, $2.90 per gallon.

The festive lights of Chesapeake City across the canal. We seldom have this vantage.

Bunkering took a full hour and a half, and we departed the dock with considerable ebb behind us. By this time it was the height of the weekend lunch rush, and we headed out into a veritable sea of incoming boats headed to Schaefer's or the Chesapeake Inn for lunch. We ended the day at a familiar anchorage in the Bohemia River (map), but not before passing a trio of, I kid you not, zebras on a hillside on Elk Neck. Not the only zebras on a farm in Maryland, according to Google, but we never found their backstory.

Another lovely sunset, from the Bohemia River.

Sunday we weighed anchor, rounded Turkey Point at the tip of Elk Neck, and made our way up the Susquehanna River to Havre de Grace, Maryland, a new stop for us. We dropped the hook in 15' off the historic Concord Point lighthouse (map), which is so much shorter than the surrounding trees that we could not even see it until we were right next to it. The annual Art Festival was in progress in Concord Point Park as we arrived, and we had also noticed some of it in a different park behind the city marina.

Vector at anchor in Havre de Grace. That's the promenade at left.

From our saloon we enjoyed the music of a Tom Petty cover band at the festival. Just before dinner we dropped the tender and headed the very short distance to a floating dock near the lighthouse, so we could stroll the festival in its final hour. After walking past the booths at Concord Point, we walked the wooden promenade around the end of the point, a bit over a quarter mile to Millard Tydings Park for the other half of the festival. They had different music at this venue -- a US Army combo was playing jazz and belting out Frank Sinatra hits. We presume they came from the neighboring Aberdeen Proving Ground, from which we occasionally heard ordnance during our stay, and where Louise once lived when her dad, the ordnance guy, was stationed there.

Army jazz combo in the gazebo at Tydings Park. Army sound guy at far left hard to see due to Operational Camouflage. The crooner front and center, but facing away, just finished In Other Words.

We walked back to Concord Point Lighthouse on city streets, passing the Decoy Museum and the Maritime Museum and arriving just as the show wrapped up and the vendors were tearing down. We got back in the tender and ran a half mile upriver to the Tidewater Grill, which has its own dock, and had a nice dinner on their patio.

Mandatory shot of a generic Arts festival.

Monday the weather was lovely and I ran ashore stag to wander the town. I tied the tender up at the little-used boat ramp at the Jean Roberts Park, just north of the historic 1907 railroad bridge that still today carries Amtrak's high-speed electrified trains from Washington to New York and beyond. Long-time readers may know that we stopped numerous times in Havre de Grace in the bus, parking at the Elks Lodge, but that's a very long walk from town and this was my first stroll through the historic downtown.

Re-purposed early 20th century buildings in downtown Havre de Grace

In addition to enjoying my walk along the downtown streets, I also scoped out other tender landings, finding a decent one at the Frank Hutchins Park, and some dinner venues with outdoor seating. Dinner was iffy, with a thunderstorm due to arrive at 7pm, but we decided to chance it by going early. We returned ashore at Hutchins Park and walked down to MacGregor's, eating on their nice covered deck in case of sprinkles. We enjoyed dinner and were just about to order dessert when Louise, checking the radar, said "we gotta go"; we took dessert in a to-go box and scurried back to the tender. We arrived back at Vector mere seconds before the heavens opened. Winds quickly escalated to 39 steady, and the harbor was a frothy mess.

Sunset over the city yacht basin, from our anchorage, in a calmer moment.

Having just become eligible for a booster shot, I had made an appointment at the CVS in town for Tuesday, and I also had a script refill sent there. As of Monday night, it looked like it would be pouring rain all day Tuesday and I very nearly rescheduled. But by Tuesday morning the forecasted rain had moved back to the evening, and I took the e-bike ashore at the closest dock for the trek up the hill to CVS, by way of the post office and the dollar store.

I initially had the one-shot Janssen vaccine, and I opted to get Moderna for my booster. After the 15-minute wait period I went next door to the Weis supermarket, across the street from the aforementioned Elks lodge and thus very familiar, to stock up on provisions before heading back to the dock. It was a whirlwind errands trip, but I got to see a bit more of the town, further afield than walking distance. Before errands I made a quick stop at the old Susquehanna and Tidewater canal lock.

Final lock on the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal, where it rejoined the Susquehanna.

The rain arrived at dinner time and we had a nice dinner on board. Yesterday, forecast gale-force westerlies had us pinned on the boat all day, which was fine with me as the booster shot had me feeling low-energy for most of it. By dinner time the winds had let up considerably, and I ran ashore at the boat ramp with our insulated pizza carrier and picked up a pie at Nonnie's Brick Oven Pizza, which was quite good. After dinner we decked the tender for an early departure this morning.

While we were just fine in gale force westerlies at that anchorage, tomorrow's gale is easterly, so we needed to get out of dodge. We'll be on the eastern shore tonight, so we should be well protected.

City seal over the Maryland flag, painted on a piece of Amtrak infrastructure.

Update: We are docked at the free bulkhead in Rock Hall, Maryland (map). This is a familiar stop, but we were last here in 2014. We've secured the boat with extra lines for the storm. I am a little disappointed that the nearby power outlets are turned off, which means we will be running the gen here, but still it's nice to be able to just walk off the boat.