02 April 2006 | St. Michaels to Edgewater
I finally sailed across the bay. Many thanks to Dave for all the help yesterday! It was a beautiful day out on the Chesapeake, 60-70F, sunny and clear blue skies. The only thing missing was some more wind. My brothers Chris and Brian playing with the camera:
Here we are departing my old port:
We unfurled the genoa several times, but we rarely got over 3 knots under wind alone. It was just so calm out. We motored probably about 70% of the trip. For a time when we had the wind coming directly from the stern, we put my spinnaker pole to use and used it to hold out the headsail as we went wing on wing.
I tried to get a different view of my boat and the water in this shot:
Here's a photo from laying down on the bow and looking at the beautiful sky and sails. That's my new Cruising Direct (North Sails) 135% genoa.
Here is our course plotted on a chart from using Dave's GPS. I think it was around 27-30 nautical miles, I forgot the exact number.
Since my younger brother Chris who was being our shuttle decided to drive all the way to Ocean City, MD, we beat him to the other side of the bay. Since we had some time to kill, we sailed down the West River to explore and then headed to my new marina off Cadle Creek. It was a total of 6.5 hours of motoring/sailing. Before we left, I filled up my fuel tanks (6 gal and 3.5 gal) and I was surprised that I used probably only about 2 gallons. The Honda 4 stroke 15hp outboard worked great during the trip. It doesn't take much throttle to get up to 5 knots, pretty much just turned to the "start" setting of the throttle. I still need to look into the wiring because the electric starter didn't work, but I think it wasn't connected to the good battery. I plan to look into it this weekend.
Here is a photo of one of the lights on the bay near Bloody Point. That sure is a lot of bird crap on that structure!
Brian on the cabin top and Dave at the helm.
Brian at the helm for the first time!
Of course, I need to have a photo of myself at the helm!
I can't wait until this coming weekend to go out on my boat again.