You know you are isolated when even your cell phone loses coverage. Two days without. That's cool. We can survive, after all, we're the pre-cell-phone generation and have known life without being connected.
Given that we knew the Tropical Storm Sandy was heading "our way", that was not so cool. But made us wonder what on earth life was like before instant communication and knowledge !
So once again we raised our hook in the wee hours of the morning and knew we had about 5 hours to get to where we were going, confident that the incoming information, we would make it before the winds and the storm did.
As we were raising the hook, we figured out what the SO on the chart meant. Slimy Ooze !! Sticky Ooze ??
It's kinda funny, when you know "something is coming" you kind of look for signs around you to enhance that observation, n'est ce pas ? Like this ominous looking sky as we left our anchorage,
And the water was getting a tad more "disturbed" (compared to the molten sea glass of yesterday's travel).
However this photo is much more than disturbed water. It's actually about the disturbance in the water and not "of the water". Do you see what we saw ?? OUR FIRST TWO DOLPHINS !! Please believe us, they were there !
And then look what we saw coming around the river bend,
Bubba Gump Shrimpboat !
Given the narrowness of the channel we pulled aside and slowed down in order to allow him to pass. A fancy two toots of the horn as he went by made us smile and we were glad we did !
What a perch this guy has for hunting.
Hope he wasn't hunting one of these?
And many more hunters hidden in these in the tall marshy grasses,
We had an early lunch in anticipation of our arrival at our hiding spot for the upcoming weather. We had fortuitously stopped at their booth at the Annapolis Boat Show and talked with JC who told us about this great hurricane hiding hole, not that we were anticipating any hurricanes, but still good to know as we filed away his card in our folder. As any cruising boat knows, it's hard to make definitive plans of when you're going to be where, and we always have a Plan A, B or C on the go.
As time would come to tell, we were glad we had kept his information.
We needed to navigate carefully given the depth (barely 8 feet) and narrow width of this channel entrance into River Dunes Marina, but the channel was clearly marked and easy to follow in.
We breathed a huge sigh of relief once we were tied up alongside, thanks to some helping hands of our neighbours on Serendipity. You can see the clouds starting to build from where we had come in...
Once we'd double tied our lines, and made sure we were set up nice and tight, we took a walk to the clubhouse to check in. What a great welcome by the fine folks here, and it was great to see JC again, although he was a tad busy given the constant stream of incoming boats.
One final word, this isn't a Marina. This is a RESORT ! This is what we saw on our way to take our luxurious steam-showers.
So this be our home for the next few days and we can't wait to explore the luxuries it has to offer.
Maybe you can spot us ?