Hello all,
We're sitting on a mooring in Spa Creek, Annapolis, MD, where we've been for several days; I'm not exactly sure, but I believe we made it here on Sunday evening. We left Coinjock, VA on Monday morning and wrapped up the ICW that afternoon in Norfolk, VA after a fairly short 50 mile day. Nothing too eventful, apart from lots of bridges and heading through a set of locks. After taking a quick break in Norfolk, Makana and our gang decided to push through the night up the Chesapeake to Annapolis. Zusammen was hoping to head outside to Cape May, but their weather window dissolved so they decided to head up the bay too.
The bay was fairly calm that night, with north winds backing over to NW and eventually W, and lots of commercial traffic running in and out. Betsy pulled a long, long watch that night and did a terrific job talking on the VHF radio all night with tankers, container ships and other AIS targets that were in the area. By the time the sun came up, we had a fantastic sailing breeze and were trucking along at 7-8 knots. It's a good thing this breeze kept up, because we had some engine trouble later in the day when the wind died off for a bit, and we had to run into Annapolis under sail alone.
Since then we've been getting various projects done on the boat, reprovisioning and most importantly, visiting with family. We headed over to Centerville on Tuesday to see the Maryland Davenports (Mike, Tracy, Brooke and Ben). The kids were sooooo excited to see their cousins again -- technically, their first cousins once removed -- that they couldn't stop talking about the visit for days before we left. The kid and grownup Davenports had a truly fantastic time catching up, and Mike and Tracy were wonderful hosts. We went fishing, headed to the largest auction/fair this side of the Mississippi, ate incredible Amish food (including apple fritters, doughnuts and "logs" of pretzel dough wrapped around home-made sausage and cheese) and had our first American style hamburger cookout of the summer. And perhaps best of all, Ben Davenport -- not our Ben Davenport but Mike and Tracy's Ben D., or Ben MD as I call him -- even arranged to have our Ben speak to Ben MD's class about his cruising experience. It was a great trip all around, and we're hoping to catch up with the MD Davenport crew again early next week, when we plan to head up to Georgetown, MD.
Our plan tomorrow if to head to Alexandria, VA early in the morning to catch up with Tom and Susan Tuttle for breakfast. They are two of our oldest friends and, in our minds at least, surrogate parents of sorts. We're also hoping to see Tom's workshop and a few of the boats he's been working on. Then we're off to the Mall and the Smithsonian museums for the day, and finally we'll head to Bethesda to spend the night and catch up with my cousin Terry (Fairbanks), his wife Mary and their children Eleanor and Henry. We haven't seen any of them for far, far too long, so everyone is thrilled that we'll get to stay together for the night, and maybe two. We plan to spend another day in DC, and then head back to the boat to plot our next move up the Chesapeake. My guess is that we'll be in the Georgetown, MD area, weather permitting, by Monday and then start looking for a good window to head through the C&D Canal and down the DE bay to Cape May, NJ. After that, we'll likely head to NYC for a night or two, and then up Long Island Sound to Block Island. But that's still a ways away; we'll see what the weather holds for us, and what surprises spring up between now and then.
All for now. We continue to enjoy all of the calls and emails from family and everyone back in MA.
Sam
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