From Annapolis to Island Creek in the Choptank River off Chesapeak Bay

Sunday, October 7, 2012

From Annapolis to Island Creek in the Choptank River off Chesapeak Bay

There are not very many photographs for this part of our journey. We went 37 nautical miles on Saturday and had a "weather adventure". As you can see in the first picture, leaving Annapolis at 9 AM the weather was beautiful. Not as much wind as we would like, but we had to get through the boats anchored out for the show and out into the bay. By one the wind picked up and in the picture of the light house you can see the bay was full of sail boats enjoying the brisk wind. The skies started to darken and I went below to check the latest weather. There were small craft advisory and notice the wind would switch to N and gust to 25, waves 1 to 2 feet. At around 3 Tom went below for a break and told me to keep watch. To give you an idea how quickly things went to hell in a hand basket, the local NOAH weather station had the following readings 3:00 pm WNW 5.8 / GUST 9.7 3:10 pm NW 11.7 / gust to 23.2 - 3:20 pm N 21.4 / gust to 37.2

I watch the wind go from 11 to 18 to 25 and Cool Hand heel over to port her tow rail hitting water. Yelling for Tom I disengaged the auto pilot and fought the wheel to bring her into the wind. Tom was below dodging stuff and trying to get back to the cockpit. We started the engine and both of us fought to bring her into the wind. Then down came the sails as wave after wave came up to our dodger. We spent the next 3 hours battling out way into Choptank river finding a small inlet that was out of wind and waves. We anchored for the night, tired and cold. Sunday morning bright light winds but gray wet skies. We motored to Cambridge and here I type dry and warm tied to a dock, Laundry this evening.