We Did A Bad, Bad Thing

 Chris Isaak - Bad, Bad Thing

Last weekend, 7-16, we had plans to sail over to the Choptank River and meet up with the local sailing association for a raft-up with hor d'oeuvres and drinks.  Wow!  Hoighty Toighty!

We were supposed to meet up at 1730 on Trippe Creek which is a good four hour sail from Herring Bay.  We planned to leave by noon and figured that would give us plenty of time.  Fired up the engine and discovered an electrical problem right away.  By the time I fixed that it was 1430 and we were finished before we even started.

We sailed out from R2 in Herring Bay with the wind out of the South at about 18 knots.  Beautiful sailing conditions even if it did require that we tack our way down the Bay.  By the time we got to the entrance to the Tred Avon River it was already 1800.  We pulled up to the party at 1830 and were greeted by semi-cold shoulders.  We mingled with the crowd which was a good size coming from 12 boats altogether.  Encountered comments like "Jeez, too bad you're so late, ya missed all the good food" or "Maybe next time you can get here a little earlier".

After the party broke up we crawled back to our boat and decided to celebrate our anniversary with a couple of nice cigars and a glass of Amaretto.  We sat out in the cockpit and figured with the breeze blowing across our bow that it would draw the smoke right out the back of the boat.  We figured wrong.  The folks sitting in the boat next to us got very quiet shortly after we lit up and moved their party down below.  Bummer.  We just can't seem to fit in with this crowd.

In the morning we got up early and watched the sunrise, went for a swim (probably shoulda worn swim trunks, huh?) and had some coffee.  As people emerged around us they said not a word to us, had a very nice breakfast amongst themselves and then informed us they were ready for us to cast off.  Uhm, OK, see ya later.  "Have a day".

I really don't think this "rafting up with the cocktail crowd" is our kind of thing.  We've always been lone wolves so I'm not really sure why we wandered down this social path.  I think I had been reading about how cruisers band together and party a lot so I thought we should try it out.  OK, got that out of the way, let's move on.

When I installed the wind generator I had trouble finding a good spot to mount the control panel for it.  I wanted it located at the Nav Station but the previous owners had taken up most of the space with "stuff" to make it look official or complete or something.  I knew I had to re-organize this mess but that would have to be a project for later on, like next winter maybe.  We have two VHF radios, one mounted in the panel at the Nav Station and the other, which we use all the time, being a hand-held up in the cockpit.  Of course I removed the panel mounted one so I could put in the control for the wind generator.  Where, you might wonder, am I going with this?

Sailing out of the Choptank River the wind was blowing out of the SW at 12 - 15 knots.  We were tacking back and forth down the river when the Coast Guard came on the radio with a warning about an overturned boat and at about the same time we were passed by a CG riverboat hauling buns towards Tilghman Island.  On our next tack we spotted the boat floating upside down, white hull with blue stripes.  No bodies.  We called it in on our hand-held but the response from the CG was unintelligible.  We tried several times to communicate with them but it was useless.  Finally another boater came on and told us it had already been reported and they were just calling it a navigation hazard.  OK.  We circled around several times thinking that riverboat might come out but they never did so we eventually took off.  I think if we had the other radio we could have had better communications with the CG because it has more power and the antenna is mounted at the top of the mast.  I believe the correct thing to do would have been to stay on station until they arrived but without the communications I couldn't see sitting out there all day hoping they'd show up.  Shortly after we took off we heard another boater go through exactly the same routine with poor coms.  He probably also had a hand-held radio.

We tacked out of the Choptank under full sail, Main, Staysail and Genoa.  We've been sailing La Vida Dulce for about a year now and this is my first experience with the cutter rig.  I haven't been too happy with her ability to "point up" into the wind and had found that we could do better when we weren't flying the Genoa.  Of course in light winds you want the Genoa up.  About halfway out the river it dawned on me that maybe the Staysail was fouling the air for the Genoa when the sails were close hauled.  We tried running with just the Main and Genoa and were able to point up an extra 5 degrees on either tack.  Cool!  So maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks.  That extra five degrees helped us work out the final tack so we just barely cleared GC9 off Tilghman Island and were able to turn up the Bay without another tack.  We ran all the way up to Herring Bay on a beam reach, course of 312 degrees magnetic.

Aside from my inability to play nicely with others, I had a great weekend of sailing.  The weather was better than nice, it was uncharacteristically wonderful for July, with good wind and temperatures in the low 80's.  This was our first time sailing on the Choptank with La Vida Dulce (remind me sometime to tell you about our visit here in our last boat, "Delirious").  It's a beautiful river with a ton of great anchorages, over three centuries of history, quaint old towns to visit and some of the best boat yards on the Bay.  The Choptank was also the main focus for James Michener's book "Chesapeake".  I know most of it was based on a conglomeration of ideas taken from around the area but it's easy to picture the island with the plantation or the settlement on the shore.  When I'm sailing down the river I think about what it was like for those guys back in the 1600 and 1700's, sailing on this river, living at that farm over there or in that town. Out on the water it's easy to time-travel because you're removed from the traffic and powerlines and all those things that say "modern day".  Out on the water there are occasions when it could very well be 1735.  And then you get slapped back to reality when you run hard aground and have to get on your hand-held VHF radio and call TowBoat US for help.