Warehouse Creek off Eastern Bay

Chart Showing Warehouse Creek

Pictures From Our Warehouse Creek Trip

Thursday, 3-17-11, was forecast to be excellent weather, continuing on through the weekend.  We used my recent birthday as an excuse to take a four day weekend and spend some time on the hook.  We spent most of the morning taking care of our regular weekend chores and finally headed out past the breakwater around 1100.  We're concentrating on having Cheri experience all parts of sailing first hand so for the next few months she's the skipper and I'm first mate.  She took the helm while I handled the lines leaving the slip.  This chick is a natural.  Won't take long before she's teaching me.

We had three days to blow and wanted to be able to sit at anchor for most of that.  Our primary choices for anchorages were the Choptank River and Eastern Bay.  When we got out into the middle of the Chesapeake the winds were light, 10 to 12 knots, and blowing out of the SE.  We decided to make the most of that and headed up to Eastern Bay.

From Herring Bay it's almost a straight shot on course 075 into Eastern Bay, cutting across the north end of Poplar Island.  With the light winds we were only making about 5 or 6 knots but it was a beautiful day and we were in no hurry.  Once in Eastern Bay we sighted R2A and drove for a spot halfway between it and Long Pt., which is on the south-eastern tip of Kent Island.  There's some shallow water that extends off this point and taking this course kept us in deep water, mostly 30'.  Once past Long Pt. we lined up R2A and the mouth of Cox Creek and headed north, roughly on course 010.

The entrance to Cox Creek is clearly marked by red 2CC and we held that close on our starboard side.  Once inside the creek the channel is centered between shores and about 13' deep.  All along both sides of the creek are large homes with private docks extending way out there to get to deep water.  It's good to keep this in mind because the channel is fairly narrow and the water on either side gets shallow quickly.  The charts show a marker, red nun 4, farther up but it musta been washed out in a storm because we didn't see it.  Just past this spot is the entrance to Warehouse Creek, off to the left.

We're a bare bones operation.  We don't have a chart plotter or GPS or radar or any of the high-dollar high-tech instrumentation.  At least not yet.  For now we have paper charts that are reasonably up to date and a compass that's accurate within about 5 degrees, some really nice binoculars and a depth gauge.  On the south side of Warehouse Creek are a few homes and the channel is about 30' out from the end of their docks.  As we headed in our depth gauge quickly went from 13' to 6'.  We backed down hard and swung to starboard and watched the depth return to 13'.  Remember the game "Operation"?  It's kinda like that.  We took it slow, 3.5 knots all the way in, dodging port and starboard to stay in the deep water.

There's only two houses on Warehouse Creek, both towards the entrance on the south side.  The second one in is called Batts Neck Plantation on the charts.  It's not historical since it has a swimming pool and tennis courts but it's a big ol' dump with lotsa square footage, numerous outbuildings and over 400 acres.  I looked it up on the internet and there may have been a plantation on this site at one time but I think this house was built in the 1980's.  This is the last building on Warehouse Creek and the shoreline beyond and to the North is natural with marshland, tall grasses and forest.  We dropped anchor in the widest part of the creek just out from the "Plantation".  This spot has about 8' depth with a muddy bottom and is pretty well protected from all sides.  We set anchor around 1830 with about 55' of line out.  Later on Friday night the wind got up to 30 knots out of the NW and we stuck like glue.  I know this because I checked on it every two hours and finally went and sat in the cockpit at 0400 and waited for the sun to come up.  What, me worry?

So, we're anchored and got all settled in and had a Bloody Mary to toast the fine day.  For dinner we had home made crab soup and then settled down to watch a movie.  About 5 minutes into the movie our cool-man 37" LED flatscreen went nuts and the picture got all weird looking.  We were concerned about causing damage so we shut it down.  It didn't take long to figure this one out.  When we're away from the dock we have a power inverter that takes 12 volts DC from our bank of "house" batteries and creates 110 volts AC so we can use our coffee pot and TV, among other things.  The problem here is that our inverter (Xantrex Feedom 2000) is "old school" and doesn't provide what's called "pure sine" voltage.  Compared to the picture above, our sine wave would be chopped off at the top and bottom and maybe even kinda ragged on the rise and fall.  This creates havoc with sensitive electronics.  Looks like we'll have to look into a small inverter to provide clean power for things like our computers and home theater.  We'll eventually upgrade our system with more storage (batteries) and increased supply through additional solar panels, wind generator and a diesel generator.  When that happens we'll probably be looking into a new inverter too.

Friday was absolutely gorgeous with temperatures in the mid 70's.  We had blueberry pancakes and cinnamon coffee for breakfast.  Mmm, mmm, good!  I spent part of the afternoon chasing ghosts in our electrical system and Cheri kicked back and enjoyed the peace and quiet. I eventually sat down and buried myself in a good book out in the cockpit.  It got so warm we had to open up the enclosure to let the breeze blow through and considered shorts and T-shirts for the day.  Friday night's dinner was pork chops.  We try to eat well to keep from feeling like we're camping.  Towards sunset we noticed things poking out of the water all around us.  At first we thought they were turtles because they looked kinda rough, almost prehistoric.  Cheri broke out the binoculars and found they were fish, about 1' to 2' long, cruising slowly at the surface and what we were seeing was their dorsal fins.  I have no idea what kind of fish these were.  I'm thinking Jurassic Park.


Like I said earlier, the wind kicked up Friday evening and neither of us got much sleep.  When we first set anchor the wind was out of the SE.  It was now blowing out of the N and WNW at 30 knots.  I was concerned the anchor would pull loose and we'd wind up on the beach.  I kept going up topside to check my bearings and everything was fine.  OK, check my bearings?  When we first anchored I took sightings with the compass to easily identifiable spots all around us and wrote them down for later reference.  If the boat moved more than just swinging on the anchor these readings would change.  This is the old fashioned way of doing things because nowadays all you have to do is set the alarm on your phone's GPS and it'll wake you up from a sound sleep.  In fact I have this feature on my phone.  I just don't use it because just like those fish, I'm a dinosaur.  So at 0400 it was really blowing hard and I finally got up, made some coffee and sat up in the cockpit and waited for the sun to come up.  If anything happened I could fire up the engine and keep us in deep water.  While sitting there I saw gusts over 35 knots but I did notice that the water never got very choppy because this spot is relatively protected.

Saturday morning was windy and chilly, in the 40's.  We decided to pack up early and head back home.  We pulled anchor which was challenging in a 25 knot blow.  It took two tries before I finally got it and it brought with it a huge clump of mud and oyster shells.  While I hosed it off Cheri headed out the creek.  After we made the turn into Cox Creek it was difficult to tell where the channel was.  There was a streak of muddy water coming off Warehouse Creek and it made the water look shallow, like a sandbar.  We veered around it and immediately ran hard aground.  We backed down hard, full throttle, churned up the mud and clawed our way back to deep water.  We then veered back over to the middle of the creek and continued on like it never happened.  Running aground is a time-honored tradition on the Chesapeake Bay.

We continued under power all the way out to R2A before setting our sails because I wanted to check our knot meter for accuracy.  The charts show the distance between CC2 and R2A so I timed it to get a reading.  Turned out to be right on.  We held a steady course from R2A all the way back to Herring Bay with the wind varying between 15 and 25 knots.  Once we got near Herring Bay it kicked up to 30 knots and we had a pleasant sail in under full Main and Staysail at 8.5 knots.  We dropped our sails after rounding R2 and motored back to our slip.  The entire way over from Eastern Bay we never saw another boat until we got into Herring Bay and then it was just one other guy and his two kids.  As we came through the breakwater we looked back and saw them out there heeled way over, rail in the water.  Looked like they were having a ball.

So, I think we found a nice spot to hide away on Eastern Bay.  It had a few drawbacks that are worth noting.  The swampy areas are probably a real source of bugs in warmer weather.  The location is several miles south of Stevensville, which is at the eastern foot of the Bay Bridge on Rte 50.  During our stay we were aware of a low background roar of traffic but you had to listen for it.  We didn't find it intrusive but it might be worse in the Summer, especially at 0200 when sound seems to really carry.  It is a nice spot and we'll add it to our list of places to re-visit during other seasons.

Eastern Bay is big and has lots of potential anchorages for us to try out.  The Miles River branches off at the eastern end with many great looking spots, including the town of St. Michaels.  There's also Shipping Creek, Crab Alley Bay and Prospect Bay to explore.  Considering that this is all within a few hours sail from where we hang out at Herrington Harbour North I'd say we'll be spending a lot of time on Eastern Bay.