We planned to leave Swan Creek for Annapolis on the first weekday in May with decent weather. This turned out to be Wednesday, May 5th; we pulled out of our slip there for the last time right around noon. The sky was clear and sunny, and there was almost no wind --what there was was right out of the south, on our nose. We resigned ourselves to motoring the whole distance. According to our measurements on the chart, it looked like something around 17 nautical miles.
For fun, we pulled out our handheld Garmin GPS to play with on our little passage. Navigation on this trip was trivial, since everything was more or less line-of-sight from one landmark or buoy to another, but we entered our route just to see how things went. (And we discovered that the supposed "10-year battery" was dead, after less than 2 years, and that the waypoints we entered would be lost when we shut off the unit. Grr. But when we called Garmin later, they cheerfully instructed us to send it back to them for a free replacement, even though the warranty had expired six months ago. Yay, Garmin!) We also experimented with running the engine at different RPMs to see what speed each point on the tachometer translated into, and tabulated the readings from the GPS in addition to the ones on the boat's speedometer display. The GPS speeds were consistently 30% or more higher than the boat's knotmeter readings.
We're pretty sure the GPS speed is accurate -- or at least that it's more accurate than the boat's speedometer. The GPS-measured speed at 2500 RPM was exactly what the boat specs said it should be, 7 knots. Also, when we arrived in Annapolis, the boat's tripmeter said we'd gone less than 15 nautical miles, which wasn't consistent with the distance we'd measured on the chart. So we think the knotmeter reads low, which makes us happy, because we were sailing along a few days ago in a good wind and making (what we thought was) a measly 4.5 knots. We were very cheered to discover we were actually traveling at better than 6 knots. (For those of you who aren't sailors or meteorologists: a knot is one nautical mile per hour, about 1.15 mph. We're not talking blinding speed, here.)
After we passed under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, the wind picked up a little. Since we were going to be changing direction to go up the Severn River toward Annapolis, no longer going directly into the wind, we figured we could get a little sailing in. We turned a bit broadside to the wind and Britt unrolled the mainsail -- or at least, he tried.
Most cruising boats have roller-furling headsails, which unroll like windowshades from around the headstay at the front of the boat. Windom also has a roller-furling main, which is less common; the mainsail is rolled up inside a specially-designed mast, and unrolls out along the boom. A furling mainsail is more convenient to use and it is easy to reduce sail for high winds by rolling it partway. On the other hand, it forces a less efficient (and thereby slower) sail shape. And, conventional wisdom warns, more moving parts mean more things to go wrong. What do you do if it jams?
Well, we found out. The last time we'd sailed was the first time we'd sailed with much wind, and we'd turned directly into the wind in order to roll up the sails, the way you'd normally position the boat for taking down non-rolling sails. This turned out to be a mistake. The wind made the sails flog: the jib rolled up more loosely than it should have, while the main folded back on itself as it rolled inside the mast. When we tried to raise the main as we sailed toward Annapolis, the fold jammed in the mast.
The first thing we tried was using the wind to help pull out the sail, but at 10 knots it wasn't very much force. The problem was that the furling line pull is directed more downward than outward, parallel to the fold rather than forcing the sail to unfold. To get more of an outward pull, Britt untied the outhaul line from its path across the boom and tied it directly to the sail, then ran it around our stern rail and back to a winch so he could really yank on it. In this way he got the sail out to its fullest extent at the bottom, but the top ten feet or so of sail was still furled up inside the mast. Furling it back up and then pulling it out again got the entire sail out of the mast. Then we rolled it up yet again and undid the temporary outhaul kludge, ran the line back the way it was supposed to be, and rolled out the mainsail one more time. What a pain! We're definitely going to be a lot more careful about keeping tension on the sail as we furl it in the future.
The jib rolled out properly, and we had a lovely sail into the Severn River toward Annapolis. There was a good bit of other recreational boat traffic even though it was a weekday, although nothing like there is on weekends. We managed to stay out of everyone's way, which fortunately isn't really difficult at 5-10 mph.
Petrini's boatyard is just upstream of the Eastport drawbridge, which opens on request every half hour except during morning and evening rush hours. We had some time to kill before 4:00, so after we called the drawtender on the radio to request an opening we sailed slowly upriver to just past the Naval Academy boat basin. Midshipmen on little bitty sailing dinghies zipped around us like waterbugs. At 3:45 we jibed around and sailed back down the Severn and into Spa Creek, where we (carefully!) doused the sails and started the engine.
I had been nail-bitingly nervous anticipating our entrance into crowded downtown Annapolis, but we only saw a few other boats in the close-quarters approach to the bridge. I was still nervous, though. First, I was convinced we'd miss our scheduled opening and be stuck out until 6:00. When we got close to the bridge, right on time, it was clear to me our boat would never fit through the narrow slot between the bridge abutments. I didn't want to get too close until the bridge was clearly opening, so as we approached I turned the boat into a circle. Naturally, the bridge started opening just as I had the boat totally sideways to the entrance, and while jockeying around to get into position I was positive I was going to smash into something -- the bridge, a docked boat, or maybe the shore. And I still wasn't convinced we'd fit through.
"Britt, I can't do this, you'd better drive!" I yelled.
"I haven't done any driving, remember? You're the experienced driver here."
I gripped the wheel. The bridge got closer. And as it got closer, it got bigger, and we obviously had plenty of room, and I grinned and said, "Oh, never mind, no problem," and we slid on through just as easy as can be.
The slip we'd been assigned at Petrini's had a line across it from another boat, so I pulled into the one next to it. This slip is much narrower than the one we'd been in at the Swan Creek Marina, and I was quite proud of the way I deftly maneuvered in without bumping a single piling. It was nice to have something to be proud of, because I totally fluffed my next task of setting the stern lines. Britt stood on the dock with the bow lines and pushed the boat away; theoretically I should have easily reached out with the boathook and draped a perfect loop over each pile. In practice, it took a half-dozen tries. The lines slid off the hook, fouled in the backstays, fell in the water, and basically did everything except loop around the pilings. Oh, well -- I'm learning.
A bit after 6:00, we heard gunshots; Wednesday night is the big sailboat race night here. The finish line is right by the bridge; the tightly-grouped boats sailed practically into the bridge, doused their sails at what seemed to be past the last possible moment, and glided into the Annapolis Yacht Club docks. We were glad we'd missed that particular bit of excitement while coming through the drawbridge!
We're settling in at Petrini's. Things are pretty active here since it's a working boatyard, with boats constantly being hauled and painted and fixed and so on. At Swan Creek, we had one of the larger boats, but here Windom is dwarfed by some huge craft. This is because Petrini's has some of the deepest water around Annapolis; really big cruising sailboats and many racing boats have such deep draft they can't fit in other marinas. Someone told us the big Swan at the end of the dock draws 12 feet. (Our draft is 5.)
Next to us is Waupi, which reportedly belongs to one of the Duponts. She doesn't look much like a millionaire's boat; she has elegant lines but appears fairly old, and her deck and mast are painted baby blue in what looks like regular old interior house paint. On our other side is Gosi, a Valiant 42 owned by Tom and Barbara (and their basset hound Dick), who live next door to Petrini's. They are soon going to Bermuda for three weeks, so they've been down here a lot, getting ready. They've been giving us lots of helpful advice and suggestions. Best of all, they let us use their phone line to upload this web page!