Labor Day Weekend

 Map of Eastern Bay (click here).

At the beginning of September we had four days off, Friday through Monday.  Something to do with Labor Day.  I wanted to take all four days and head south to Tangier Island to do some exploring.  As it worked out that didn't work out.

We had things to take care of on Friday and by the time we got our act together it was 1630.  Knowing we were getting low on fuel I checked the tank and found it was down to 1/8.  If this was my car I'd be pulling into a gas station.  Our boat has a slightly larger tank, 160 gallons, which meant that we probably still had about 20 gallons which could reasonably last us until late February.  Thinking we were gonna take a long trip I would feel better with more so we added that to the list of things to do prior to leaving.  We departed from our slip and headed to Herrington Harbour South for fuel.  Cheri and I had heard separate weather reports neither of which agreed or supported our going south in any kind of hurry.

We motored over to the fuel dock to fill up.  I glanced at the wind sock as we approached and it indicated the wind coming out of the east.  I decided to get a line onto the bow and then drive the stern around to the dock.  As I made my move the wind shifted around to the south and caught me with the nose straight into the dock and the stern sticking out in the channel.  Cute.  I quickly used prop walk to bring the stern around the other way and we tied up properly at the dock.  Transferring 120 gallons of diesel takes a while and the hose didn't have a clip to hold it on so I sat there the entire time.  Final bill came to $419.06.  Yikes!

We cruised back out into Herring Bay at 1830.  We had maybe 1.5 hours of good light left and the wind was still blowing 15 knots out of the south.  Our new destination became the Rhoade River, about 2.5 hours to the north off the West River.  We thought we could anchor overnight and figure out where wanted to go from there.  Maybe north of the Bay Bridge to the Sassafrass River, home to my ancestors on the Eastern Shore.  That'd be cool.

We set our sails, main and genoa, as soon as we got out of Herrington South.  We settled onto a course of about 030 magnetic to keep us clear of the shallows off Shady Side.  We were zipping across Herring Bay at about 7 knots running on a broad reach.  Waves were low and lumpy about 3' to 4' coming from behind on our starboard quarter.  Sweet ride!  We were enjoying it so much Cheri suggested we can our plans and head across the Bay to the Wye River, our not-so-secret hide out.

I brought the boat around to 075 and we headed across the Bay on a beam reach.  Waves were hitting us on the side now but we were running at 8.3 knots.  Flying!  We made it across the Bay in no time, less than an hour, and continued up Eastern Bay at 7 to 7.5 knots.  Once past Kent Island the sun set and we continued on in darkness.  We sailed on in the moonless night, heeled over at about 10 degrees, quietly cutting through the water.  The shore lights mingled with other lights around us and we occasionally turned on the radar to confirm there were no other boats on the water.  We turned up into the wind as we came into the Miles River, furled the sails and continued on under power.  We arrived in Shaw Bay on the East Wye at 2130.  We shined the radar one last time to verify positions of boats already at anchor and wound our way through to a good location closer into shore.

This was a dark night with the moon not up yet (waning) and just the stars all around.  The lights on the shoreline were far enough away that they didn't provide any illumination.  The moon was waning, only 25.8718720226389% full that night.  Waxing?  Waning?  Yeah, we had to look it up.  If you can see the moon in the evening it's waxing (getting bigger).  If you see it at dawn or in the early morning it's waning (getting smaller).  Here's more...if the shadow is on the left side then it's waxing, on the right it's waning.  BTW - the shadow is not caused by the Earth, which would instead be an eclipse.  The moon is always lit up 50% by the Sun and the "phases" are due to the angle we see the moon from as it rotates around our rotating Earth.

With the anchor set I shined the flashlight down on the water around us.  I was greeted by 10,000 jelly fish.  Wave after wave of jelly fish.  It was incredible!  In a cubic foot of water there had to have been 100 jelly fish.  I've never seen anything like it.  Musta been a jelly fish convention. I googled it and found that there can be jelly fish "blooms" when the conditions are just right.  Usually in the Spring though.  I'm still thinking this was some kind of a convention.  Republican jelly fish or something.

Saturday we motored further up the river to our cove.  What to my wondering eyes did appear?  Three other boats already anchored here.  Bummer.  I think this is the first time we've come here and not had the place to ourselves.  I gotta admit, it is a fairly large cove and three or four boats are not going to get in each other's way.  I'd just come to think of it as my private get-away.  Guess it's time to search for another spot.

We settled in for the rest of the weekend.  Quiet, decent weather but no swimming with all the jelly fish.  Caught up on my reading and spent some time in the tender rowing around the shoreline.  Very relaxing.  On Monday we headed home around 1400 with a nice breeze out of the NNW which took us all the way home on a single tack once we rounded Tilghman Point into Eastern Bay.  All in all this was a mighty nice weekend.  The weather is cooling off with daytime temps in the 70's.  Good wind, 15 to 20 knots.  Excellent sailing (with some night sailing!) and quiet time at anchor.  Cigars too!  Who could ask for more?