Oh my stars and garters, in place of what I am really thinking.

Last night we were sitting in the cockpit listening to the wind doing a duet with the wind generator and wondering what was going to happen tonight when another Canadian yacht drifted into the creek. Sweet Chariot Too has been in here before and ducked in to avoid the crap out in the bay. Very pleasant to meet someone else from the auld sod, especially someone who has been here before. The skipper mentioned that this was the fewest boats that he had ever seen in here.

Throughout the night the weather went from somewhat crappy, to mildly crappy, to, I don't know, crappy?! The wind stayed at around at least 15 knots with gusts higher. We probably didn't need it but I had an increased sense of peace that we had done so when we had set out the second anchor. I got up in the middle of the night, turned on the deck light and went forward to check the anchors. That alone would have caused a bit of a stir if anyone else ashore had been up at that time of night since Ma Turney's oldest and boldest doesn't even own a pair of pjs. I found the wind had shifted slightly and we were being held mostly by the second anchor that I had put down. The primary would most likely have held just as well but I did get a small sense of vindication. No emails from people ashore asking for a repeat performance yet.

This morning the anchors were secure enough and had done so well during the night that I decided to risk a trip ashore to give Peri some relief and to get some cash from an ATM. The boat show sure put a divot in our budget and financial plans! At any rate we went back to the Acme Grocery store and for less than $10 got some fresh vegetables, a cantaloupe and two gallons of water. Not bad. However on the trip back to the boat the rain weather event that had been forecast for this afternoon opened up on us at 0945. What fun! Back to the boat and pad about finding places to hang up the wet clothes. I have several books that I have started to read that I will have a chance to make some progress on, one of which is a thing called Heads in Beds, a memoir about the hospitality industry. Too bad the weather wouldn't allow us another day to properly poke about in St Michael's. I would recommend it as a cruising stop for boaters on the Chesapeake, but don't go around to the St Michael's side of the peninsula. The town actually spans the land bridge and if you go in to San Domingo Creek like we did you are a very short dingy ride to what is literally a five minute walk to downtown. Granted you can't dingy in to the museum or marinas but our budget wouldn't allow for that anyway.

I tried an experiment to pull up the Bruce with its rope and chain rode and it doesn't look like it is going to be too much of a problem. Famous words before.....eh? The forecast is for the winds to die down later this PM and into the evening so, unless the weather witches are lying to us again, I think that we will pull the secondary up around supper time to make things easier tomorrow. The forecast is using the word "calm" for the winds overnight so the primary anchor should be OK on its own. It likely would have been last night too but as someone who have had their anchor drag in the middle of the night, and who witnessed Otter II do the same just a week ago we tend to err on the side of caution.

We dodged a wee bit of several bullets today. First and easiest we got Peri in for his poopambulation early in the PM and we're back on the boat before it started to rain again. Whew! The other was more serious. Apparently the strip of countryside from Annapolis to Baltimore was under a tornado watch today. I don't think that anything touched down but after Barb's experience in Deltaville several years ago I think that even the preparation is something that we'd like to avoid.

One thing that I would like to throw out is the whole business of the oyster fishery. The Chesapeake used to be the heart of that fishery for the country if not the world but with demand, lack of regulation, and lack of enforcement of what regulations there were, the fishery went into serious decline from the mid 1800s to the 1920s. In fact, there was open war, called the oyster wars between draggers and rakers in the bay and tributary creeks. They even had a specialized police force, the oyster police, whose job it was to stop them shooting each other and to get them to obey the belated conservation regulations. The fishery is slowly making a comeback but in answer to the question that I asked in an earlier post, how can so many guys make a living at this? The answer is they can't. But maybe soon, one day.

When we got back to Nelleke we brought the outboard and dingy up in preparation for departure tomorrow and since the wind wasn't too strong I handraulically brought up as much of the secondary rode as I could. The line is about 30 degrees from vertical and still it has a bite in the mud. I left it shortened and am hoping that the movement of the boat will ease it out and we'll fall back on the all chain rode and CQR. If not we will use the engine to beast it out. Well yee-haaaw! It came out just as I'd hoped it would. You'd al pat think that I knew what I was doing. Of course, it chose the midst of a pouring rainstorm to do so so wrestling then anchor back into its storage spot left us both wet like wet hens.