First Over-Nighter

This past weekend, May 29th to the 31st, we planned for a 4 day sail, our first over-nighter.  We were going to leave early on Friday morning and have the Bay to ourselves for a leisurely sail to the Eastern Shore.  As it turned out, the weather was awful, rain and thunderstorms all day, so we decided to hold off until the next day.  A three day sail is still a good getaway.

This was an important trip for us to have a chance to get to know the boat a little before Cheri's grandson Jack comes out to visit the following week.  We're planning an extended sail with him and didn't want it to be full of unpleasant surprises.  As it turned out, this was a good education for us and we did find a few things that needed looking into before going out again.

Saturday we got up early to get a good start, showered, had breakfast, packed things away, cleaned up the boat, made sure we had tools for some projects we'd be working on.  We finally got out of the slip around 1330.  Yikes!  Where does the time go?  I wasn't even sure we could make it across the Bay before dark but didn't want to delay another day.  We usually have our regular stations when getting underway, Tom at the helm and Cheri handling the lines.  We decided it would be best if we both mastered all jobs on board so we switched duties for this time out and will be trading off jobs from here on out.  Cheri manned the helm while leaving the dock so she could get a feel for the boat under power, use the bow thruster, etc.  She managed it like a pro while I bungled the job of handling the lines, leaving a rats nest of rope hanging off the pilings.  I don't know how she's able to make it all look so neat and simple.

We headed out Herring Bay across a glassy surface with more of the same further out.  There was some wind but under sail we were only making about 2 knots and the wind kept ghosting around from different directions.  We fought it for about an hour and finally dropped the sails and fired up the engine.  If fuel wasn't so expensive I wouldn't mind running the engine.  This is a Yanmar 4 cylinder, 75 horse diesel engine with a turbocharger.  At 1500 rpm's the boat get's up to about 7 knots.  It'll go faster but then we're just guzzling fuel.  I'm basically pretty cheap and with a 160 gallon fuel tank I don't look forward to filling it, especially with marine diesel at about $4.00/gallon.  We motored all the way across the Bay and never saw any wind.  Just as well since we were running so late.  We got into the Little Choptank River around 1900 and wound our way up the channel to our planned anchorage on Hudson Creek.  As we came around the bend we found this well protected spot to be already over-crowded so we meandered on and found ourselves in Fisherman's Creek at Cherry Point.  This is a beautiful, well protected little cove with just a few houses on the shore, tall trees and plenty of peace and quiet.  Perfect.  We dropped anchor just as the sun was setting and were treated to a spectacular display of color.

Anchoring is one of the most important skills to develop in boating.  It can save your boat if the engine dies and you find yourself drifting towards a rocky shore.  It can give you a quick stop for lunch or an overnight stay at places you'd never be able to get to otherwise.  An anchor is the key to really getting the most out of your boat.  You have to develop certain skills with anchoring.  It's helpful if you know what type of stuff is on the bottom that the anchor will be digging into.  In the Chesapeake you're mostly dealing with brownish grey, gooey mucky mud, grass and in some places, piles of oyster shells.  In other areas you have sand, coral or maybe rocky bottoms.  The point is, if you know what you're dealing with then you'll have a better chance of getting your anchor to dig in.  La Vida Dulce has two different anchors hanging off the bowsprit.  One is a Bruce, connected to 300' of chain.  This is supposed to be a good all around anchor and the weight of the chain works to get it to lay down on the bottom so it'll dig in.  I haven't used this one yet.  The other is a Danforth with about 20' of chain and 250' of rope.  The Danforth works well in the muddy bottom of the Chesapeake.

The technique I use for anchoring is to lay out the line ahead of time for the depth we'll be anchoring in.  The ratio we want is 7:1 with 7' of rode for every foot of depth from the bottom of the creek to the deck of the boat.  At Cherry Point the water was about 9' or 10' deep and I added another 3' to cover the distance from the surface of the water to the deck, 13' total.  Multiply this times 7 and I had approximately 90' of anchor rode to let out.  It's all about the angle of pull the boat will be putting on the anchor.  In severe conditions I would put out more line and maybe less if we're just gonna stop somewhere for lunch or something.  Once I have the line laid out and attached to a cleat at the 90' mark, we'll motor up slowly "into the wind" to the spot where we want to set the anchor.  Slowly drop the anchor in, feeding the line out until I can feel it sitting on the bottom.  I then signal Cheri to back the boat slowly as I feed out more line.  When I have about 2/3 of it out I give it a good yank to see if it's set.  If yes then I pay out the rest of the line.  If not then we go back and start over.  Once it's set and all the line is payed out we back down hard on the engine as a final test.  After the boat has settled down on the line I'll take bearings on at least 3 objects on shore and write them down.  Throughout the stay I can refer back to those notes and see if the anchor has dragged.  This goes a long way towards being able to enjoy the stay, knowing that your anchor is holding.

This was Memorial Day weekend and everyone and their brother was out on their boat.  Cherry Point is pretty far up the river so it was less populated but we still shared the anchorage with 3 other boats.  It's a fairly large cove, open to the NE so it's nicely protected from winds out of the South to Southwest.  There's a forest of Loblolly Pines that comes down to the shore and five McMansions are widely spaced around the perimeter, each with their private dock and 25' power boat suspended above the water.  It's a very quiet spot and dark at night, very peaceful.  We stayed through Monday morning before heading back.

Coming back we had some wind.  Woohooo!  We had a beautiful sail, 7 to 8 knots, up the Bay to the lower end of Pooles Island before changing course and sailing into Herring Bay.  Awesome.  What a great way to end the weekend.

So, what needed looking into?  After two nights out our batteries were drained.  We have two 85 watt solar panels that appear to be connected but not doing the job.  There's a controller for these things and I've gone through it, even read the manual, but there's nothing coming in from the panels.  We'll hafta have a dude come out and take a look at it.  Another problem is our water tank, or rather the 250 gallons of water in it.  It has an odor to it and you definitely don't want to drink it.  I washed my hair in it and smelled like a skunks butt for the rest of the day.  Yuck!  When we got back we drained the tank and refilled it with fresh water and about 1/3 of a gallon of Clorox bleach.  We let it sit for 8 hours then opened all the faucets on the boat and flushed out all the lines.  After dumping all 250 gallons, again, we refilled it with fresh water.  So much better!  I can drink this water.  I can wash my hair in it without smelling like a skunks butt!  Life is wonderful!