Cool morning. Sky is blue, fish are coming to the surface creating little circular ripples where they scour the surface for food. A crab boat pulled out this morning, nice and early with someone up top banging away at the bait (I assume) on the way out, all the pots/cages empty and ready to cast out again. There's a blue heron across the way standing in the water looking for his breakfast in the sandy water below low tide level. The trees behind him are tinged in color. This place will be stunning in another couple weeks when all the maples and trees come into full color. There are so many leaves on trees that I don't recognize here. The water current is flowing in from the Chesapeake so the tide must be rising. What they call creeks here amaze me. I'd call it a good size river at home. Worton Creek is very good size, and quite pretty. I could visualize a house here easily. Herons, eagles, all manner of sea birds, fish, crab, woods. I wouldn't mind living here. We need to see if they have some charts of this area before heading out to Annapolis this morning. I never thought I'd like being "up a creek" but I like this place.
While making coffee this morning I heard a bunch of geese flying over - honk, onnk... onk, onk... as they were heading south from their Canadian, Artic-breeding grounds. There used to be millions of geese in the Chesapeake at one time, but over the centuries hunters, and locals for whatever reasons (food, sport, pest control) have thinned them out, just because... I can imagine the great traffic jams in the sky and on the bays and creeks here. Phenomenal. But slowly, over time, since this area was settled, the habitat that supports the great birds and other wildlife has dwindled, as people have moved in, filled in the marshes and creeks and generally polluted large areas before realizing the impact that they were having on this treasure we call the Chesapeake.

Coming into Annapolis was.... Holey cow I'm lost for words... amazing... incredible... Holey cow I'm still lost for words. I've never seen so much boat traffic. The amount of sailboats was incredible! Sailboat races, boats coming in to the various rivers, creeks, boats going out, power boats, freighters traveling the channel highways to Baltimore, etc... Everywhere I looked, there were sails. Traffic was heading every which way in a confusion of weekend travelers (us included). I have a feeling that coming into Annapolis on a weekend is not a good idea. Coming in the weekend before the boat show realllllly not a good idea. We motored around for a while looking at moorings and possible anchoring spots. The only available moorings were private ones (hence not available) Yikes. Entering Spa Creek - the place was packed. We came up to the bascule bridge and hailed them. No response. I called him on the phone and he said they open on the hour & half hour. Would I like for him to open it on the hour? Yes please. Boat's name? Kolibrie. Spell that? K-O-L-I-B-R-I-E. Okay then. Click. Before I could ask him about anything else. Soooo... Forward, backward, forward, backward for 20 minutes while boat traffic started piling up behind us also waiting for the bridge to open. After we entered Spa Creek we started looking for somewhere to anchor. The place was packed. So after motoring about for awhile we finally anchored in for the night after 3 tries where we were to close to everyone (it was uncomfortable) then a homeowner came out and told us we needed to move after we swung around pretty close to his dock (we were going to move as we'd already noted that). We finally settled next to Simpatico (a 35 ft O'Day) from S. Dakota. Hopefully we'll get to meet them tomorrow. They told us that they had set a Bahamian anchor with 2 anchors, so we followed suit. Since it was getting dark we decided to call it a night. Tomorrow we'll try and settle in better. It's pretty calm tonight so no worries. My cell service is working again - got a message from Laura & called her back - they're off to Disney with the little ones for a week (how fun J I miss doing that kind of stuff). I also have internet access again YAY! It was good to see that Sister Patti and my weather guru Bob found us (go Bull Dogs!). Bob - if we make it to the West Coast - I still owe you and the Mrs a beer and maybe dinner J