CHAPTER TWENTY SIX: TWO DAYS ON THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX:  TWO DAYS ON THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

What a bay! Two hundred miles long, from the Susquehanna to the Atlantic Ocean. Thirty miles wide near the Potomac River. Total shoreline: 11,684 miles. And might I add, the largest estuary in these United States. Maybe its name is Algonquin for “great water”, maybe not. Yes, I’m talking about the CHESAPEAKE! We spent all day today, August 23, cruising through its waters from Deltaville, Virginia to Solomons, Maryland. We started at 7 a.m. and pulled into the fixed dock at Harbor Island Marina in Solomons at 3:40 p.m. It was a looong day of cruising, but what variety and surprises the Chesapeake offered along the way. First, the pelicans are back. Hurray! A small squadron of three flew by to welcome us to Maryland. That was shortly before the Navy fighter planes flew overhead to give us a military greeting. And the porpoises are back! Big, healthy ones playing right in front of Slow Motion. The crabbers have never left us, as we headed north, but there seem to more of them and more crab traps near our path than anywhere else.

We started out at Deltaville, reluctantly leaving the friendliest, coolest marina (Dozier’s) of our journey. They had a wine and cheese and watermelon get together last night at 6. That was a first. I met Kay, who sailed up and down the Intracoastal Waterway in a 45 foot boat for several years. Now they’re tied up, except for day excursions, at Dozier’s. I can understand why. This place is so quiet and restful. As you walk up to the office, you step onto a covered porch that has more than a dozen white wood rocking chairs. The Admiral and I tried them out. We could get used to rocking on that porch watching the sun set. Dozier’s had courtesy bikes, not in the best shape, but still, I managed to ride several miles on a narrow country road. I found my ice cream sandwich, and I turned around and rode back to Dozier’s. I sweated just enough to need a shower, and of course, the showers were clean. They had hair dryers. You get the picture – seventh heaven. Oh yeah, and free pump out. This is not my favorite chore, but I feel so good (for a few weeks) after we do it, knowing that I can, you know, and not worry about overflow. Gee, that’s a charming subject.

Dozier’s – we wanted to rent a room there, or a slip. We wanted to enjoy the peace and quiet for as long as possible. We were actually hoping for bad weather today, so we could stay longer. Not that we weren’t excited about the prospect of coming to Solomons. But when you find an edenic place like Dozier’s, you want to savor it. And the contrast with Norfolk was off the charts, as the Admiral would say. No sign of the military, no sign of gathering storm clouds, no major highway backed up for miles right next to the marina. When we got to Dozier’s, it was like entering a different climate zone. And the waters were so calm. Plus, the humidity was bearable – my hair didn’t stick to my head. Deltaville, Dozier’s little town, is just an hour and a half from Richmond, according to Kay, but worlds away from any metropolitan influence.

Enough about paradise. We went through a rugged aquatic terrain to get there. We left the Rebel Marine Service on Wednesday pretty early, and we were immediately in the middle of the busy Norfolk Harbor, watching 360 for the large navy and commercial ships that could plow us under. We went through choppy (one to one and a half foot waves) water to the Salt Ponds Marina, which has the best price for diesel fuel in this part of the world. We got there at 8:30 and a teenaged boy, who lives on a cruiser with his father and stepmother at the marina, helped us get fuel. He was efficiency personified tying us up and getting the diesel fuel to us. Such a pleasure to work with someone who knows what he’s doing and doesn’t waste time. We were out of there by 9 a.m., after pumping 90 gallons into each main tank. We swapped stories about storms and spouts, earthquakes (the East Coast is getting them) and tornadoes. But all the time, he was doing his job, helping us get back to our journey.

Then we returned, gingerly, to the nearly open sea. All the bodies of water that we traveled on Wednesday were huge, except for the narrow and shallow little channel we took in and out of Salt Ponds Marina. The Admiral was using some religious expletives as we tried to stay off the shoaling, and we succeeded in getting back to deeper water. For the rest of Wednesday’s journey to paradise, the Admiral had checked the charts and, using his protractor, determined the various angles we had to cruise, for what number of nautical miles, in order to reach our Deltaville destination. No more baby steps – this is not the Intracoastal Waterway with day markers every mile or so and a “magenta line” on the electric chart, which any idiot (read: me) can follow. This is uncharted territory – for us, at least. It’s really weird, when you are surrounded by unknown waters, with land in sight on your port side, but just water stretching to the horizon in every other direction.

I remember experiencing the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean with my crossing in 1967 and return in 1968 on a huge ocean liner, to and from Bremerhaven, Germany. That passage took a week each way. Some of the return was scary, stormy with waves of the Perfect Storm variety (against the front of a much bigger ship). It was hurricane season, the middle to end of August. For me, shipboard romances in both directions (different guys) made the time fly. And I was too young and inexperienced to appreciate fully any danger associated with crossing the Atlantic. I just remember that not seeing any sign of land for days was quite disconcerting.

On Wednesday, we never lost sight of land completely, but it was a different cruising day from any we had previously experienced. We didn’t have much company, in terms of other boats. At a place called “Wolf Trap”, an old lighthouse in the middle of nowhere, we saw a sailboat heading toward the lighthouse. We didn’t see one other trawler, and we were never close enough to another boat, even a crabber, to wave. What was really cool – and this happened the whole 47 miles we traveled – was that the angles that the Admiral figured out were perfect! We cruised for 10 nautical miles, and voila! There was the buoy that we were supposed to be near. This was like a treasure hunt. We kept finding each “treasure”, each green can and red nun and each lighthouse that we were told we could find, if we charted the right course. It was so cool! Thank you, Admiral, for your many hours of figuring out the angles and executing your charts to perfection.

Needless to say, the Admiral huffed about how the navigator (nominally, me) should be doing this work. But get real – no, seriously, I’m sure I can do this in the future, maybe in a year or two. However, remember that the Admiral worked on a lobster boat in the Keys for years and owned his own fishing boat that he captained and took out into the ocean and also went out to sea in a 40 foot cruiser of his cousin’s. I, on the other hand, paid for a few hours of sailing in the Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake, and did exactly as I was told. I also paddled a kayak in Elkhorn Slough a few times, and rowed a rowboat around Lake Mineola in Pennsylvania. Oh, and don’t forget the whale watching cruises in the Monterey Bay. What a wealth of nautical experience! Yes, I’m just a little bit defensive about wearing the label “navigator” and not actually navigating. Fortunately, I have other skills essential to the operation of Slow Motion. I’m just not revealing what they are.

Back to the Wednesday open sea excursion: We made it to the bottom of the Chesapeake, where the Piankatank River and the Rappahannock River flow into it. We passed Yorktown and other historic places on the way, with the hope of stopping there when we head south in early October. It was really a great day of straight cruising – after two weeks of inactivity for Slow Motion. At one point, the Admiral increased the speed of Slow Motion, and my God, she can actually move pretty fast, when pushed. But with the price of diesel fuel, it only makes sense to us to travel at a relatively slow, relatively fuel efficient speed – if you can get your mind around 2 miles per gallon as fuel efficient.

Today, as we (sigh) left Dozier’s, we had a whole new set of charts with angles that the Admiral had developed, based on the few markers that existed in the Chesapeake to guide us to Solomons. We had some buoys for the main ship channel (commercial ships) to watch for, and we had some lighthouses with heights of 50 plus feet in the middle of the Bay to steer toward. Oh, oh, the Admiral figured out how automatic pilot works, and since then, he has been able to program the angles for the automatic pilot, and we can both sit back and watch AP steer the course. This is incredible – no more jerking the wheel to port, then to starboard, making endless corrections. The AP makes the endless corrections. We just have to keep an eye out for the big ships that can drown us and the little crab pot markers that can destroy our propellers.

Let me tell you, there were some BIG SHIPS out there today. And they were moving – we stayed several miles away from them, out of the BIG SHIP channel, but still in plenty deep water. We could easily see them, but we didn’t quite trust their ability to see us, or their ability to change course quickly, if necessary. So always steer clear of BIG SHIPS. You already knew that, I’m sure. It’s part of the Bully Principle. Just don’t do anything to get in the way of the Bully, and you’ll live a lot longer – on land and water. Kay was telling me that you really can’t stay away from the big ships in the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. And it looked to her like an entire building, a huge building, a skyscraper on its side, was coming down the middle of the waterway. She said it didn’t look like you and the BIG SHIP would both fit in the Canal, but it works somehow. You just shake in your bare feet, as the behemoth rumbles past you. Think “fly and elephant” and you get the right size comparison. We’re not sure we are going to travel on the C and D Canal, but don’t worry, if we do, you’ll read about it here, every hair-raising moment.

Now, after the wonderful experience we had at Dozier’s, we were looking for another paradise at the end of the day at Solomons. It was not to be. The first sign of something amiss occurred when we asked the dock master if we turn at the huge crane, visible to anyone at the marina or within 5 miles of it, and he said “what crane?” Then we asked if we make the first turn off the Patuxent River into the marina, and he said “what do you mean?” Well, the marina was in the little cove near the big crane and it was indeed off the first turn from the Patuxent River. We found it, as the dock master gave us unintelligible directions for docking. As we approached the dock, oh my, it’s an old wooden, fixed dock, and the only space big enough for a 50 footer on the T-dock is right next to the fuel tanks. Then we looked up and, sure enough, there was another accursed dockside restaurant hanging over the marina. Heading into the weekend, we were reminded of the drunken, LOUD patrons at other dockside restaurants and the horrible live music that emanated from these joints. Once we tied up – redoing every line that the dock helper had screwed up – I went to pay. I asked him about the noise level at the restaurant. He said it shouldn’t be “too bad” tonight, Thursday, but on the weekend, they did have live music. Oh Lordy, here we go again! And tonight, there was a constant cackler, whose voice pierced the air between the restaurant and our boat repeatedly. If this Blog is disjointed, blame the cackler, a concentration buster par excellence.

So, we are tired after our first two challenging days of cruising the Chesapeake. And we are happy to be in Solomons. Now will the people in the restaurant just go home? Let us have some silence to dream about our two days on the open Bay with pelicans, porpoises, big ships, lighthouse islets, and perfect angles. Thank you, Admiral, for a job well done. “Take a bow”, she said sternly. (Nautical Pun No. 1)