A Study In Contrasts

Back Creek, Annapolis, Maryland
N 38 57.496 W 76 29.081

Last night it was particularly nice, and the bugs were not biting, so we stayed up late sitting in the Cockpit. What a nice evening scene it was. We watched the reflection of the 3/4 moon in the water. Soon after sunset, bats began darting around. Then we saw our first fireflies of the season. No doubt, the bats were seeing them too. We love fireflies. At our house in West Charlton, fireflies reached their peak in mid June. We had so many fireflies that it looked like a Disney park.

The wind was totally still so we could hear noises from on shore. First it was the splashes caused by fish jumping out of the water to capture some insect floating on the surface. It would have been a good time for fly fishing. We also heard the Kraak of a great blue heron nearby. Then we heard the hooting of an owl. It may have been a barn owl, but I'm not sure. Then there was a ruckus in the nearby hen house. Perhaps a fox was nearby, or perhaps it was just a rowdy rooster. Later, I heard a duck quacking in the distance. Last, we heard a dog barking from a long distance away. Ah the sweet sounds of summer.

This morning, there was a pleasant fresh breeze, so we set sail for Annapolis. We had a great time sailing, albeit slow progress in the light head winds, up until noon. Then the wind died entirely and we had to motor the rest of the way. In the summer months, the Chesapeake is frequently windless, just like the lakes in upstate New York are.

Right now, on Back Creek, the contrast in the scene compared to last night is total. Instead of pristine nature, we have civilization. I never saw so many boats per foot of shoreline than on Back Creek. Tomorrow I may try to count the masts. There must be thousands.

But our reason for being here is pleasurable. Our good friends Chris and June are here on their boat Albion. They wintered over here in Back Creek, and we kept in touch with them by email the whole time. So we came up here to have a rendezvous with them. They invited us out for a hot shower at the marina and dinner at the local Chinese buffet restaurant. It was a lot of fun and the hot shower felt great. (For the benefit of non cruising blog readers, a hot shower is a special treat for cruisers, and we leap at every opportunity to get one.)

Tomorrow, we go to the post office to fetch the new camera that hopefully, is waiting for us. I also plan to go up the mast in the boatswains chair to fix the radar. Our radar stopped working on that foggy day on the Alligator River. I talked to the Furuno service technician today. He said that the symptoms sound like the rubber belt that makes the antenna go around must have jumped off. I'll try to fix it myself, and if I can't we'll call a local dealer to fix it for us. The radar is less than a year old, so it is still covered by warranty.

After a couple of days here, our plan is to watch the weather. When it looks like a good day to sail from the Delaware River up to New York City 3-4 days in the future, we'll head up the rest of the way in the Chesapeake, and down the Delaware. The point is that between the Chesapeake and the Hudson River, there are no fun places to stop and wait for weather. Therefore, we'll stay someplace fun until the weather looks right.