Ice and snow everywhere. Record low low temperatures and record low high temperatures the past couple of days. More snow on the way later today. The northern Chesapeake is frozen with ice up to a foot thick. Looking from the dock, Spa Creek in Annapolis is frozen solid. In the thirteen years I've lived in the area, I've never seen the rivers frozen solid. Here's a shot of the Potomac River taken earlier this week.
With all the ice already in the Bay and the frozen rivers, even after the creeks have thawed it will take a week and a half to two weeks for the Bay to be clear of ice. It doesn't look as though we'll be able to get the boat down the Bay for four, six, or eight weeks. So, I'm heading back to Grenada on Tuesday.
Here are a couple of links and a video of the ice in Baltimore Harbor:
The boat's name comes from a poem by Robinson Jeffers:
Evening Ebb
The ocean has not been so quiet for a long while; five nightherons
Fly shorelong voiceless in the hush of the air
Over the calm of an ebb that almost mirrors their wings.
The sun has gone down, and the water has gone [...]
down
From the weed-clad rock, but the distant cloud-wall rises. The
ebb whispers.
Great cloud-shadows float in the opal water.
Through rifts in the screen of the world pale gold gleams, and the
evening
Star suddenly glides like a flying torch.
As if we had not been meant to see her; rehearsing behind
The screen of the world for another audience.