10/4/14
Nabb’s Creek, Chesapeake Bay
Posted by Bill

We didn’t get much rain, but the wind blew up to 30 knots overnight and most of the day today. We got the flooding as expected and the water rose to a foot over the dock. We did a good job of securing the boats so we had no drama…yay!

Today was the first day in probably 6 months that we were able to just chill out, watch football, and just do nothing. It was weird. I had a hard time just relaxing. Having secure wifi, I attended to administrative work on the computer. One of those things was to order a mail shipment. We use St Brendan’s Isle in Florida to collect our mail and ship it to us on request. We have only had one shipment so far, and they did a fine job. The people who started the company are ex-cruisers so they know what is important to their customers. I also figured out how to add a map to the blog site with markers of where we have been. Look at the top of the page and there is a new menu item. When you click to that page you will see a overview map and if you want to zoom and explore, click on the link. I am interested to see if people like it, so let me know.

Our friend Mike took this picture of us sailing in to the Patapsco River:

See the soot on the transom of the boat that I was talking about in the last post?

Below is a pic of the dock we are on from today:

Notice that Mike’s sailboat is on the other side of us. You will remember from the last post that he and I moved it over after the diver cleaned the bottom. I didn’t post it yesterday, but we had a bit of a “Captain Ron” moment when we moved the boat. It is a typical boating situation. Mike hadn’t used that boat much this year, but just a couple of days ago he tested the engine and transmission and everything was good. We motor away from the dock, me at the bow and him at the helm. The boat moved really well and Mike was having fun tooling around Nabb’s Creek. He made the turn to take it into the slip on the other side of us and because of the wind he had to come in a little “hot” to keep control of the boat. When it came time to slow the boat down Mike says “ok…reverse….reverse…REVERSE….REVERSE”. No reverse! My first thought was to hook one of the pilings with the dock line I was holding but they were too far away and moving too fast. My next thought was: we are going to hit the wall in front of me and I am going to get catapulted over the bow rail and be killed! Fortunately, the bottom tapers up as you get closer to shore and boat slid to a nice easy stop in the mud, about 12 feet from the wall. Of course, Mike says, “of all the things have have gone wrong with that boat, it has never failed in reverse”. There is always a first time! With some help from Tricia aboard Island Bound, we warped the boat out of the mud and got her secured.

10/3/14
Nabbs Creek, Chesapeake Bay
Posted by Bill

The weather is supposed to turn for a day as a cold front moves in. There is also a coastal flood warning along the east coast and the bay area. This is why we needed to get the boat here and I am glad we made it before the front.

It was nice not to have to get up and start moving for a change. Instead, while Tricia worked, I did some boat maintenance. First thing was to get the diesel exhaust stain off the transom (back of the boat). Our model of Island Packet boat is known to develop a “mustache” along the transom due to the way it slopes. It captures the exhaust which allows the mustache to develop. Having the dinghy hanging in the davits doesn’t help either. We usually have a minimal amount of mustache that I try to keep clean. After pushing the boat so hard, we had a major stain that just looked terrible. I was beginning to think that we had some sort of engine problem but I am chalking it up to the fact that the engine has never been run for more than 4 hours at a time up to this trip, and figured we were just burning out some crud (great technical analysis…I know). Contributing, we have 90 gallon fuel tank, and we usually only use 20 or so gallons a year. We religiously use stabilizer, but we have been doing this for 4 years and I think it was the same with the previous owner for some time. So we had fuel that didn’t make for the most efficient engine combustion. So I cleaned the transom and waxed it while standing in the dinghy, polished some stainless steel that was developing rust. We will have to see if the normal or bad mustache reappears.

I also cleaned out the dinghy…it was pretty dirty…and put the outboard engine on it. Mike had a diver showing up to clean the bottom of his sailboat and also clean the prop so he could move it over to the other side of us. We had the diver check our bottom and everything looked “really good”, so happy captain. We moved Mike’s boat over and started prepping for possible flood waters. It was forecast to potentially be 2 feet over normal which would put the dock underwater, so we moved in with Mike and Sue for the night.

Once the boats were prepped, we all jumped in the dinghy and motored across Nabbs Creek to a restaurant/bar that was on the water. It was always fun to do that in our home waters, but the number of places you could do that was so limited. The bay has so many places to go to by water. This was fun. We chowed on mussels, steamed shrimp, bacon wrapped shrimp (they were awesome…everything’s better with bacon!), crab cakes and sliders. We also drank “Orange Crushes” which did taste just like Orange Crush and had a delightful kick…lol. The food was great.

Let’s hope the flood doesn’t float the boats away!

10/2/14
Nabbs Creek, Chesapeake Bay
Position: 39 09.817N, 76 32.135W
Posted by Bill

We motor sailed from Havre de Grace, down the bay, into the Patapsco River, into Stony Creek and finally into Nabbs Creek. When we made the turn into the Patapsco, we had a good wind direction and decent winds out of the northeast, so we finally got to SAIL! With the engine off even! We have been pushing to get to this destination, driving hard each day, so we have not really sailed until now.

If you remember from earlier posts, we were driving hard for several reasons:
1) Tricia has some business meetings next week in Baltimore
2) We have had an incredible weather window and needed to get as far as we could while we had it
3) We got a late start (about a month late) and only had a few days of slack to play with

Looking back, it seems incredible that we made it a few days ahead of time and that we didn’t need to use our schedule slack. We are tied up behind some friends of ours that live on Nabbs Creek. They have a sailboat and powerboat and a really nice dock. They are former cruisers and live-aboards (lived on their boat) and they totally get how wonderful it is to have someone offer their dock, house, electricity, car, washing machine, and especially a nice hot shower and real bathroom! They are very low key and love to have a good time…we are such kindred spirits…and have become good friends. I am just so overwhelmed by their hospitality and giving nature. It is something that you usually only experience with family, which by the way, they have all been so wonderful in their offers for help, as well as helping with many things. As and example, my brother the other night told me that if we needed a place to stay, someone to run errands, help of any kind, just call. Now he lives a good 45 minutes from where we are docked and their life is crazy busy, but I know that all I would have to do is call and they would be there. That is absolutely amazing!

I have read how the cruising community supports themselves like this and we have started to experience it. Many people buy homes on the water when they are done cruising and do the same as our friends are doing for us. I just cannot express how really cool that is. If everyone in the world shared this level of generosity and also respected the people giving it (so as not to take advantage), how cool the world would be!

Ok, so enough of blabbing on. Sitting on the boat in Nabbs Creek is just fantastic. The bay is full of these little coves. It is just so beautiful and is fun to explore. We will be back next summer to spend lots of time here. In the mean time, while we are docked I have a list of projects to get done, both on the boat, and misc. things that have been neglected while we were pushing hard to get here.

Havre de Grace

Sailing down the bay you could see the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. It is down by Annapolis. I am sure I will have closer pics of this in the future.

Our friend Mike came out on his power boat to greet us as we entered the Patapsco River.

Coming in to the Patapsco River with the Francis Scott Key bridge in the background.

Coming in to Stony Creek, we had to go through this narrow lift bridge.

Here we are docked at Mike and Sue’s. They have a great set up! It is so cool to be docked here.

The view of Nabbs Creek to the west.

The view from the boat. They have a cool beach area where many parties are enjoyed!

Sunset on Nabbs Creek.

As cool as all of this has been, we think about our Ohio friends and our family every day, and are really missing everyone. Glad we can share via the blog but wish you were with us.

10/1/2014
Havre de Grace, MD
Tidewater Marina
Position: 39 32.828N, 76 05.154W
Posted by Bill

Today we motored into and through the C&D canal, into the Chesapeake, and up to Havre de Grace, MD. I expected the canal to be very busy with lots of big ships but only saw 3:

This nicely painted red one.

This tug pulling a bunch of crap.

And this tug pulling a chain of crap all connected together. Wonder what the hell they are doing with all of that crap they are pulling behind them.

We also reached a milestone…first time to have our boat in the Chesapeake Bay…something I have wanted to do since my brother moved here in the early 80s. I was psyched.

Along the way to Havre de Grace we saw the Turkey Point light:

The channel to Havre de Grace was very narrow and the markers were of great distance of each other. It made for some challenging navigation, especially when we encountered a tug pushing twin barges side by side. But we made it. Tidewater is pretty nice. The restrooms and showers are nice and clean and the marina is very close to the stuff in downtown Havre de Grace.

Best of all (and the real reason we came here), my brother, sister-in-law, and niece and nephew live here! We got to go out to dinner with them and really enjoyed a delightful evening! I was psyched. We don’t get to see them as much as we like to so this was a real treat.

All of this made for a fantastic day!
Pics:

Cruising through the C&D canal.

Coming out of the C&D and into the Chesapeake Bay.

Picturesque northern Chesapeake Bay.

As I was having dinner with my brother and we talked about boating, I was remembering the first boating experience we had together. We decided we could build a raft with scrap pieces of wood and logs, and we carried it about 1/2 mile up a hill to a neighborhood pond on our wagon. We launched it only to find it sinking within minutes. I guess we have come a bit of a way since then…lol.

Tomorrow we will travel to some friends of ours who have a dock behind their house. They offered to give us free dockage and we will wait out the coming storm, and Tricia can attend some business meetings.