Out of the Bay
19 May 2007 | Sasafrass Creek, Md.
Jim Lea
We just watched the Preakness on TV, as it was run just a few miles away in Baltimore. We are anchored here, our last anchorage in Chesapeake Bay. Last fall, we spent our second night here as we headed south, and went through our first Chesapeake Bay squall. And tonight as we were coming in, we went through what we hope is our last! The weather this week has been unsettled. This morning, we got up to a new weather forecast. Rather than north winds for today an west tomorrow, it is west today and north tomorrow, so we decided to change our plans. Chesterton will have to wait until fall, as we took advantage of the westerly winds (15-20 with gusts to 25) to head up the bay to this, our last stop. Tomorrow we will head through the C&D Canal and anchor for the night on Delaware Bay and catch the outgoing tide on Monday down to Cape May. And from there, we will look at the weather and decide when and where to go, either up the New Jersey coast to NYC or across too Block Island, our preferred alternative. But right now, the weather favours the coastal route up to NYC on Tuesday and Wednesday. By the way, we have been keeping note of the boats we meet or see, looking to find a boat name for every letter of the alphabet. We are missing only "X" and "Y". I can't figure out why we can't find "Y", but we haven't seen one. We were stuck with "Z" until Solomons, when we saw a Canadian bat called Zen. For "Q", we were settling for the Queen Mary II which we saw in Ft Lauderdale, but we came across a boat named Quantum also in Solomons. Probably not surprising, given the thousands of boats. But we now need "X" and "Y". So tomorrow, we leave the Chesapeake. It is truly a cruisers paradise with anchorages everywhere, but on the other hand, the number of boats is also amazing. We are fortunate to be cruising in off-season. In summer, I'm not sure I would enjoy it. But from here, we will be heading ASAP to New England, then up to Maine.