This EPIC blog post has been written over the course of weeks (I started writing 21 days ago). Like fine wine, my prose needs to age and mature before its potential is realized. When first I began flailing at the keyboard, it seemed only natural to begin with the following humorous (and, at the time, à propos) opening line.

​Four-score and seven hours ago, our motor yacht pulled into her slip at Downtown Sanford Marina in Sanford, Florida. It was fully three months in the making. There were missteps. There was a totaled car. There was pestilence. There was a cheap flight to Baltimore followed by a long drive from Solomons, Maryland. There were new friends, historic vessels aground, boat rides with friends, manatees, gators, and finally “The Voyage Home,” but I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Let’s get back to just after our arrival in Astor, Florida. Crazy happened, and I have yet to enumerate any of it for our dear BLOGophiles. 

Those who remember our departure from Florida on April 1, 2022, which predates this BLOG's first entry by about three months, will recall that one of the last things we did before casting off lines was to park our beloved red Toyota Prius, “Ruby,” with our friends, Velma and Kip McConnell, who graciously offered a corner of their Palm Coast, Florida property to store our car. Chris and Cherie (AKA Technomadia—or later in this BLOG, also the "Sanford Chris and Cherie") followed us in Blooper, their van, to Chez McConnell where we carelessly tossed the keys to Velma, who was sick with COVID-19 at the time, turning around and returning to Sanford with the Technomads after a lovely late lunch at a nearby restaurant. The next day we all cast off lines to do a little buddy boating on the St. Johns River before parting company for Stinkpot to continue north. You can read about all the places we ended up in earlier blog entries and also on our Facebook page. Suffice it to say, we went north and returned south, and when we tied up in Astor, we wanted to retrieve our car. 

Kip graciously came to the marina, picked me up, and brought me to his house where I became reacquainted with our car. Ruby looked just fine, but, once inside, it was hard not to notice the smell. During the 7½ months of being parked, unidentified members of the order Rodentia had clearly made Ruby their home for part of our absence, and so I drove back to the marina with the windows down. 

We cleaned and vacuumed the car, replaced the cabin air filter and did everything we knew to in a futile attempt to purge the malodor. We continued to use the car, airing it out before every trip, but after about three or four days of doing so, I got into the car to take a short drive to the nearby market, only to be greeted by a barrage of dashboard lights, an engine that sounded sick, and a car that refused to go into gear. Our furry stowaways had clearly done greater damage to the car than simply stinking it up. We filed an insurance claim for rodent damage on November 14, 2022. A tow truck was sent over and the car was taken to a dealership in nearby Deland, Florida for assessment. After more than a month of insurer deliberations during which the car was lost by the dealership on their own lot (they found it), we were told the car was totaled, and just after the first of the year, we were remunerated quite generously for a 16-year-old car—receiving a check for roughly what we paid for it almost nine years before.

Of course, we couldn’t be without any sort of wheels for all that time, and we weren’t. No sooner had we found out that Ruby was to be towed away than I started making plans to go pick up our “other car”—my trusty 2006 Toyota Highlander which we left parked in Solomons, Maryland at the home of dear friends, Aaron and Cristin. We, of course, had no idea that the Prius was to be totaled, but I had a sneaking suspicion that we might be without a car for a few weeks and renting a car seemed ridiculous. I hopped online and found a $29, one-way flight from Orlando to Baltimore the following week. I grabbed a ticket and, after a lovely ride to Orlando’s airport from boat neighbor, Chris, was soon spirited away to a much colder climate that was enjoying a blessedly warm day.

As an aside, Frontier is not an airline you should fly unless the tickets are stupidly cheap. It’s an uncomfortable cattle call. You will not enjoy it. $29 from Orlando to Baltimore? Yes! It was absolutely 10% the cost of any other airline’s offering. I’d do it again, but not for a farthing more.

On the ground in Baltimore, I was greeted on the ground by Kim—dear friend of decades, music supporter extraordinaire, and recent purchaser of a slick BMW. She was waiting for me when I exited the airport, and after a moment of “hiya” and “howzitgoing,” we were making tracks toward Solomons.

Now this is the moment in the story when I should tell you that one thing I forgot to pack with me was the key to my car. Fortunately, there was a copy of it squirreled away in Cristin and Aaron’s garage. Unfortunately, they are living in Düsseldorf, Germany for Aaron’s final, pre-retirement, US Navy-required, three-year tour of duty on foreign soil as a navy flyboy mucky-muck. Mind you, knowing that I was going to get the car, I had already asked that the key be retrieved by Cristin’s house-key-toting neighbor and deposited inconspicuously under the floor mat in the then locked car. I texted Stacey about my faux pas, and she set about trying to get in touch with Cristin to have the car containing the key left unlocked. It took a few hours, and several of my nails had succumbed to nibbling in the meantime, but eventually Stacey let me know that she had successfully “made contact” and that the key had unfortunately already been “deposited,” and the car had been “locked in the process, as originally intended.” Too late….

So while Kim and I were making the drive from BWI to Solomons, I had to decide how to deal with this latest wrinkle. Do I call the auto club and have them meet me there to save time since I’m about to make an all-night drive back to Florida? Do we just drive to the car and see if the smart auto locks detected the key fob and refused to lock for Cristin’s neighbor? I decided there was a fair chance that her best intentions to lock the car failed and so we did the latter. Upon arrival beside my chariot, I tried the driver’s door and it popped open! Smart auto locks for the win! I grabbed the key and fob off the floor board, swung the door closed, hit the “lock button” and said to Kim, "Let’s eat!"

Back in the Beemer, we made for The Pier, a nearby restaurant that is, predictably, on a pier. With the usually-gorgeous Solomons Island sunset hiding behind the overcast, we enjoyed the views out the windows and the conversation over a lovely dinner, the tab for which was deftly snatched from view by Kim’s expert sleight of hand and dealt with without my knowing while I was in the men’s room. Following an after-dinner caffeine injection, Kim returned me to my vehicle where we said our good-bye, and I pointed my steed southard at around 6PM.

I will save you the point-by-point recounting of my six-state, twelve-hour overnight odyssey, but suffice it to say, 800+ miles later, I arrived at Astor Marina & Motel around 6AM and took a well-earned nap shortly thereafter.

At this point, I pause my writing, only because this seems like the end—it isn’t. There is still a month or more to go before we’d know that our Prius would be totaled by the insurance company and large check cut.  

Blogger’s fatigue shrugged off, and realizing that my flight to Baltimore happened on November 30, 2022, with my overnight drive concluding at dawn on December 1, suffice it to say, with wheels at the ready, we settled into a routine in Astor. Our new slip being a mere hour’s drive from Sanford (in ideal conditions), I reconnected with my favorite pub there, The Sullivan, and began booking gigs shortly before our arrival. So sure were we that we’d have a working vehicle when our weary feet hit the sod that I had to borrow a car from our friends/dock neighbors Chris and Cherie (the Astor contingent) to play the first of the shows in late November after the Prius died, but all the other shows have been since December 1, so I was able to make them with the help of the Highlander. ​

The marina is still very damaged from the high water following hurricanes Ian and Nicole, and repairs are happening slowly since the city-owned facility didn’t have the budget to swing such major repairs.  The videos above from Technomadia show the devastation from the unprecedented flooding in Sanford. There are still two entire piers that are damaged beyond repair, removing some 40 slips from circulation. Officially, the marina is still not accepting new boats, and will not be for quite some time, even short-term transient boats, but this conversation with Luke seemed like it might be moving toward an exception being in the works for Stinkpot.

“Ha! We're waiting with bated breath,” I typed. “That whole place is like family to us, so we're very excited to get home.”

30 more minutes elapsed before I saw the words we longed to hear appear unbidden on my computer screen: “You just won an exciting stay at the Downtown Sanford Marina.”

I accepted the offer, and after a bit of logistical discussion, we agreed that Stinkpot would arrive in its assigned slip, 34B, Monday morning, January 30. Being that it was Friday, and I was still pretty worn from my COVID convalescence, we took our time preparing to leave, despite our excitement to return “home” to Sanford. We decided to make an overnight at anchor out of it. We took one more run to the grocery store to make sure we’d have everything we might want. We began stowing, tying down, and otherwise preparing Stinkpot to be underway after two-and-a-half months mostly tied to land.

We told the Astor Bridge Marina & Motel’s manager, Julie, that we’d gotten the good news, and we’d be getting underway soon, thanked her for everything, settled up any final bills and paperwork. On a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning, we topped off our potable water tank, started the engines, disconnected the shore power, brought our dock lines aboard, and Stinkpot gently nudged back out into the St. Johns River for her final 30 mile, upstream push to Sanford.

The storm happened during a king tide, so the storm surge which came up the St. Johns River proved entertaining for us, but devastating for some of the very expensive homes that were around us in the cove. Clearly some of the homes were built at a time when no one could've conceived of the river level rising much above a certain level. Newer houses were built upon piles of fill, but the older homes were decidedly not, and we watched with morbid fascination as the water rose over retaining walls and docks, up manicured lawns, around patio furniture, and through locked doors into some very posh dwellings. The wind did howl, but there was almost no wave action in our enclosed cove, and Stinkpot came through with nary a scratch. 

After spending three days in the cove with no place to go ashore, your humble captain was starting to go a little stir crazy, so against the better judgement of the crew, we weighed anchor on Veterans Day and pointed the boat out of the cove onto the river to continue up river (south). Our goal was to fuel up at our usual fuel stop at Mandarin Holiday Marina and continue as far as Green Cove Springs where we could dock with power on the municipal docks. Mind you, those docks would've been a terrible choice during the storm because a powerful northeast wind there would rock those docks mercilessly, but post-storm, the winds clocked around to the southwest, and that would be very pleasant there, indeed. I was looking forward to going ashore, perhaps grabbing a pizza or some other culinary perk of civilization while there. It wasn't meant to be.

When we exited the cove onto the river, the river seemed relatively calm, but as we continued south, the wind and wave action on the river became lumpier and lumpier, the overcast increased, and by the time we got to the area around Mandarin Point and Doctors Lake, the seas were uncomfortable  and the numerous, black crab pot floats were increasingly hard to spot under darkening skies. I decided at that point that we should divert into Doctors Lake and run down to Whitey's Fish Camp (a restaurant with a dock) to dock for dinner, go ashore for a walk, and perhaps spend the night if allowed. ​

Stacey called ahead of our arrival, and the person she spoke to was talking as though the docks were bound to be wall-to-wall boats, and we'd scarcely find a place to tie up. I was dubious because, despite it being a weekend evening, the weather was far from prime boating conditions. Stacey persisted with her questioning and asked if we could spend the night. She was told that captains who drink a bit too much are often encouraged to spend the night on the dock. Challenge accepted!

We made the four miles down the lake against the chop to Whitey's and the only boat that was tied up there was one that clearly stays tied up there—presumably belonging to one of Whitey's owners. The restaurant is tucked into a creek and the water was flat calm, despite the relentless southwest breeze. I slid Stinkpot alongside the dock just ahead of that vessel, and the water was already so high still from the storm that we could tell the still-rising tide would take it over the fixed dock. With another two or three hours until high tide, we went inside and told the staff of our presence on their dock and said we'd be in for dinner after the tide recedes enough to let us back off the boat. A plan that we were all too pleased to follow—and we did—and it was delicious—and the captain got a little tipsy as t'was required and foretold. While we were inside, the overcast began to break up leaving us with a beautiful sky under which we took a lovely post-dinner stroll ashore and retired for the evening, and while we were admiring the very nice houses ashore we received a private message from one of our fan/followers on Facebook saying, I see you're at my family's restaurant. I hope you enjoy staying the night on the dock. We told them that we had already accomplished the listed quid pro quo, and were told in no uncertain terms that such drastic measures were unnecessary, and that Stinkpot was invited to dock at Whitey's for the night any time. Fortunately, I did not wake up with a headache the following morning.

The sun rose on that Saturday with nary a breath of wind and gorgeous warming sunshine. We cast off from Whitey's and made our way back up the lake and across the river to Mandarin Holiday Marina for our requisite refueling at the least expensive fuel stop for hundreds of miles in either direction, after which we continued up river (south) in idyllic conditions with a knot or so current against us toward our target for the day of the free docks in Palatka. That current we were running against never waned at all at flood, even though we were still on the tidal portion of the river. I attribute that to the high water and indeed flooding conditions still up river following hurricanes Ian and, to a far lesser extent, Nicole.

To those of you on land, today is election day. For Stacey and me, we filled out our ballots a few weeks ago and mailed them from Southport, NC with the USPS's official "Maine Stamp" providing the fare. That truly feels like a lifetime ago.

Today, and for most of the last week or so, we have been, more or less, in Jacksonville, FL. We crossed into Florida on November 2nd, and since we've been "in town" so much has happened that it almost deserves its own blog entry. Instead of doing that, I'm just going to rewind to the point at which our last blog ended, and hit "play." To find out about all that has transpired, read on—I'll get to it. I promise.

The last time I did the old "jazz hands on the computer keyboard" thing here was when we had just entered South Carolina. Having figured out and fixed, at thankfully minor expense, what was wrong with our starboard engine, the boat was running great, and we were so pleased to be back underway. Anchored on the Waccamaw River is truly our "happy place." Quiet and calm, it was a truly relaxing place to unwind after the uncertainty of the previous week or so. We were suddenly energized and decided we wanted to press on and get to Sanford, Florida where I could get some gigs and start rebuilding the cruising kitty after months of expensive boat repairs and even more expensive diesel fuel. We had no idea what we were getting into when we left on April 1st, and had we known then, we may not have even left Sanford.

I don't want to write this post. It's just too much, and I'm pooped. It has been a full ten days since I last sat down to write a post here, and it feels like at least a month has passed—maybe two.

It's Wednesday, and we were supposed to be here on Saturday afternoon. As I write this, we are in South Carolina, right beside the point where the ICW and the Waccamaw River diverge. Why were we not here five days ago? There's a story, and I will tell all as soon as I catch you up on everything that happened after we left Washington, NC.

We left Washington in the morning after our last entry here and ran back down the Pamlico River and turned onto Goose Creek and the canal to its south, ultimately stopping at R.E. Mayo's Seafood Dock where we spent the night. While there I changed the oil in our main engines, and we enjoyed a quiet night. Mayo's even had a "used oil" tank where I was able to dispose of the evidence.

Early last Tuesday morning we topped off our fuel tanks while we were near Mayo's fuel dock and then continued south to the Neuse River where we bounced around on some uncomfortable seas until the Adams Creek turnoff. We continued to Bogue Sound and ran all the way to Swansboro to a wonderful anchorage just off the beaten path known as "Spoil Island."

Last Wednesday we rose with the sun and were underway soon thereafter to make a long run down the ICW to Carolina Beach State Park, a favorite stop of ours, where we spent two nights. We had mail and Amazon packages stacking up ahead of us in Southport, NC and didn't want to get there before they did!

But there's not a gator in sight, and this late in the season we don't expect to see any until we reach Florida. I guess what I mean to say is, we are now in North Carolina. 

This place we're in now is simply lovely. I mean, truly beautiful. Nice downtown with lots of historic buildings and houses. A free dock with 48 hours of allotted time to tie up while we take it all in, and a laundry room all to ourselves to do as much laundry as we can stand for the nominal cost of $5. Washington, NC is exactly as was promised when we were reading about it and considering making a side trip up the Pamlico River to experience it for ourselves. It took a bit of doing to get here, and we'll be casting off in the morning to leave here, but it was so worth it!

The last time I wrote here, one week ago, Stinkpot was tied up in Deltaville, Virginia at the Fishing Bay Yacht Club. The very next day, Monday, October 10, we had a beautiful, flat-calm day to run down the bay to stay in our regular spot on the Portsmouth, VA free dock at High Street Landing. We enjoyed being in a "downtown" location, and took a nice long walk to admire the the city's architecture and take in the ambiance of the waterfront. 

Captain's Log, Supplemental: We did a thing tonight. After the sun began to go down, I looked up at the voltage gauge and determined that we didn't get nearly enough solar charging time to make it through the night without some serious powered intervention, so we made the decision to pay for a slip and have power. We moved the boat to the only open Stinkpot-sized slip in the marina for the night. ​

After two false starts, the first caused by a delayed Amazon package, and the second caused by the remnants of hurricane Ian circling for what seemed like a year, perhaps a year and a half, while we watched coverage of the wasteland it left in its wake, Stinkpot has finally left the dock and begun her voyage south for the winter.

With a tinge of regret, on a beautiful, sunny morning, Thursday, October 6th, we dropped lines and pointed Stinkpot away from Havre de Grace, Maryland after five weeks in the City Yacht Basin.

We made some very good friends there, not the least of whom is Steve, the dockmaster at the marina, as well as the developers of the Argo Navigation app, Jeff, John, and Bill. I'm sure all of these folks will figure prominently into some future adventures, but for now we are off to new places. Our first day, we ran down to Annapolis to pump out our black water tank and grab some fuel—not a lot of fuel, but just enough since we see a very nice fuel price at Top Rack Marina.

We were thinking we might anchor nearby and take in the sights and sounds of Annapolis, but that will have to wait for another time. The Annapolis Boat Show was in full swing, and our desire for a peaceful anchorage proved more powerful than the desire to see the town. It remains on our list of future stops—the boat show is as well—just not now. We continued south and anchored up the Rhode River near Sheephead Cove. 

Greetings from GORGEOUS Havre de Grace, Maryland! We have been here for over two weeks now, having arrived on August 27th. Last time I posted here, we were in Rockhall, MD awaiting a diver to give our bottom a scrub—the boat's bottom, that is. He found growth enough down there to slow us down a bit, including a healthy crust of barnacles on our prop shafts. In no time flat, he had chiseled off our stowaways, and we were on our way, headed north along the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. It was still quite hot, and our generator had not worked so well in the heat during our stay in Rockhall. It was overheating under load, so we decided to not run it until we solved that problem (more on that in a moment).

We were on the hunt for an anchorage with a good breeze, similar to the anchorage called Dun Cove that we enjoyed days before, just to the west of St. Michaels, MD. First we nosed into Fairlee Creek, which looked promising, but some crab fisherman had woven an intricate network of trotlines and floats throughout the entire anchorage with little room left for us, so we scrubbed and ran up to just north of Handy's Point in the mouth of Worton Creek. The breeze there was lovely, the water was flat calm, and we were anchored in no time enjoying dinner and the sunset. The breeze calmed down to almost nothing and the only force dictating our position to the anchor was the changing tide.

For the previous few days, we had been trying out a new navigation app called, Argo. It really seems like a promising app, but it had some rather significant gaps in its feature set. I had emailed the company and started a dialog with Jeff, the company founder. He told me they were located in Havre de Grace, so our trip here developed a few different angles of interest. First, we would rebuild Stinkpot's fuel injectors. Second, we'd meet up with Jeff and learn more about his app and its development and offer to help him make it more attractive to long-distance boaters such as us.

So we docked on the end of pier 2 at the City Yacht Basin and secured a month of dockage from the dockmaster, Steve. I ordered my injector nozzles and a new raw water pump for the generator to cure the overheating problem, and we invited Jeff over to visit us on Stinkpot. Jeff came a couple of times, the first time, bringing some nice gifts like an Argo hat, beer coozie, dry bag, and other things. He asked if he could plug his Argo data collection dongle into our navigation network to collect depth data for improving his app (which we agreed to). On a separate trip, he brought John with him, who is another of the folks working on the Argo, and John asked if we needed a car, offering his seldom-used Subaru sedan for as long as we're here. On yet a third trip, John and Bill came to diagnose and fix an issue with the Argo data-collection dongle (all is well now).

Also since we've been here, I was contacted by friends, Fred and Shirley, with whom I sit on a non-profit folk music association board called the World Folk Music Association. Fred took us shopping (pre-John's Subaru) on one of our first days here, so we could restock our thinning pantry, and he took us to lunch for good measure. Since then we've been treated to lunch several other times by Fred and Shirley. We dined with them last Saturday afternoon along with, Sean and Janet, two other mutual friends. Stacey successfully enjoyed her first-ever Maryland Blue Crab, which your humble scribe eschewed due to having tried and failed to enjoy one before.

Our injector nozzles finally arrived a week or so ago, and I set to work collecting tools we don't have and extracting the first injector to replace the nozzle. You know, if you watch YouTube enough, you can foolishly gain the confidence to attempt virtually anything. With a bellyful of virtual-confidence, I easily removed the first injector and then, using my available tools as recommended by the video's creator, fruitlessly tried to recreate what I saw on YouTube. A vice, big wrenches, a torch, and brute force and I could not get the retaining cap off of this injector. I felt like a stereotypical geezer trying to open a drugstore pill bottle. I called my friend and former Dave Rowe Trio fiddler, Ed, who usually encourages me in these sorts of things, and Ed said, "Oh, I just take mine to an injector shop. You want them to be tested and balanced, and you don't have the tools."

I rarely need to be told twice that I'm a fool, so last Tuesday we were back on the internet and phone—both Stacey and me—and we found a shop specializing in diesel injector rebuilding about 20 miles away, just over the Delaware line who could squeeze our 12 injectors in before our stay here in HdG expired. Last Thursday we piled into John's Subaru and drove there to drop off said injectors and our twelve, fresh nozzles. The process of disassembly, cleaning, relapping, replacing worn parts, seating our new injector nozzles, and testing for leaks and proper aerosolization and spray pattern would, we were told, cost us $80 per injector plus shop parts, as required. He said, "Figure on a grand." I didn't cry at the figure, and I think it's very fair given the circumstances. In the process of finding the shop, we called another injector shop and he turned us away because he doesn't do diesel injectors for want of an $80,000 tool he would need. I guess I can swallow my pride and pay the man who does own the tools (I surely do not and likely will never).

We have been told our injectors should be ready soon, and it'll take me a couple of hours to get them all reinstalled. Until then, Stinkpot shall remain motionless, and we have ceased using our on-board heads for fear of needing to get our blackwater tank pumped out before we are once again mobile. The marina has nice bathroom facilities, but it's a quarter-mile round trip on foot, so we're getting our steps in.

So, all told, this has been a good stop for us. The marina adjoins a nice park with an excellent boardwalk. We've enjoyed the First Friday street festival. There was a "Lighted Boat Parade" and a fireworks show to close out the summer season on Labor Day weekend. We intend to take in the nearby museums as we are able and desire diversion, though our evening walks punctuated with roadside/trailside signs have given us a nice taste of the town and its well-documented history.

It feels like I haven't dropped an update here in a long time! It's funny what a few weeks of being tied to docks will do to you. We have found ourselves staying up later and waking later in the morning. A lot more lazy time…time at the pool at the marina.

Since our last post here, so much has happened. During that heatwave under which the entire continental US seemed to suffer for weeks, our main air conditioning unit died a tragic death. Given some time, patience, and a few hundred dollars in parts, it was probably repairable, but it was also 35 years old, and the technology has progressed with the years, so we decided to "bite the bullet" and ordered a new unit. It took about 3 yea—I mean days—to arrive at the local West Marine in Solomons, Maryland, and I had it installed and running within a few hours of toting it aboard. It was an amazing relief to get cool. We only survived the three days without it by taking advantage of the marina's saltwater swimming pool, but even it was starting to approach "hot tub temperatures" as the heat wave wore on. Suffice it to say, the new A/C unit works great!

On August 10, our slip agreement with Safe Harbor Zahnisers expired, so we moved Stinkpot to the t-head dock at Southern Maryland Sailing Association where I played music in July and again a few days before we cast off to leave Solomons—one of the perks!

After we got Stinkpot tied up and secured, we piled into our car and drove away. I had music to play: two pub shows in Massachusetts, an evening at the Towne Crier in Beacon, NY, an afternoon performance at the Middleburgh, NY Library at the behest of Sonny Ochs. The comings and goings of that music tour were well-documented in Chapter 38 of Folk on the Water, so I'll restrain from rehashing it here.

We returned to Stinkpot Monday, August 15, did groceries, and got ready for our final week in Solomons, which seemed to rush by. Laundry was done. Boat maintenance checks were done. On Friday night I played for the club members in the SMSA clubhouse. Saturday we drove to Rockville, Maryland, where I played a house concert at my friends, Scott and Paula Moore's house. Sunday we returned to the boat and restocked the larder at the local grocery emporia for our Monday morning departure. Monday, we rose and made ready for a 10-11 AM departure to take advantage of a favoring tide to ride the Chesapeake northard. At the appointed hour, we dropped lines, moved briefly over to the town pump-out dock to lighten our blackwater tank, and headed out of Solomons for the bay. 

It's very hot here in Solomons, Maryland right now. 100°F in the boat's cockpit when I snapped this photo. The lower two temperatures are INSIDE the boat with the air conditioning cranked (it's slowly losing the battle, but by the time is might get too hot inside, the sun goes down and it recovers). I bet you're wondering about what is 2°F. That's inside our deep freeze, which is out on deck with the sun beating on it. I keep wondering if there is a way to fit myself inside there for a little while, but I have my doubts. My contortionist days are mostly behind me.

Two familiar and perfectly wonderful anchorages in a row, and neither was part of the plan. We find ourselves in the second of them, swinging at anchor in Solomons, Maryland. Our eight-day odyssey of anchorages, docks, friends new and not-so-new, frightening stormy skies, and not-quite-angry-but-at-least-slightly-miffed seas over the last four days has brought us here, but I get ahead of myself. 

Allow me to back up four days. As you might recall from our last blog, we were docked in Deltaville, Virginia at a very nice yacht club that had given us three days on their very comfy T-head dock in exchange for a performance after a cookout on July 3rd. Stacey and I ate well and were very glad of their hospitality, and not wanting to overstay our welcome, we attempted to leave the very placid harbor on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 5th. We knew the wind had come up, and we could see waves breaking over the shallow bits of the creek entrance, but we were sure we'd be able to get out and around Stingray Point before the winds and waves got the better of us. All the wind and wave apps were saying that it was 1 to 2 footers coming from the south, and surely we've been through worse. Furthermore, once we make the final turn north, the seas would be behind us—you know, following seas. That's supposed to be a good thing.

On top of that, we were unwisely "timing the tides," which means we were waiting for the flood to carry us north and save us fuel. If you run north up the bay on the ebb, you burn more fuel and it takes longer to get anywhere. If we left at 3pm, we'd have the flood carrying us north and saving fuel. How foolish we were! You can't time the Chesapeake. You take the flat calm when you can get it, which is in the morning. 

We had dinner cranking in the Crock-Pot, and we expertly wedged it in so rough seas would not cause it to seek a low point in the cabin while underway, disconnected the shore power and water, cast off lines, and headed into the wild blue. We cleared the channel and it got a little rougher, and a little rougher. We were seeing waves of about 1 to 2 feet, as the forecast stated—until we saw something more like 5 feet, and it broke over the bow and brought Stinkpot to a standstill whilst she bounced on the next three consecutive waves. A rogue. These things happen. Press on. Two minutes later it happened again. Stacey was below making sure nothing was becoming airborne in the salon—like our dinner. I assured her via our ship-board communications system that if it happened again, we'd turn tail and…no sooner had the words left my mouth…it happened again. I turned the boat around, the sea became a following sea as it beckoned us back to the same dock we'd just left not 15 minutes before. We tied up, connected the shore power and water, and, when it was ready, ate our dinner that never spilled a drop. It wasn't long after dinner a storm cloud moved by to the north and "convinced us" to go ashore, just in case it did something dastardly on its way by (it didn't).

That's when we remembered something about Chesapeake Bay. The early boat gets the calm. The winds always kick up the afternoon seas. Message received and hopefully remembered for next time. 

The next morning, we woke early. Wait, that should be all-caps: EARLY! We started the engines, brought in the shore connections, cast off the lines, and we were gone. Our destination, as earlier stated, was to be Tangier Island. We had been doing some research and it had come to our attention that there was a marina with comparatively inexpensive fuel not far from there, and we intended to spend a night at the island and then run up for the cheap fuel. We got out, made the turns to the north past the point, and the wind was coming off the western shore—on the beam—at about 14 MPH. After the previous day's events in a similar wind, and realizing that a good breeze needs fetch (read: distance) to turn little waves into big waves, we decided to just run straight up the western shore and stay on our friends' dock in Reedville. Walt and Mary have a gorgeous spot there and had extended an invitation, so we quickly emailed them and told them we were coming. Tangier could wait a day. 

We arrived in Reedville in late morning, and with the mercury creeping toward 90°, we immediately set to work plugging into shore power and getting the air conditioning working! We enjoyed the day looking out the window at the beautiful scenery around us and chilling INSIDE the boat.

While enjoying the cool, we came to the realization that a couple marinas near us would be dropping their fuel price 30 cents overnight. That meant crossing the bay to get our fuel no longer needed to happen. Our reason to venture over to Tangier Island was now solely "because we want to." That kind of reasoning made it easy to push off the visit until later this summer when we'll be looking for places to visit and running south on the bay. We decided that our next day on the bay would see us in Solomons. The forecast was for sun, light breezes, and nice temperatures on the water. So, decisions made, we had a lovely visit with Walt and Mary on their porch, took a nice walk around town, and retired for the night.

The next morning, we shoved off and ran about 4 miles south to Ingram Bay Marina where we fueled (180 gallons at $5.39/gallon) and pumped out our black water tank. We then began running north toward Solomons, which required crossing the massive, 10-mile mouth of the Potomac River. It was beautiful and sunny, just as predicted, but for some reason I referred to my weather app to see a small craft advisory was in effect for the very water we were cruising on. It made NO SENSE. It was beautiful out there, and there had been nothing in the forecast last time I looked, but there is was, all scary-looking, in big red letters with exclamation points and everything. It was obviously Chesapeake Bay being fickle and changeable, and there was nothing we could do about it. We were committed. 

Another ten minutes went by and the sky started to get dark around us. We still had about 5 miles of river mouth to cross, and we were running against the ebb current, which was running about a full knot against us, so we were only making about 6 knots SOG (speed over ground). The north wind came up and waves started to break under our bow, depositing salt spray all over the foredeck.

I started considering our "bail out" options. Where could we go? We could take the building sea on the beam run behind Point Lookout and anchor in Lake Conoy by the state park which would add about 8 miles of off-course distance to our trip to Solomons, or we could continue running another 4 miles north and duck into St. Jerome Creek where we've anchored before. It's skinny water, but if we just stay inside the marked channel, it's just enough for Stinkpot. We opted for the latter and got off the bay. We'd continue our way to Solomons Friday morning. After we cleared Point Lookout and got north of the Potomac River mouth, the sea started to lay down a bit, and we ran the rest of the way into St. Jerome Creek without incident. 

It took two tries to get the hook set in 4 feet of water, but after putting the hook down further up into the cove off the channel, we felt confident we'd have a peaceful evening, which we did—winds be damned.

Friday morning, we rose with the dawn, weighed anchor and continued our northard push to Solomons, riding the flood the whole way. We arrived in the harbor by 10:30am and had the anchor down in our favorite spot before our morning coffee buzz had even worn off.

We did go ashore in the dinghy, reclaimed the keys to our car, and ran a couple of errands (including a much needed haircut for yours truly), and picked up our Amazon packages (including our new Breeze Booster), returning later to the boat for supper and a very pleasant, if hot and sticky night on the hook. The Saturday forecast was for all-day rain/showers, which we ultimately chose to weather aboard (and during which I finished writing this post). Tomorrow we shall move to our allotted slip at Safe Harbor Zahnisers, where we shall be for the next month.

UPDATE: As scheduled, we moved into our new boat slip around noon Sunday. They originally had us on "G" dock, but I balked after pulling within sight of it, and said I didn't think Stinkpot would fit between the pilings. They called up to the office and confirmed that I was right and moved us to the much nicer "F" dock. We are in the catbird seat now and have already had an evening visit with our friends, Cristin and Aaron on Sunday night, and Monday we ran up to Harpers Ferry, West Virigina in our car to visit with good friends, Cherie and Chris of Technomadia, and walk around the national park—which is gorgeous and worth the trip!