June 6

June 6. At about 0200 this morning a violent nasty squall came through the anchorage. When we had turned in it was dead calm without a hint of breeze. Christy woke up when the wind generator came alive in the 30 knot gusts. We were anchored in between 4 trawlers and one had already dragged in the dead calm of the evening so we were a little nervous.

The storm had all the thunder and lightening you could ever ask for. Molly is completely terrified by thunder so Christy decided it was time to try a new cure. When I sat up in the cockpit to keep an eye on the neighbors I was joined by my little petrified friend Molly.

The lightening flashes lasted for several seconds each time and the thunder claps were lasting 20 or 30 seconds at a time. It was raining huge drops and the squall passed in about a half an hour. All the boats I could see stayed where they were. The only boat I couldn’t see was the trawler that had dragged earlier in the evening but I knew he was downwind so I wasn’t really too concerned.

In the morning Christy turned on the VHF to a conversation between the missing trawler and the Boat US tow boat. It turned out that they had dragged again during the night and were now aground. The problem was that they were insisting to the towboat driver that they were in Fisher’s Bay when they were actually in Jackson Creek, a difference of at least 6 miles. The poor towboat driver is insisting that he’s in the middle of the bay and there’s not a trawler anywhere to be seen. After a while the driver had a hunch and asked the trawler guys to describe the entrance to their anchorage. After they described the winding entrance to the driver he said “You’re in Jackson Creek, I’ll be right there.”

Christy and I had the anchor up and were underway as the towboat driver arrived from his wild goose chase. About an hour later we heard another radio exchange between the 2 boats. It seems that the trawler had been pulled form his grounding and had run aground again 10 minutes later as he tried to follow the towboat out of the anchorage.

Speaking of us being underway, what a difference a day makes. We were supposed to have 10 knots of wind from the north. That means that we’ll be tacking back and forth across the Chesapeake as we make our way north. It won’t be so bad as the tacks will be more than 15 miles long and we should be close reaching at 5 knots or so.

In reality what we got was 15 to 20 knots from the north. With the tide running in and the wind coming down the bay the seas were close set steep waves. On port tack every wave was an explosion of spray as Veranda pounded through the surf. Starboard tack was a little mellower but still no party. After an hour of ridiculous pounding we picked an alternative stopping point for the night. The day ended with us traveling 19 miles in 4 hours just to travel 10 miles north up the bay.

We pulled in to Fleets Bay and turned into Indian Creek. There are several good places to anchor up the Indian Creek. The first few spots we had hoped to get were full of boats hiding from the north wind. We finally wound our way up the river and found an excellent protected spot that has about 10 feet of water.

It ended up being a much shorter day than we had hoped for but tomorrow the wind is supposed to come back around to the southwest which would be excellent.