Southbound ’17 – Travel Day 8: Annapolis, MD to St Michaels, MD

FROM: The Captain

Forecast: Mostly sunny and cold.  Winds from the north 10mph. Seas 1-2′

Distance traveled: 25.1 nautical miles

Time underway: 2 hours 45 minutes

Average Speed: 9.1 kts

Max Speed: 12 kts

Fuel used: 28 gallons

It was 29 degrees when we awoke on the morning of our departure from Annapolis.  29 degrees.  Ugh.  Fortunately the sun was shining brightly and the winds had calmed some from the big blow that came through the day before.  Tim and I had actually started discussing our departure plan the previous day… there is not a lot of room to maneuver in the Yacht Basin’s basin.  We were tied up at the T-head (the face dock at the end of a pier) in the fairway that boat’s transit to and from the basin’s exit, pointed away from the exit.  The question with departure was whether or not to spin OLOH around before pulling out of the basin or just come off our dock and back down out of the basin.  The fairway is only about sixty-five feet wide so there’s effectively no margin for error on the spin and, of course, the wind was still blowing a bit.  But in the end, we felt confident enough in our skills and the responsiveness of OLOH to my helm input.  Keep in mind – we’ve only owned OLOH for less than three months at this point so we are still getting used to her dimensions and behavior in different situations.  As always, we simply took our time and pulled off the maneuver without incident.

We were off the docks at 9:39am for our relatively short run across Chesapeake Bay to Eastern Bay.  Once we cleared a flotilla of hard-core sailors (it was really cold) also leaving Annapolis harbor with us we had a great run to St. Michaels from the heated comfort of OLOH’s pilothouse.  The only time we had to stray from our plotted course was when I noticed an enormous freighter on AIS northbound on the Bay a few miles away.  Normally you have plenty of time to react to vessels of this size that you may encounter – this one was 653 feet long – but I noticed that it seemed to be getting closer to our intended course line unusually quickly.  When I looked at Integrity’s AIS data I saw it was traveling at 18 knots (almost 21 mph)!  That’s really fast for something that size.  The “rule of big” always applies in these situations but I made my intentions clear by turning to starboard and passing “on the one’s” – port to port.

After that it was smooth sailing as we entered Eastern Bay.  If we were on a “delivery” schedule this stop wouldn’t have made sense as it’s quite a bit out of the way from our progression south.  But I’ve always heard about it and it was recommended to us by Captain Pete as Maryland boating at its best.  Even though it was freezing cold we decided we did not want to miss it and we are so pleased with our choice.  As we meandered our way there it was clear that this was a special area and a worthy destination.  We had a reservation at St. Michaels Marina, not very big, but simply perfect.  Roy, who had taken our reservation that day before, was right there on the radio when we hailed with easy directions into the marina and our slip and there waiting to grab our lines with a smile.  The place is fairly empty right now but, understandably, really fills up in-season with boats of all sizes (Roy told us about the 160 footer that was tied up recently where we are) and far-out reservations are a must.  THIS is what we have been waiting for and within two hours it was clearly the stop to beat on this trip.

November 11 is a special date for several reasons – besides being our dear cuz Jules and best friend Amy’s birthdays which makes it a great day – it was also Jasper’s “gotcha day!”  Three years ago on this day we took him home from the rescue organization Out of the Pits…  We never realized that three short years later our little nugget would be our amazing OLOH boat dog!  We celebrated with a few treats, a couple really long walks and some snuggling.  He seemed quite pleased.