Our new sail was finally delivered on Friday afternoon so we busied ourselves with last minute preparations for our Saturday morning departure. As mentioned in earlier posts we haven’t had the best of luck with good sailing conditions on the Chesapeake, however, this time the wait was worth it. We dropped the mooring ball at 9:30 and motored out of the anchorage in a building north wind. By the time we set the main sail the north wind was a steady 15 knots, gusting to 20 in bright sunshine. We wove our way between a couple of dinghy race couses then set a south bound course for Solomon’s Island. As the wind filled in dead astern Dagny was in her element as we rolled out the new genny, strapped the main out with the preventer and settled in for a great downwind ride. Mill Creek in the Solomon’s is one of our favourite anchorages and we were relieved to find it empty as we rolled in after a busy day.

The weather here has been unbelievable, sunny every day, a little cool over night but we haven’t seen a rain cloud in a week. Once we wiped the dew of the windshield in the morning we were off with coffee in hand for the 45 minute motor back to the bay. As we cleared the entrance to the inlet we were able to set the main and after a 45 minute motor sail around a headland, we bore off, set the sails and we’re off again for a great day of sailing. Destination, Fishing Bay. As the day wore on the wind gradually eased off forcing us to motor sail for a while, but considering our past luck we were ecstatic with our progress. By day end we had covered almost 100 miles in two days of sailing. The only glitch of the day came when we dropped the anchor, we couldn’t get it to bite on the first set, which is extremely rare for Rocky. Bev tried twice to back down but to our surprise it wouldn’t hold. However, when I hauled it up I discovered we had fouled on an old anchor line lying on the bottom. Third time lucky as we reset in a different area without an issue and settled in for peaceful night sleep.

Today’s picture is of a duck blind at the sunrise in Fishing Bay, notice we anchored outside of shotgun range, just in case.