Chesapeake Bay - Oct 2008
After a quick trip down the New Jersey coast, we were back in the Chesapeake Bay in early October. Our first stop was at the town of Havre de Grace, where we got to see our friends Jon and Jan on 'Huckleberry' who live there. They were getting the boat ready to head south when we were there. We also got to see our friends Anita and Phil on the sailboat 'Sweet Pea,' who we'd last seen in the Chesapeake Bay while heading north in the early summer.
We anchored out a bit as we headed south towards Solomon's for the American Tug rendezvous. I took these pictures on two different mornings as along the way.
Jeremy and I hosted the East Coast American Tug Rendezvous this year at Zahniser's Marina in Solomons Maryland. We had a really good turnout, with 13 boats at the dock and 17 boats represented in total. Such a pretty sight to see that many American Tugs all lined up along the docks.
We headed out in our dinghy, together with Deb, Bill and Woody from Muddy Paws to take some pictures of the fleet. Woody is waiting patiently on the swim platform while Mom and Dad get the dink ready to go.
That's Tug for Two, Muddy Paws, and Tardis on the dock in the photo to the left, and our two AT41's at the rendezvous - Higher Ground and Emerald Lady in the picture to the right. I thought it was interesting that they arranged the two 41's so the red one was on the left and the green one on the right!
Mark and Beverly from Calypso chat with Geraldine and Bill on the dock (from Tug for Two) together with Bob on the bow of Hummingbird.
Zahniser's graciously provided us with meeting space in the form of a deck and a tent, together with tables and chairs all at no extra charge. They also lent us a huge 40-cup coffee pot to use for the early morning get-together we had on Saturday morning. Jeremy gave a couple of talks - one on power management, and one on some inexpensive improvements we've made to our tug. Mike Pare, from Newport Electronics, fielded a Q&A session on electronics and a couple of CG Auxiliary guys provided a safety talk to round out the morning talks.
Jeremy and I didn't have a way to collect money for catered meals, so we asked everyone to pitch in for 'pot luck.' No one ever starves at a boaters' pot luck, and this was no exception. Everyone agreed that we had some of the best food of any of the previous rendezvous.
We spent the afternoon doing 'tug crawls' where we got to check out each others boats to see what others have added or done.
All in all, it seemed to be pretty successful. I'm glad that we did it, as it didn't seem as though anyone else was going to put this together this year. We were happy to see lots of enthusiasm for a rendezvous next year - including Bill and Deb from Muddy Paws volunteering to take the lead on putting it together.
We were happy to have 13 boats at the docks, but the Krogens were having their rendezvous the same weekend at a marina across the way. They had over 50 boats rafted up on two long transient docks at Calvert's marina. Of course, they've been doing this a bit longer than we have!
After the rendezvous, we saw Liz and Charles on Oops anchored in Solomons. We also got to spend some time with Art and Jeanne on their trawler Change O Pace while we were there..
After the rendezvous, we headed up the Patuxent river for a few days to anchor out and relax. We anchored off of Vera's on St. Leonard's Creek together with Sigi VII and Lady in Red.
We met Dick and Carol Masse in Seneca Falls on the Erie canal this summer. They have a house on St. Leonard's creek, and they invited us to stay on their dock while we were there. Carol is also a quilter, and she took me to a quilt shop in the area. She also plays the piano, and she invited me to bring my flute over one evening so we could play some duets. We were both a bit rusty, but we had a wonderful time! This is Dick's 'toy' car - a Triumph Spitfire convertible. When Carol and I went to the quilt store, Dick took Jeremy in the Spitfire to see an airplane museum on a local military base. Both Dick and Carol are retired Air Force - Carol was a General and Dick was a Colonel.
Tall ship on the Chesapeake Bay and a sunset in an anchorage on the bay.
We headed up to Annapolis to see the Power Boat Show. We anchored in Weems creek, which is where we stayed last year. There's a good place to leave the dinghy near a boat launch ramp and there's a free shuttle to the boat show from the Navy stadium, which is only a few blocks away.
Thomas Point Shoal Light is one of the most famous and photographed lighthouses on the Chesapeake Bay. It is the only screw pile light on the bay still in its original location. It was built in 1875 at the mouth of the South River, replacing an earlier shore light that eventually succumbed to shore erosion. In 1964 it was the last manned lighthouse in the Chesapeake Bay, staffed by four Coast Guardsmen, three of whom were on duty at any one time. When the Coast Guard announced plans to discontinue the lighthouse in 1972 and replace it with a steel tower there was a huge public outcry. In 1975 the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse was declared a historic landmark.
The photo to the right is of another beautiful sunset on the bay.
On the way south, we stopped off again at our friends Debbie and Bill Pyszka's house. Debbie has a sewing business doing boat canvas and interior decorating work. I helped her to make a Bimini top for a neighbor's 50' catamaran.
Leaving Bill and Deb's place, we made our way down to Salt Pond in the Hamptons to spend a few days with our friends Mark and Beverly before heading south down the Dismal Swamp canal.
Luckily the Dismal Swamp has remained open later this year, so that we were able to pass through on our way south. Last year it had closed due to low water only a few days before we got there - so we had to take the alternate 'Virginia Cut' route. This was the first time we've been down the Dismal in the fall and it was spectacular - with all of the beautiful fall foliage.
We were slowly traveling through the canal when we passed a disabled sailboat - 'Necessity.' They had managed to trash the seal on their prop-shaft so were unable to run and were slowly taking on water. We offered to give them a tow the remaining 10 miles or so down to the visitor center. Unfortunately it wasn't something that any of us could fix that night, and they ended up getting a tow back to Norfolk the next day to get it fixed. Hopefully they got the boat repaired and we'll see them again on the way south - this time under their own power.
Updated November 19, 2008