Nap Town

We had company stay with us this weekend, a first for us.  Cheri's niece and her daughter, Jill and Abbie, stayed on board for about 4 days.  We decided to head for Annapolis, thinking that would give us something fun to do, walking around the streets, window shopping and hitting the bars.  For Jill and Abbie, sailing would be a first.  For us, going to Annapolis by boat and using a mooring ball would both be firsts.

We departed later than we had hoped on Friday, around 1300.  The wind, less than 5 knots NNW, was on our nose the entire way so we ran under power.  Bummer.  When we arrived we found all the mooring balls were taken.  I hadn't arranged for a plan B so we stalled in the "south anchorage" while I perused the charts looking for a place we could spend the night and still have access to the downtown area.  We thought of anchoring right there but this anchorage is way out in the open, totally unprotected and boat traffic is constantly cutting through there.  The choppy water alone would make it miserable.  The fact that most of the anchorage is in 35' of water also played into it.  It was now 1730 and this place was packed.  Our options here were limited so we decided to head out and come back the next day.

We cruised over to Whitehall Bay (click here) with the intention of dropping anchor at the NE end, near Meredith Creek.  As we entered the bay I noticed a small creek running off at the NW end which looked much more interesting.  The entrance to Mill Creek is a tight zig-zag but it's well marked and not difficult.  Once inside, the creek opens up and extends back for a long way, almost to Rte 50.  We snagged a nice, quiet spot just below Providence Cove along an unpopulated piece of shoreline.  Just on the other side of the trees is an Annapolis landmark, the large radio towers at the entrance to the Severn River.

Once we got the anchor set we launched the tender for a trip upstream to explore things for a while. If you look on the chart (click here) you'll see where the depth goes from 7' to 5', changes from light blue to dark blue, back towards Rte 179.  That's about how far we got before turning back.  Not really very far but it was a nice ride with lots of beautiful homes and big boats to see.  Lotsa money back in there.  When we got back to our boat Cheri made pizza for dinner.  We put Abbie to bed and then the three of us crawled up on our bed and watched a movie.

The next day, Saturday, we had French Toast made with cinnamon-raisin bread. Mmm mmmm good.  Finally got under way around noon and headed over to Annapolis again.  I was planning to anchor out in the "south anchorage" for the day and then head further up the Severn River to anchor for the night.  When we got over there though we found that the mooring area was half empty.  We cruised over and snagged a ball that gave us a great spot looking down the throat of "Ego Alley", the nickname for the city docks.  Probably one of the

best spots there and it only costs $35/night.  The Annapolis mooring field has something like 75 mooring balls available with different sizes to suit different sized boats.  The 24" mooring ball is attached to an anchor of some sort, engine block, large chunk of concrete, etc.  The ball floats on the surface and has a pennant attached with an eye in the loose end.  You're supposed to snag this line and loop your own line through it which is then attached to the boat.  When it's time to go you simply let one end of your line go, pull it through the eye and take off.  This being our first shot at using a mooring ball I'll admit it took a few attempts.  The wind was blowing 15 knots out of the ESE so we circled around the mooring field and came at the ball headed into the wind.  I slowly coasted up on the ball but we hadn't pre-arranged any hand signals and I missed it.  With the wind blowing us around and other boats in the vicinity I didn't attempt any maneuvering and just circled around for a second try.  This time we settled on some hand signals and Cheri was able to snag the line.  Unfortunately I decided we were being blown off to the side and hit the bow thruster to bring us back, yanking the line out of Cheri's grasp in the process.  OK, third attempt.  We circled around again, came up on the ball, Cheri snagged the line with her boat hook and had us tied off before, well...you know...before I could yank it away.

Once we got settled in we hailed the harbor taxi and got a lift into town.  We walked around (click here), working our way up Main Street towards St. Anne's on Church Circle.  About half way there we stopped in a small Deli for lunch (crab cakes and Sam Adams Summer Brew!).  Feeling reinvigorated, we continued up the hill, perusing the shops as we went.  When we arrived at the circle we crossed over to the State House on State Circle.  Annapolis served as the capitol of the United States for a brief period from 1783 to 1784 and this building ( the State House) is where  George Washington resigned his commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army.  This is also where the state senate ratified the Articles of Confederation in the forming of our country, the good old USA.  Walking through these streets you get a sense of history all around you.  We walked around to Maryland Avenue and eventually found our way to a nice cigar shop about halfway down the road where we picked up some stogies for later on.  We then walked down through the old neighborhoods on Prince George Street to Randall Street and worked our way back towards the docks.  Middleton Tavern invited us in for raw oysters, shrimp and drinks before heading over to Hats in the Belfry on Main Street to try on about 100 hats.  From there we walked down to the harbor and found a good spot on the wall to take a load off our feet and smoke our cigars.  Continuing on we walked around the harbor and checked out all the boats before deciding what we really needed was some ice cream.  There's an ice cream shop right there on Dock Street but it had a line going out the door and wrapping around the block.  Standing in line is not how we like to spend our time so we continued on and found a nice old general store on Market Space that sold ice cream without the wait.  Perfect!

By the time we finished our ice cream and got back to the boat it was 2200.  I checked the weather for an update and found they were calling for rain to start around midnight.  We pulled in the tender and packed up the cockpit.  Finally hit the sack around midnight.  This was such a nice day.  Relaxing pace, good food and drinks, interesting shops and plenty of things to see and a fine cigar to top it all off.  Plus the girls ended up with a few hats!  Note:  in the picture is a monstrous yacht, about 80' or 90', that was parked near our mooring.  I think that thing has been there for at least a couple months.  Probably has to wait for that "once-a year" extra high tide to get back out to the deep water.  Or maybe he's waiting for the price of diesel to go down.  Or he came to Annapolis, wised up and traded it in for a sailboat.  Or it could be that he got in there and then realized he didn't have enough room to turn around to get out.  Or maybe he's waiting for the swelling to go down on those things on his mast.  Yegads, can you imagine the operating cost for that thing?  The dock fee alone is probably more than I make in a year.

We were on a tight schedule for Sunday because Cheri's older brother was stopping by for a quick visit in the afternoon so we had to be on our way early in the day.  We got up at 0630 and had a quick breakfast before getting under way.  Once we were clear of the mooring field we set the sails and were on our way.  Wind was about 10 to 12 knots NNE which was good for the beginning of our trip, giving us a nice breeze on our port side and good speed over ground (SOG) of about 7 knots.  After we got down to Thomas Point Light we turned more before the wind and our speed dropped off to 5 or 6 knots and we sailed wing and wing with the main out one side and the genoa out the other.  We cruised on like that for about an hour with everyone except me asleep in the cockpit.  Approaching Herring Bay we secured the sails and went in the rest of the way under power.  Backed into our slip around 1430.

This was such a nice weekend.  Got some sailing in.  The anchorage in Mill Creek turned out to be a really great spot.  The time in old Annapolis was a total joy.  I also researched anchorages in the area when we couldn't find a place to anchor on Friday and it looks like there's several good places further up the Severn River worth checking out.  But best of all, our visit with Jill and Abbie was a blast.