July 18, 2008.

We left Wye Island yesterday with every intention of heading across the bay and spending 2 nights in the South River. Didn’t happen though.

While underway Christy called the marina in Baltimore we’re headed to in a couple of days, to make a reservation. We’re having mail and some items that we’ve ordered sent there to meet us. It’s actually being sent to our friends the Makeitso’s as their spending two months there.

We thought we’d be arriving on the 20th for a weeks stay. A couple of days ago when we first called, the woman told us that if we stayed for at least 8 days the price would be calculated at the monthly rate, based on an 8 day stay. Its $80 a day to stay there, but only $588 for a month so we were figuring 10 days would be less than $200. Then yesterday, on the phone the story had changed. If you stay more than 8 days they just automatically charge you $588 (plus $10 per day for electric) for the month. There is no weekly rate. Shit. $588 to stay a week is more than we want to part with, so we decided that since we’d be paying for the month we might as well go straight there and spend closer to 2 weeks rather than just a week for the same money.

So that meant to hell with South River and we reset our course for Baltimore. The only problem with this plan was that the breeze was exceptionally light and the tide was running out against us. This gave us way too many hours to weigh our options and flip flop back and forth on our newest plan.

After a few hours of northward progress we finally decided that we didn’t want to spend so much money for time at a dock. So when we get there we’ll anchor for a few days, maybe take a slip for 2 nights and then anchor once again until all our mail arrives. Normally, we would just opt to spend the entire time on the hook but from what we’ve heard the anchoring possibilities are fairly bleak. We’ll see what happens when we get there.

So in the meantime, we turned hard to port and we headed into Annapolis once again. We had been internet-less for a few days and we can get online in Annapolis and catch up on mail and check the shipping progress of our soon-to-be new watermaker. We yet again dodged a hundred tiny sailboats as we entered the harbor. We decided to anchor right in front of the Naval Academy. There seemed to be a spot in near shore, just our size. As dumb luck would have it, Sapphire turned out to be our neighbor.

They’ve been hop scotching around the bay as we have and they arrived here 2 days ago. They actually tried to leave here and head north earlier today and had the same lack of success that we did so they turned around and came back.

They were here to pick up their new sewing machine and have been pretty busy with projects. We ended up having dinner with them ashore followed by cocktails on the Veranda afterwards.

The next evening we spent a few hours on their boat and enjoyed the start of the Annapolis to Solomon’s Island race. It’s an overnight race and at least 2 hundred boats in several divisions set sail for the overnight race.

The next morning Sapphire headed south towards their scheduled haulout in Deltaville, Va. We went into town and rode the bus out to the grocery store to do a little reprovisioning.

In the afternoon the winds veered a bit and made the anchorage very uncomfortable. We decided to pull the hook and head up the Severn River to Weems Creek. The allure of Weems Creek is that the Navy maintains several hurricane moorings there for their small training vessels. You’re allowed to pick up a mooring on a first come first serve basis whenever there’s no Navy boat on them.

We arrived in picturesque Weems Creek and picked up the last mooring available. Usually a mooring will have a pennant (a piece of line) on top that Christy will grab with the boat pole. Once she has the pennant onboard she secures it and we’re all set. The navy moorings turned out to be a little different. Instead of a line they all had just 1 foot of heavy chain hanging from the top of each mooring. The bow of our boat is so high that the chain can’t be pulled up high enough for Christy to attach a line to. So we had to adapt. We decided that she would be able to reach the chain if I brought the boat alongside the mooring about amidships instead of under the bow. I pulled the boat up alongside the mooring and let the breeze push us down upon it. Christy laid on the side deck and slipped a dock line through the last link of the mooring chain. Then we switch places and as she backed the boat away from the ball I walk the attached line to the bow and cleated it off. Perfect, secure and set for the night.