Mike
10/15/2009, Deltaville, VA

October 13th, 2009 Deltaville, VA
Over coffee we watched the anchorage empty while checking the weather. It was plain to see that today was the day to make the last leg of the Chesapeake. It was going to get cold, windy and rainy for the foreseeable future. But we had things to do here and there are worse places to be socked in.
I went ashore to see who was around and found Rick and Linda on the hard in our spot. They had lightning problems this summer as well and are here letting the marina do the work. (What a concept?)
I also found Roger and Jane of " Sereno 55" parked next to "Tilt"... it seems that Craig just returned to Michigan for the funeral of a friend and won't be back for a week or so.
When I returned to the boat, Kathy had the laundry ready to go and had spent a considerable amount of time cleaning the cockpit floor. It looks better than it has in weeks. Tom of "Perseverance II" had called and was on his way to pick up his crimping tool that had been passed to us from some of his Canadian friends. He arrived in his two-seater 1964 Mercedes convertible... and was kind enough to drive me on a couple of errands around town. We had a nice lunch before returning to the boatyard.
The aundry was backed up so there was really no reason to take our clothes over yet but we did pay our daily usage fee and took the car to the grocery and vegetable stand. Linda rode along with us to pick up a few things as well.
After taking the groceries back to the boat, Kathy took the clothes ashore to get in line for the washing machine while I worked on topping off our fuel tanks. I make two trips to the fuel dock and by the time I was done, Kathy was almost finished with the wash.
Meanwhile, and this is cool, Rick had yelled at me from shore to come in or give him a call. He had mentioned this morning that his radar was being replaced even though it had been working fine for a month. It is the same ours but has three times the range. I told him that I'd be interested in taking it off his hands if the insurance company okayed the deal and so in the afternoon he called them and got the ok.
What he really didn't want was to have the Boatyard get their hands on the unit... and resell. Anyway, I walked over after refueling and he gave the thing to me . . .Wow! If we're lucky it may be a plug and play. The transmitter seems to have the same type of plugs as ours. We'll have to wait and see, but I am hopeful that it will be an easy swap. At the worst, I'll have to snake a new wire down the mizzen mast.
With clean clothes and a new radar we returned to the boat just at dusk and went to work on supper. While is was cooking we put the outboard on the rail and hoisted the dinghy on the long shot that we might be able to travel tomorrow.
We had a great meal of escalloped potatoes and ham with sautéed spinach on the side, and then watched some old "Cold Case" reruns before bed.

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Mike
10/15/2009, Deltaville, VA

October 12th, 2009 Solomons, MD to Deltaville, VA
As you may remember my day started a 2:39 am when the wind came up and "Sapphire" started rocking and rolling like crazy. We should have known better but there was 10 kts forecast which is fine but 20 is not. We made some coffee, watched the GPS to make sure we weren't moving and waited for the sun to come up.
We left a few minutes before 7 and headed out into the Bay. The seas were manageable but the wind on our nose held us to about 3 knots. Once we turned south though and rolled out the jenny, we were making over 7 knots in a lurchy behind the beam reach. Kathy couldn't get comfortable, so went below and tucked herself between our mattress and the wall.
"Sapphire" rolled along making good time. We really didn't have the best sail combination out for the weather but I wasn't about to change things at this point. Kathy showed up about 10:30 and around noon things smoothed out a little, although the wind held at around 20 kts.
Although Jackson Creek was reasonably full, we found a good spot and were anchored by 3:00 pm after averaging 7.3 knots for the 60 mile trip. Our plan is to spend a day here to do laundry, make a trip to the hardware and then pull out tomorrow morning for Norfolk. However, the weather which looked good a day ago is not as appealing today and there is a chance that we may get stuck here longer than anticipated.
It was beautiful here today-sunny and 75 degrees.

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Mike
10/15/2009, Solomons, MD

October 11th, 2009 Annapolis, MD
It was clear and cool this morning so with most of our work in Annapolis complete, we prepared for departure. It took a while getting the anchors out of the mud and cleaned off, but eventually everything was secure and we headed out Spa Creek. We had to wait 20 minutes for the 9:30 bridge opening and then were on our way. There was no wind, and the sun was beginning to warm things up a little.
We began the morning with a slack tide but within a couple of hours caught a fair current of about 1 knot and motored easily at 6.5 to 7 knots. Although we had no particular destination it began to look like Solomon's was the place to stop.
The day was uneventful, warming up to about 64 degrees in the afternoon. We had the cockpit side on and the sun made things toasty inside. Arriving about 4, we decided not to go inside and anchored out in the river mouth. It was an exposed position but the forecast was favorable so we decided to take the chance. We've done the same thing here before and everything was fine.
We cooked a flank steak for dinner and had a salad and some potatoes as sides. I was tired and went to bed early while Kathy stayed up a little later watching "24."
At about 2:45 am the wind began to howl in the rigging, so I got up to check things and turned on the anchor alarm. By 3:15 waves from the NE had built to good and "Sapphire" was hobby-horsing to the point that sleep was impossible. Kathy got up and played computer games while I kept my eye on things. We made pot of coffee around 4:30 and waited for daylight.

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