The winds were still blowing when we got up on the day of our departure from Annapolis, so we took our time getting underway. The forecast was for the winds to drop off around lunchtime, so we waited until after rush hour as the drawbridge we needed to pass under would not open until 9 due to traffic anyway. Turned out there were a couple of other boats wanting to pass under as well, so we untied the lines and got in line to go under the bridge.
We were in a parade of boats heading out of the harbour. We followed this sailboat through the bridge and out into the mooring field, then he peeled off to go watch the Blue Angels practice.
Out in the main harbour conditions were rocky. It was still a bit windy, but the rockiness was mainly due to boat wakes. As part of Commissioning week at Annapolis, the Blue Angels were putting on a show, and they had a practice scheduled for 14:00 that afternoon. Well, at 9:30 in the morning there was a steady parade of boats headed at high speed for the river where the practice was going to be held. This was creating really rocky conditions near the harbour. For the next 1.5 hours, as we travelled up the river, we were passed by a non-stop stream of boats, all headed at high speed for the show. It was like Waterworld! We could hear the police and coast guard on the radio trying to keep order. What a circus.
As we passed in front of Baltimore the winds died out to nothing, and we had a really smooth ride the rest of the way to Bowley's marina. Coming into the marina we were treated to a kind of air show, a squadron of A-10 Warthogs was landing. One after the other they came in on the same turning course and set in to land. These planes look really strange, all kinds of flaps and engines and things sticking out. After the warthogs, we watched a lot of private jets and other small planes land. Turned out there was an airport here which was a combined civilian and Air National Guard facility.
We took on fuel, got pumped out and set in our slip. They should actually call this place Rolley's marina. There is only a breakwater on one side, and we were rolled all afternoon from passing boat wakes. Everyone here seems to have no idea what no-wake speed is. We saw boat owners returning to their slips who waked THEMSELVES because they waited too long to come off plane. They put us on the end of a T-head, which put us first in line for wakes, and also as far away from anything as possible. The docks were really super-long here. When Louise went to the office to pay for our slip, it took a loooong time to walk the dock there and back.
View looking down the dock. Our slip was over a thousand feet from shore.
Someone had set up a fishing rod on a holder at the end of the long dock.
As we were setting up, the boat got covered in bugs. It was like they instantly appeared and landed on the boat. Had to keep swatting them away as we set up our lines and shore power cord. The midges (fish flies) did not bite, but there were thousands of them flying around. We watched the swifts flying around and chowing down. We became a kind of swift-aircraft carrier. The birds would fly around catching bugs then land on the hand rails to eat, then off again for another meal.
The marina was constantly moving boats into slips. We have seen that the marinas here are "waking up" and getting ready for their summer season. We were surprised that their boating season seems to be the same as ours, even though the weather is at least a month ahead of what it is in Canada. Seems to be that Memorial day is the start of their summer season. Surprising, as some boats apparently stay in the water all year round here.
Chesapeake marinas use special tug boats to move yachts around. These tugs are small plastic pontoons with an outboard mounted on a swivel. The motor can turn 360 degrees making the tugs super maneuverable. The driver turns a wheel to control the boat (orange), the outboard motor is inside that orange wheel that the guys turns. Note the bugs on the window this was shot through.
The tug platform has a V-notch that the front of the boat being towed fits into, then they tie the two bow lines to the tug to keep the boat in place. The little tugs are super-maneuverable and a great way to move boats around.
Around 16:00 in the afternoon, a fleet of power boats came past, all heading inland. We figured that these must have been the boats that had gone to Annapolis for the air show. Of course they waked the marina pretty good. We have not been rocked like this on the loop before. We have been in a couple of rolley places, but this place is off the chart. Even the locals who keep their boats in the marina wake their own facility as they depart and enter. We were in a slip with pilings on both sides, so set out ropes on both sides to spider-web us into the slip and keep us off the pilings.
This baby tern sat on a piling while its parents fed it. The adults would fly around catching fish, then return to the piling to stuff the food into the baby.
Whenever we arrive at a new place, once we get set in we use google maps to see what kind of interesting things are around. Well, there was nothing here, we are in the middle of nowhere. We were really isolated, on the end of a super-long dock in a marina with nothing. On their website they listed a pool, but it was not open for the season yet. They also listed a bar, which was not open yet. The closest restaurant or store was 5 km away. In scooter range, but the weather forecast was for rain for the next several days, so we were stuck here. The weather was so bad the marina was empty, we saw only a few boaters on the docks.
At dusk the water smoothed out so we headed to bed. However, all night long the boat moved. We are used to the boat moving, its a boat of course, but normally things settle overnight. Even in an anchorage, you don't notice the waves. However in an anchorage, the boat tends to orient itself to face into any swell, which minimizes movement, and the boat gently pitches but does not roll (pitching is up and down movement fore-and aft). In this marina, we are tied in one orientation, and the swell comes at us from the beam and the stern quarter. This causes a lot of rolling (rolling is up and down movement side-to-side) and pitching, so the boat tends to "corkscrew". At about 4 in the morning we were woken up by some heavy-duty waves. We figured a bunch of commercial fishing boats must have been headed out.
This was the view out of our bedroom window first thing in the morning. The boat was covered in these bugs. Every square inch of boat had bugs on it. The boat beside us appeared a kind of grey colour because there were so many bugs on it.
This is the view out of the front window. Each window seems to have its own spider that stakes out the area. Well, the spiders ate really well the days we were there. Not all the spots on this window are bugs. If you look close you can see some big black blobs of spider poop.
The midges left behind poop of their own, which was green. A few days later Louise hosed off the bugs, and the poop created a kind of green effluvium that she washed overboard. The decks were covered in this green liquid while she was hosing off the bugs. Yuck!
We spent the day stuck inside the boat. It was windy, cold and rainy. The boat never stopped moving. You had to hold on to something just to move from one place to another. Gotta say this is the worst choice we have made for an overnight stop so far on the loop. To make matters worse, the weather was forecast to last for 5 days, and we were going to be pinned here. Crap.
Since there was nothing else to do, I decided to wash the bilge. Our bilge is normally dry, but it does collect a bit of water when it rains. I try to get this water out quickly, as it does not take long before it starts to smell.
This gives you an idea of how much the boat was moving. It settled down in the evening a little, but the wind was blowing big waves which refracted around the break-wall and kept us moving all the time. Every once in a while a boat would go by and add its wake to the action.
I am constantly checking weather as we go to update our plans for the next few days. When we are in "big water" I also monitor the Coast Guard website for info. They issued a small craft warning for the northern Chesapeake for the days we were to be here, so we were really stuck. Despite this, we saw a couple of power boats headed out - what were they thinking? At least one of the boats returned shortly after passing the point near the marina, I guess the conditions got really bad there, and they were horrible where we could see in the bay we were in.
In mid-morning a sailboat came in and tied up to the fuel dock, apparently they were seeking shelter. We also saw a rescue boat go out around 10 in the morning. They returned around 14:00 towing a big sailboat. Conditions were nasty for sure.
In mid-afternoon we saw a mega-yacht coming across the bay towards the marina. It was about 70 feet long, and really moving. As he approached the marina, he kept the speed on, only throttling back at the last second before the gas dock. The resulting tsunami, a wave about 4 feet high, swept through the marina. We had to sit down and hang on. Luckily we were spider-webbed to the pilings so no damage, but we could see the sailboat masts swinging like crazy. What a douche. The boat hovered outside the marina, it looked like he was trying to get fuel or something, so I got on the VHF to the marina and told them the name of the boat and what he had done. Shortly after, the boat turned around and left.
The winds picked up around 18:00, and it turned grey and got really miserable as the temperature dropped, and there was a steady, cold rain. We watched in amazement as several people came down the docks in foul weather gear and proceeded to get on a couple of sailboats. We could see a couple of other sailboats in the bay by now, so figured that there must be some kind of weekly race going on. Talk about hard core, the small craft warning was still in effect! We saw at least six sailboats go out. They stayed out until sundown, then returned to the marina at dusk.
Before it got dark I went out and checked all our lines, and made a couple of small adjustments. Nylon rope stretches a bit when it gets wet, so our stern was a bit loose. I re-set the lines to keep us a bit further from the dock so if waves came through we would not hit anything.
Several times a day I check the weather using two different apps. Windfinder has a nice interface that allows you to see forecast and conditions at various weather stations. You can see info in both graphic and tabular format. The table is really nice for viewing conditions several days into the future. Predict Wind is another app that allows you to choose between 10 different weather models, and it also predicts wave height. Each one uses a slightly different algorithm to predict the conditions, and I usually check 3 or 4 of them. I also check the NOAA website for the area we are in, as well as the Coast Guard site for weather warnings, and finally when we are in coastal areas, I check a weather service called Marv's Weather. I check the weather forecast at least three times a day. Before we went to bed, I did my last weather check of the day and noticed that there was now a break in the weather forecast for the next day. Basically the winds were going to switch directions almost 180 degrees, and there would be a small one or two hour window in between, like the eye of a storm. I figured that this window was too narrow to try to use. Even when the wind drops it can take a long time before the water settles down, and as well, you don't want to get caught in the middle of big water if the wind comes up. Small weather windows can get dangerous.
When I got up in the morning at my usual 5:30 am, the first thing I did was to check the weather like usual. Well, turns out the window had gotten much better, we would have calm conditions all morning and most of the afternoon. We were not super happy with where we were, the marina was not well protected and there was nothing to do here, so I did some research to see how far we could get in this window. Turned out there was a super-well protected and inexpensive marina about 2 hours away. Going there would improve our situation, and it was do-able within the time frame the weather gods were giving us. I woke Louise up and ran the idea by her, and before you knew it we were having breakfast and she was booking us a slip at the new marina online. Moving meant we might give up a day at this marina we had already paid for, but we decided the change in conditions would be worth the sacrifice.
When Louise returned the gate key to the marina she was chased by this squirrel looking for a handout. She had obviously been fed by people, and was not shy about asking for food. Notice she was feeding babies.
Feed Me!
I got the boat ready to go while Louise returned the gate key to the marina. While she was there, she told them we would be leaving a day early, and they told her they would refund us for the unused day. Nice! We got underway around 7:30 am, which is a little late for us, but we wanted the extra time for our destination marina to open, and also for the Chesapeake to calm down a bit. Conditions were wavy but not difficult, we were running into one-foot waves the whole way, which is something the boat handles well.
We made it to Worton Creek marina shortly before 10:00 am and easily got into our slip without help. This place specializes in REALLY big boats, so the slips were massive and easy to get into. The place was really well protected, and looks a lot like some places on the Rideau. While we were tying up the boat, we met Carol of Summer Hours. Turned out she and her husband were new loopers, and were preparing to start their loop the same day we are planning to be moving on. Cool.
Around 16:00 the Coast Guard re-issued a small craft warning as winds on the bay had re-started. Really glad we moved as the winds were now from the opposite direction, and had we stayed where we were we would have been hit directly with rollers from the bay. At this place, the water was flat calm.
One of the tradesmen here used a trailer to haul his tools to the dock. Instead of pulling it by hand, he decided to get a little help from his truck.
Here I am going into the small Jeffries tube under the counter. Our sink faucet has a small screen on the hot water input line. Every few months, this screen gets clogged with stuff from the hot water tank. For some reason, this only happens on the hot water side. To fix it I have to disconnect the faucet and clean out the screen. Not the easiest access, but not the most difficult repair on the boat either.
While I was working on the sink, Louise got the hose and cleaned all the bugs off the side decks of the boat. All of these bugs came with us on the ride across the Chesapeake. Once she washed them off, the boat looked normal again. At least until the next batch of bugs arrived the next morning.
This marina was also isolated, but not as much as the previous one. There was a pizza place nearby called Milano's that delivered to the marina, so we decided to treat ourselves to some take-out. Going out to get the pizza from the delivery guy required layering up as the temperature dropped noticeably in the late afternoon. Since leaving Annapolis, we have had to turn on the heat in the boat in the mornings. Our air conditioner is actually a heat pump that can heat the boat. Once the boat warms up in the morning it usually stayed warm as the day wore on, but this day we had to turn the heat back on in the evening.
Next morning, we noticed that the Coast Guard had posted another small craft warning that was to last two days. We have not seen nasty weather shut things down like this since lake Michigan.
The marina serviced work boats as well as pleasure boats. They had two big sheds for fibreglass work and painting, as well as a really big machine shop. Here you can see one of the crab boats. They stack the crab pots on the top of the boat. These boats are made of metal, looked like steel.
Close up of some crab pots. You can see the openings for the crabs as well as the bait boxes inside. The pots are made of plastic-coated wire.
They were working on this dredge in the boat yard. Based on the size, I think this one is used in marina harbours. It was way too small to do anything to a shipping channel.
Close up of one of the tugs they use to move boats around the harbours here. The outboard is mounted on a gimbal that can turn 360 degrees. There is a steering wheel welded on top to control the thrust direction.
Bottom of a wooden boat that was rotting away in the yard. We will never understand those who own wooden boats - they are a non-stop woodworking project. Doesn't take long for them to fall apart unless they are constantly maintained.
Gives you an idea of the slope from the boat storage yard down to the launch facility.
Notice how the bow of the boat is swung off the front. They adjust the straps to keep the boat level as they go down the incline. As a result, the boat swings well forward in the slings.
Around 10 in the morning, the boat beside us in the marina left. He said he was going south, somewhere near Annapolis. The boat was big, a 50 foot sport fisher, so it was able to handle conditions that are too gnarly for us. We don't go out when there is a small craft advisory.
They had a pool at the marina, but it was not opened yet. Seems like Memorial Day is the opening time for summer season, but with the weather so cold here we didn't see anyone who was interested in swimming. A few boat owners stopped by on Saturday, but with the small-craft warning on the bay, nobody was moving anywhere. A few owners were cleaning their boats, but not much else going on.
There was a small winery across the bay from the marina, and as it was the only thing in the area besides the marina, we thought about going, as they were opening for the season on this day. However, Louise called and all they had was a small room for wine tasting, no tours or anything else. We decided we did not want to bother going over for that. Instead, I fixed the radar. The last time we used it it was giving loss-of-GPS errors. So, I broke out the manual and did some troubleshooting. Like a lot of other things, it was a loose connection.
Just after supper we went over to Summer Hours to visit with Carol and David. They were in the process of getting ready to leave. Their plan was to leave the same day as us, however they had two outstanding jobs on the boat that the marina was to finish. Buffing the boat and fixing their autopilot, so they were not absolutely sure they would leave on time. Turned out they had three cats on board, and two of them came out to visit us. Made us realize how much we miss having a cat.
Some pretty heavy duty damage on the side of this boat. Don't know why it is still in the water, seems like it would not be sea worthy in this condition.
The next morning Louise and did some binge-watching, re-watching Bosch Legacy in prep for watching the third season. Louise got contacted by Carol on Sunset Seeker who have just completed their loop. Turned out they were nearby at their home marina, and Carol offered to take Louise shopping. Carol picked Louise up in the morning and took her to the grocery store, while back on the boat I did the engine checks in prep for leaving the next morning. After Louise got back from her shopping trip, we did some more binge-watching.
The crew of Summer Hours got their hull buffed finally, but was still waiting for their autopilot repair and so would not be starting their loop for a few days. Looks like we will be on our own tomorrow.
Boat name of the day: Berth Control
