We motored away from Annapolis on Friday morning. Old time sailors, ever a superstitious lot, would never begin a voyage on a Friday, but we were anxious to get going before the usual weekend mob scene. We filled up on diesel and water, dumped our waste and trash, and headed north in south winds so light as to be almost nonexistent. We motored until we passed the lighthouse just north of the Bay Bridge, since sailing Windom directly downwind in 5 knots or less is frustrating: the sails flap, it's hard to keep from backwinding the jib or jibing the main, and we go so slowly that I could jump overboard and swim faster. But when we were in position to angle toward the mouth of the Magothy River, we turned the engine off and hoisted the sails. True, we made only about 2 knots -- a good swimmer would still have beaten us -- but we weren't in any hurry.
We anchored behind Dobbins Island, an uninhabited hillock of an island. Nominally private land, but you wouldn't know it from the dozens of boats anchored along its beach. The next day -- Saturday -- two "concession-stand-boats" arrived to sell Sno-Cones and sodas to the crowds. People were swimming in the water, lounging on the beach, and hiking through the trees. We rowed our dinghy to the beach and turned it over. Over the past few months of relative inactivity, it had acquired an impressive amount of barnacles and thick slime, so we scraped it off using scrapers intended for clearing ice from car windshields. (We'd previously discovered this tool worked well, and begged several more from my parents, after trying to buy more and discovering that nobody sells ice scrapers in Maryland in July.) We hiked to the crest of the island and peeked down the cliffs on the other side, then wandered for a while along the various overgrown trails through the jungle-like forest before heading back to our boat.
The winds were very light again for the next leg of our trip, but from a more favorable direction, so we alternated between sailing when we could and motoring when we couldn't. Our destination was another island -- Hart-Miller Island -- but toward afternoon the weather started looking a bit stormy, so we bypassed the open anchorage by the island and anchored in nearby Galloway Creek.
It cleared up by early evening, so we lowered the motor onto the dinghy, grabbed our dinghy lights, and headed up nearby Frog Mortar Creek. In addition to just wanting an excuse to write that weird name down in our logs, we were looking for a restaurant mentioned in our cruising guide (it was Britt's birthday, a good excuse for an evening out). The Wild Duck Cafe had burgers and beer and even some live music, so we danced a little on the beach before dinking back home.
Britt's birthday present from me was a fishing rod, reel, and various lures and sinkers and leaders and hooks that the "fishing guy" at West Marine had pulled off shelves for me when I told him I wanted everything needed to fish in the bay and on the coast. Britt used to fish a lot back in Colorado mountain lakes and streams, but of course he needed different equipment now. It was easy enough to buy the gear -- one of my solo trips to West Marine to pick up parts just took a little extra time -- but hiding it on the boat was a major trick! Most of the stuff just fit in my pack and was easy to smuggle in, but a 6 foot long rod? When I came back from my shopping trip, I left it in the dinghy, alongside one of the spare oars as camouflage, until Britt was buried headfirst under the settee cushion soldering pipes. Then I casually went out to the dinghy and got it and slid it into the hiding place I'd picked out, under the mattress in the aft cabin (our "garage")...and it didn't fit! The handle protruded a foot. Well, that wouldn't do, so I rearranged things ("Nothing, dear, just trying to neaten up a little") and pulled the rod out and back under the other side of the mattress...and it didn't fit! I finally just put it diagonally across and partly under the mattress cover, behind all the other junk we keep in there. Fortunately, Britt didn't get too curious, and it stayed a surprise.
The next morning we motored the short distance to Hart-Miller Island and took the dinghy ashore. This used to be two islands, but in 1984 the state built a huge containment dike behind them and a sand beach between them. The beach and the original islands are a state park, open for camping and picnicing. The containment area is being filled slowly with dredged material from the various channel dredging projects in the Bay; it's not open to the public, but there's an observation tower, which we climbed so we could see the enormous filling operation. The fill will be completed in another ten years, and the entire island will eventually be a public park and wildlife sanctuary. We walked barefoot on the beach and watched the amazing number and variety of birds.
Conditions were really great when we left Hart-Miller Island, so we immediately put up the sails. We dodged around Poole's Island light and crossed the shipping channel just behind a tug pushing a barge piled high with sand. A hundred or more birds sat on the sand hills, catching a free ride down the Bay.
We spent the night at Worton Creek, then headed for the Sassafras River. One long tack took us to the edge of the restricted area which surrounds the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, then another brought us right into the Sassafras. The first few miles were wide open, and it looked like we were in a bay, heading for the far shore. Finally we spotted the channel marker, where the river curved around a long, skinny peninsula called Ordinary Point; we followed it around and anchored in the shallow basin just behind the point.
Ordinary Point has a nice sandy beach, so we did a little beachcombing and then went for a swim. The water wasn't much clearer than it was anywhere we'd been -- murky green with only a foot or so visibility -- but when it splashed across our lips we could tell that it was far less saline. One nice advantage was that the jellyfish which had kept us from swimming much before were absent; they stay in the saltier waters further south. We spent several days here, alternating boat chores with refreshing swims.
As
in much of the rest of the Bay, the Sassafras was dotted with crab
pots and trotline floats. One afternoon, Britt waved over one of the
watermen and asked him if he'd sell us some crabs. $10 got us two
dozen in an old bushel basket. Our biggest pot could only handle
three crabs at a time, so it took a long time to cook them all, and
even longer to pick them apart and get the meat out. But we ate
pretty well for a few days!
We got another meal from the Bay when Britt tried out his new fishing gear, and was rewarded with a large catfish. Catfish prefer freshwater, so this was another indicator of the declining salinity as we moved farther north.
The wind was from the west when we finally left Ordinary Point, so once we rounded the curve we tacked across the wide part of the river. This part of the Sassafras is not very deep -- 13 feet for the most part -- so we decided that we'd change tacks when we got close enough to the shore that the depth dropped to 10 feet. The depth stayed around 12 feet for a long time, though, and we were getting awfully close to the shore; Britt kept saying, "Are you ready to tack yet?" but I decided to wait until we hit 11 feet.
Well, we "hit" 11 feet with a bang and a bump. When the depthsounder read 11, we tacked, but just as I swung the wheel around, the depth dropped to 8.5. Then 5. Then 3 -- and we came to a dead stop, right in the middle of tacking. We draw 5 feet 1 inch; the depthsounder is not calibrated for its position below the waterline, but through experience we've found that anything over 4 feet is ok (but nervewracking), and 3.5 feet is aground. We cheated to get off -- we started the motor and powered to finish the turn. When we were turned across the wind and pointed back out into the middle of the river, the sails filled, the boat heeled, the keel tilted up off the bottom, and we sailed off. (The depthsounder actually read 2.6 feet at one point during this grounding. We figure the bottom foot of our keel was probably buried in mud!)
After several noneventful tacks, we reached the mouth of the Sassafras River and turned right, continuing northward up the Bay. A pleasant day of sailing brought us to Havre de Grace, at the very head of the Chesapeake, where the Susquehanna River becomes the Chesapeake Bay. The water here is even less saline than that of the Sassafras, practically completely fresh, although it's still a tidewater area.
In contrast to the flatness of the middle Bay country, Havre de Grace is hilly and green despite the drought. It's a fairly old town, with many buildings dating from the early 1800s, and every museum docent we met mentioned that it was tied with Washington as a choice for the capital of the United States, until the Speaker of the House broke the tie, and we all know which town "won". In anticipation of being the capital, though, Havre de Grace was laid out as a grid of spacious avenues, and we enjoyed riding our bicycles down these tree-shaded roads, looking at the historic buildings.
Havre de Grace is trying to drum up a tourist industry for itself, but it's still in the early stages. The Concord Point Lighthouse and the Susquehanna Canal Museum are open only on weekend afternoons, and they are still trying to raise money to restore the lighthouse-keeper's house. We also visited the Decoy Museum (Havre de Grace bills itself the "Decoy Capital of the World"). The craftsmanship involved in making the decoys is impressive.
We are the only cruising sailboat anchored out here in the Susquehanna. There are several marinas, and maybe there are some cruisers staying in them, but this doesn't seem to be a popular destination. There are lots of local boats here, though, and we've especially noticed lots of trimarans. (The Bay near here is extremely shallow -- outside of the dredged channel which we followed, the depths are 2 and 3 feet -- and since trimarans are very shallow-draft, they would make a lot of sense here.)
In
addition to boats, there are many other forms of transportation
around us. We are anchored near a railroad bridge which carries
Amtrak passenger trains, and another railroad bridge and two highway
bridges are visible upstream. At the mouth of the river is a seaplane
landing zone, and we see kayaks and canoes every so often. But the
most interesting form of transportation we've seen is an ultralight
seaplane made from a kit. It's docked at the riverbank right near us,
and its owner takes tourists on rides and gives lessons to would-be
ultralight pilots. They take off and land right next to us -- it's a
kick to watch.