Today was another eventful day, for sure. We started with our first attempt at self pump out at Rock Hall's Sailing Emporium. To say that I didn't cover myself with glory is an understatement. At least I didn't cover myself with the other stuff as well. The problem arose with the fact that we have a large holding tank and since we spend so much time outside of the three mile limit where we can discharge over the side, we had not, in fact ever hooked up to a pump and had the Turney goodies slurped out. In fact, when I installed the plumbing, it turns out that I had hooked the discharge line to the input from the y-valve and vice versa. Result? No matter how much we slurped it was only sucking air. A quick check of the install clearly showed that the installer, me, needs a slap! Fortunately the fix is easy. It doesn't even require any more parts and, best of all, will result in only the barest minimum of mess. I hope! Phew! As I am going to be the guy that does the dirty deed, that last part is particularly important. This is one of my main jobs now that we are at anchor in Annapolis.

The trip over from Rock Hall was typical. The forecast was for light winds and we got 20 knots; it was supposed to be on our beam and it was smack on the nose. What should I have expected? Oh well, we finally got here to move into the shock more boats in any one place than in the entire Atlantic Canada. Little coves are one marina after another and anyone who wants to anchor does it in the narrow channel between the finger piers on either side. The only rule here seems to be 75' between boats. Sounds easy enough but after we looked at Back Creek and dropped the anchor only to have it drag and other boats that had already been there for 24 hours telling us that the bottom was like mayonnaise and they and several of their neighbours had moved as much as 50-100' in the last 24 hours, we decided that wasn't for us. So we headed down to Weems Creek just off the Severn River and anchored in here. There seems to be a lot more space and the bottom is better for anchoring. I say that without empirical evidence to support this yet as we are still waiting to see if the anchor settles in.

We have come across Whiskey Mak again and they followed us into the anchorage and we found Glass Slipper coming out of Back Creek on their way to friends place 20 miles to the south. Later today we expect Quetico to join us from Rock Harbour. They stayed behind a little longer than we did as Rob was looking for a quote on a gelcote job. Getting to be a bit like a community.

Weems Creek is bigger than what we would call a creek at home and the banks are lined with very nice homes, not mansions, but very gentil sort of places where you might expect a retired Admiral to make his home or a senior civil servant who would then commute to DC. It felt odd to anchor in a body of water with little tide but a constant current. All the boats have been lying in the same direction ever since we got here and that includes a turn of the tide.

As we get further and further south it is amazing how many Canadian snowbirds we are beginning to come across. In one part of Back Creek there was nothing but Canadian boats from 55' down to 26'. I expect that if everyone else is in the same boat (so to speak) as we are vis-a-vis insurance requirements there will be quite a "plug" of us in the Chesapeake waiting for the end of the hurricane season.

I goofed a bit in my planning as well. It turns out that there is a military marina here in Annapolis that we could have had a dock at for $10 if I had only realized it and called ahead from Rock Hall. As it was there was another fellow that went into the spot for the week just the same morning. I will have to consult the book for each stage of our trip from now on, well in advance and make the necessary calls if I want to take advantage of those possibilities.

Soon we'll put the WB into the water and put the motor on. If we are going to be spending 4 days here we may as well make it easier on ourselves getting to and from the dingy landing. This is a cozy little anchorage and a whole lot more space that either Back or Spa Creek so far but the bottom is still suspect. We have watched one boat from Georgia almost drag into another Canadian yacht right next to us so we are watching our bearings like hawks and I have the anchor alarm on.

We took the dingy and Peri ashore for a poop and a recce and found that West Annapolis is really a quite interesting sort of community - lots of small boutiques, the odd cafe, a bistro or two, and add to that the normal American run of Chinese Restaurants, pizza joints and 7/11s and you'll get the right picture. Fortunately for us the USN Football Stadium is just around the corner and there is a shuttle from there to the boat show.

Tomorrow we will be doing chores and fixing the plumbing problems in the head. Oh, and I discovered that diesel fuel in Back Creek is $0.75 cheaper that at the Annapolis Marina $3.85/gal versus $4.50. How is that possible? In the evening we have been invited out to dinner with the Clearpoint rep that I have been dealing with. I'm looking forward to meeting him.