I started writing this blog the day before I intend to post it simply because I had some thoughts I wanted to capture in my mental state after a glass of wine and an afternoon of relaxing.

Annapolis is a wonderful place to go as a boater and the boat show is an exceptional time to do it, but after two weeks of crowds, noise, wakes, and, yes even the toot toot toot of the USNA we were more than ready for a nice quiet anchorage. Indeed, all the time we were in Annapolis there was either breakfast or dinner aboard Nelleke or someone else's boat which is always fun and enjoyable but still, you need time for depressurization. This anchorage in Rhodes River is a great one for that. It's not perfect. There is what used to be an island called High Island which simply isn't there any more. Apparently ten years ago or so a severe storm or hurricane came through and when it passed, the island was no more. We are sitting here at anchor and watching the wave break on the shoal that used to be the island but that's it!

The new new plan is for us to head out directly to St Michaels and spend a day or two there before continuing towards Deltaville.

Wow! Wake up in the AM to a bit of a shock. The forecast is for very snotty weather starting tomorrow so we had better find a good place to hole up. Nelleke has chosen to stay with the original plan and Moonlight Maid will be going on to another place not too far away - Oxford.

So, off we set at 0800. Peri had to forgo his walk in the interest of a really good one this evening. The day rained, it sunned, it clouded, it blowed, in fact it did everything short of snowed and if it were a little cooler it might have even been able to manage that. But the weather wasn't the most exciting part of this leg. I had been planning for a 2 hour jaunt, 'cause that was what my calculations indicated. However Marvellous Master Navigator Mikey not only picked the wrong side of the peninsula that the target town was located on but even chose the wrong river. Sigh. Such embarrassment! Fortunately thanks to Barb reading out a description of the waterway and me being able to see enough through the haze to realize that what she was reading didn't describe at all what I was looking at, I was able to adjust the course before we had gone too much the wrong way. The only victim was distance. What had been a 10 nm trip became a 23 nm venture and instead of taking 2 hours we were looking at 4-5.

We came in at last to the Choptank River and cruised past dozens of oystermen out using their long handled takes to scrape up oysters from the bottom. Barb also made a very profound observation and question and wondered why the crab fishermen always had to make their buoys look so much like seagulls!?

Regardless, at 1450 we found ourselves anchored at San Domingo Creek, off Broad Creek, off the Choptank River, and surrounded on all sides so we should be well protected over the next couple of days. Just a little way along there is a public dingy dock at one end of the Main Street in town. This whole area is what served as the background for James A Mitchner's epic novel Chesapeake, which you should read if you haven't yet. My only criticism of it, the novel, not the anchorage, was that it really didn't have an ending but as it was the story of four families in the area over a period of nearly 400 years, I guess the story is still going on so how can there be an ending?