Home in Annapolis!
09 April 2013 | Hillsmere Shores, South River, Annapolis, MD
Donna
We got back to our home marina in Hillsmere, off of the South River, yesterday around noon. We left Norfolk around 10:00am on Sunday morning and motored up the Elizabeth River, trying to stay out of the way of the tugs and ships that were sharing the river with us. We put our sails up as soon as we got out of the river and sailed, with no help from our engine, until about 6:00am Monday morning. The boat was moving well, between five and six knots the whole way. There was a lot of big commercial traffic on the bay on Sunday night. When Bill and I were changing watches, he was going to bed and I was getting up, a Carnival cruise ship came by. You can’t miss them, they have a lot of lights on always. Bill tried to go to sleep but every time he would try and relax another big ship was coming close and I would try to call them on the radio and they wouldn’t answer me. Of course Bill didn’t end up sleeping too much. We can see the names of all the ships on our AIS system. We could hear them talking about us on the VHF radio. One we were able to make contact with told us we were right where he wanted to be and that we should move out of his way. Of course we did. None of the others really got close enough to worry about.
About 6:00am the wind was starting to die down and all the ship traffic must have gotten where it needed to be on Monday morning so Bill went to sleep and I started the engine. We were still concerned about the amount of fuel we had but if Bill had calculated correctly we had enough to get from where we were when we started the engine, Cove Point off of the Patuxent River, to our marina. I was alone on deck when the sun came up. It’s been very rare to watch a sunrise, although we’ve tried to watch the sun set when possible. Above is a picture of the sun rising over the Chesapeake Bay.
We tried to have the sails help us a bit once Bill woke up but the wind was too variable to be helpful. As it turns out we had plenty of fuel and it was good we were using some of it up. We are going to have to empty our fuel tank anyhow. Turns out we have about 8 gallons left. We could have motored a lot more but we were thrilled we could sail most of the bay.
The first thing we did when we got back to our marina was to go get our car. We had to walk to our friend’s house in the neighborhood. She is so wonderful to let us keep our car at her house while we are gone. Everyone in the neighborhood knows Bill since he was the president of the Homeowners Association for such a long time. Someone stopped to pick us up and drive us to get our car. We had heard the car was having trouble starting when our friend would periodically go start it. Luckily we were able to get it started and we’ve been using it continuously since we got home. We have now replaced the tires which is one of the things we knew we would have to do when we got back. Now I will feel much better about driving all the long distances we will drive to go visit our family and friends during the six weeks we plan on being home.
We have already been to all the marine stores in the area, not to mention McDonald’s (twice!!), and had our favorite Papa John’s pizza for dinner last night. We still need to sit down and make a list of all the things we need to fix and replace on the boat. I also must finish my pictures of the Abacos – I will post at least one more time to direct you to the pictures in the Photo Gallery when I get them done. We know we will be in Annapolis at least until the first week of June. There probably won’t be too many blog entries between now and then but please follow us as we go north again and see the rest of Maine and hopefully Nova Scotia this summer!