All Hands On Deck   Adventures on land and at sea

Sailing with Jeff

Chestertown and back to Baltimore

Baltimore 1

Last night I was sitting in Pirat’s cockpit, listening to a street performer and music from the fountain on Baltimore’s inner harbor waterfront. Both of these soundtracks became very annoying. The street performer DJ plays the same song for his robot/mime to dance to over and over again and the fountain plays the same selection of 4 or 5 songs coordinating to water spurts all day long. Last night was our fourth night on the city docks since we returned with Jeff on Tuesday. We also spent 2 nights on the same dock last week. With access to so many museums, waterfront walking, shopping, and excellent people watching why would we want to leave?

It has been a busy week. I’ll hit the high points.

Lee and I went on an informal tour of the Pride of Baltimore (the tall ship docked next to us) last week. While we were on Pride’s deck we looked over at our boat to see a woman posing with our boat while her date took her picture. She was half standing on the side of the boat with her hand on the lifeline. Lee and I got a good laugh out of that one. Perhaps we should start charging for pictures. Multiple people have walked onto the dock and posed with our boat over the past few days.
With Jeff, we spent 3 nights anchored off of Eastern Neck Island, a wildlife refuge with lots of migratory birds and very few people.
We finally tested our MPG on an afternoon sail along the Chester River.
Memorial Day brought us to Chestertown for their quaint parade.
Sailing back across the bay on Monday afternoon was fabulous! It was a brisk beam reach in 15-18 knots of wind with Pirat doing about 8-8.5 knots. We even poled out the jib on a dead down wind leg!
Rock Creek near the mouth of the Patapsco River (where Baltimore is) had a cool Osprey nest in a channel marker.
Back in Baltimore, Lee and I have been marching all over the place to see the sights and enjoy the luxuries of docked life. We went to a movie, Whole Foods, The 4 Maritime Museum ships, the B&O Railroad Museum, the Aquarium, Lexington Market, West Marine, and various waterfront shopping centers. We walked, ran, and biked. On Wednesday Lee and I had lunch with my moms cousin Lyn. She gave us lots of good tips on enjoying the bay and we’re looking forward to visiting her in Massachusetts in the fall.

Safeway delivered our groceries this morning (it’s free the first time) and we finally said goodbye to Baltimore. The sail to Whitehall Bay, just outside Annapolis, was wonderful. We passed lots of boats that didn’t even know they were racing us! After evading some Bena-toos (as Lee calls them) that were following us we found a private anchorage along the creek. The water is warm. The boat is hot. Tomorrow: no using the oven to make dinner! It’s way too hot!

Oh, and we’ve been transients for one month now. Wow! It seems like much longer.