We did it. I'm sure that single three-word declaration has you now going to the final paragraph of my previous post to figure out exactly what we did. No? I suppose I can remind you. 

We were at anchor in beautiful Oxford, Maryland waiting for the wind to subside and give us a nice run across Chesapeake Bay to Solomons, MD. It did, and we did, and enjoyed a lovely autumnal cruise. We arrived at Southern Maryland Sailing Association's T-head berth right around 3:30pm on Monday, November 11 where we were greeted by club members Robin and Mark (Mark is also the club's dockmaster). We made fast to the dock, while we were receiving a very warm welcome, but shortly our hosts took their leave. We connected to the available 20-amp shore power connection, which is a bare minimum for us to keep warm as the weather is dipping into the 40s at night. 

After the boat was secured and powered, we put feet to the ground and made our way to the Amazon Locker at Safe Harbor Zahnizer's Marina where we had packages waiting, and then on to our dear friend, Cristin's house to enjoy conversation and dinner. Cristin had to leave for Germany on Tuesday, so this was our chance to catch up before we need to continue on our own journey south. 

After somewhere around six weeks of living in our boat on dry land, with almost no fanfare except engines roaring to life, Stinkpot was relaunched on Election Day—November 5—and gracefully made her way into slip 36 at McDaniel Yacht Basin. For the last month or so, we have been scrubbing, painting, scraping, sanding, waxing, varnishing, repairing, maintaining, and attempting to make Stinkpot look like she hasn’t in a long time.

We had intended to do that over the winter in the south, but with my illness speeding our south’ard roll by a month or more, we decided to do it sooner than later, and she looks great. Somewhere in the middle of all the boat work, we were also distracted by the Annapolis Boat Shows as well as boat shopping. I suppose I should fess up that we are looking for the next Stinkpot, and have quietly been doing so for months. I am really hoping to find a boat large enough to have my digital piano aboard. If there is anything I miss from land life, it’s sitting down at the piano. It’s something we have been considering for a couple years, and this period of land time seemed like an opportunity, so we seized upon it. A barrage of emails later had us reunited with our broker, Ryan Miller, and the search has been on.

We actually thought we found a boat. A vessel near Baltimore seemed perfect—a Carver 42, was listed by Jay Porterfield with Knot 10 Brokerage. It appeared very clean, but the mechanical survey and oil samples failed very badly, so we had to pull the plug. I expected the listing to be removed after the broker relayed the findings to his client that the boat needed more work than it was worth, but instead they re-marketed the boat with no disclosure of those findings in the listing, following an all-too-minor price adjustment. This all led me to conclude I will never again look at another Knot 10 listing. Caveat emptor….

​It was a sunny, chilly morning, so we started at the lower helm as we waited for the outside temps to rise a bit with the sun as we made our way down the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay from the North East River, finishing our cruise for the day in Rock Hall on the free bulkhead/dock there. We consumed a late lunch at Harbor Shack. The place was packed, the view was fantastic, and the food was really not good. I had the chicken fajitas while Stacey ordered a seafood-stuffed quesadilla. I’m not sure how you make fajitas taste so “meh,” but they managed to. Stacey’s comment about the quesadilla was something about how, eating out and “leaving it to the professionals,” is supposed to protect one from consuming objectively bad flavor combinations, but “not this time.”

Following our insipid repast, we took to the hoof for a spin through the tiny berg with our eye on the nearby grocery for bananas. Yes, we know there are many who maintain that bananas are bad luck on a boat, but we have been assured by experts in nautical superstition that the bad luck is specific to fishing, not boating. Since we never “wet a line” we see fit to risk it.

After a successful mission, we returned to the boat to find an official-looking gent eyeballing her suspiciously. I cleared my throat and asked if I could help him. He asked when we arrived and how long we were staying, and I told him we’d arrived in the early afternoon and would be leaving out in the morning. He seemed satisfied that we were not intending to overstay our welcome and left us alone after complaining bitterly about the boat, aptly named “Problem Child” tied up just ahead of us that had apparently been there too much, too often to the annoyance of local government officials, of which he was one.

We had a quiet evening aboard, turning in early and getting underway just before dawn. The wind was coming up, so we angled toward the Chester River, down through Kent Narrows, and down the eastern shore and into the western inlet of Knapps Narrows—our immediate objective was to refuel at Fairbank Tackle, where we took on 181.5 gallons of off-road diesel at $2.809 per gallon. From there, we continued through the ditch heading east, hoping that the building wind and waves would permit us to cross to Solomons, but it wasn’t to be. We retreated up the Choptank River, into the Tred Avon and anchored for the night in Oxford, MD, just across the channel from DiMillo’s on the Chesapeake East—owned by the DiMillos in Portland, Maine. We found ourselves wishing they had a restaurant here as well to offer us a taste of home. Oxford seemed very quaint from the water. With the wind and weather, we deigned to keep the dinghy aboard and intend to return another time for a proper exploration of the town. For now, it has been a scenic place to lay our heads for the night, and nothing more. 

As I type this in the late morning, we are still waiting for the winds to lay down as forecast to give us a reasonably (hopefully?) smooth crossing to Solomons. We can see the trailing edge of the front to the west, and when it's overhead shortly, we will be weighing anchor and getting underway. 

With the recent posting of our Lake Champlain adventures, there is a bit of missing cruisology between our stop in Plattsburg, NY and my health concerns that routed us to Florida for a couple weeks. Suffice it to say, there's not much to blog about. We left Plattsburgh on August 14th, went north to Rouses Point, where we fueled at the Safe Harbor Marina there and took a short walk around town to toss a couple last-minute items in the US Mail before crossing an international border, cleared into Canada at the Customs Dock with no issue, and began the north'ard trek up the Richelieu River. We spent one night at anchor in the Fort Lennox Channel where we enjoyed one of the most crazy summer showers that included a real hail storm—a Stinkpot first! It wasn't particularly windy or rough. It's was just a wild, memorable moment. 

The morning of the 15th, we voyaged the rest of the way to St. Jean, Quebec. The river was unspeakably beautiful, and in looking back over our photos from that time, it looks like we were taking it in, not taking pictures of it. We had a wonderful first night in St. Jean, even meeting up for dinner with looper friends, Renée and Pierre, whom we met along our Great Loop trip five years ago. They even drove us for a quick reprovisioning at a local market. 

The dinner was so good that we decided to take another day to eat our way around town. We started with brunch at Restaurant Bonnes Soeurs, which was AMAZING. Later in the day we trundled into a local sandwich joint called PARMA to enjoy a muffuletta, which we split (not New Orleans, but still good), followed later in the early evening by poutine that was delectable at La Plank. 

It was while at La Plank that I started feeling strange. The next morning, still not feeling well, I suggested that we probably should make St. Jean the end of our Canadian trip, turn around, and start making our way toward the US healthcare system. Over the course of the next week or two, we followed a hasty south'ard course that ultimately had us docked in Croton-on-Hudson so we could make our way to Florida. The details of that time are etched in my memory in not-altogether pleasant ways, and I will eschew preserving them here. All I can say is, were it not for dockmaster extraordinaire, Steve, at Half Moon Bay Marina, things would have been a lot more stressful during that time. 

The rest of the story, you know. What you don't know is the excitement that lies ahead for us, and that, dear reader, will be shared in another blog after all the details come together….

While orbiting the popular vacation planet of Risa, I tried to start compiling this blog post. Actually, I started thinking that I should blog about our Lake Champlain cruising about two months ago when it would have been "fresh," but so much has happened, and been happening, I somehow have not found the time until now. I wrote most of this in August, and I'm only now hitting "post." For reasons that we'll eventually share, there will be more updates about our recent adventures, but I have simply not had the bandwidth to record them in prose. I'm editing/posting this in mid-October. All that follows this paragraph was written in late August. Set the Wayback Machine to August 29th, 2024 and entertain yourself with the words of my past self.

We are currently docked at Mooney Bay Marina in Plattsburgh, NY, where we've been for about 24 hours now. It's where we had parked our car before we cast off lines in Maryland, so, now ashore, we have wheels. Of course, tomorrow, we'll be using them to drive to Maine for my brief Vacationland tour. 

Last time I wrote here, we were docked in Fort Edward, NY, enjoying a free wall and shore power, a combination we find attractive. As I suspected, we got underway on the morning of the 18th and made our way to just before Lock 12, the final lock on the Champlain Canal, where we tied up on the town bulkhead in Whitehall, NY, where we also enjoyed shore power. While there we saw the skeletal remains of the USS Ticonderoga, which was a schooner and early steamship that was part of the US Navy and was sunk during the War of 1812's Battle of Plattsburgh—a pivotal British defeat. I'm told, were it not for that decisive victory, we'd all be speaking English. 

We also walked over to the lock to chat with the lockmaster, of whom we asked for a restaurant recommendation. Whitehall is cute, even picturesque, but it has more dusty, forlorn, locked up, and forgotten storefronts than we've seen on a Main Street in quite some time. We told her we were willing to walk a bit, so she suggested a place about a mile away called The Railyard Taproom & Restaurant, which was worth the walk it took to get there. The next morning, we did drop lines and lock down to Lake Champlain-level, where we boated to the end of the Champlain Canal and began our Lake Champlain adventure! 

​Our first stop was for a black-water pump out at Chipman Point Marina, on the Vermont side of the lake, which has two of the oldest buildings you might find anywhere in New England. We did go ashore to take them in, but were underway very soon to ultimately anchor beside Fort Ticonderoga. It was a lovely spot to drink in the views of the historic fort and hear cannon fire. We liked it so well, and the weather was so lovely that we stayed two nights there. On the morning of Saturday, July 20, we dropped our dinghy in the drink and started motoring up the nearby, but well hidden La Chute River to the town of Ticonderoga. 

It was a beautiful upstream passage. La Chute is a river that starts on Lake George and then travels “downhill” to Lake Champlain. The water is very clear. You can see bottom nearly everywhere. We traveled around fallen trees, under “tunnels” formed by overhanging branches, and two bridges. It was an intoxicating ride. When we were nearly there, we spotted a covered bridge, which was to be our cue that we should be looking for a place to tie up. We went under the covered bridge and took a spin in front of the waterfalls, but ultimately backtracked and tied up to a disused bulkhead that probably hadn’t had a barge or other commercial vessel tied up to it in many decades.

Normally, in a situation like this in an unknown area, we would lock the boat to an immoveable object somehow, but there was nothing to run our lock cable through. We were a little concerned that we were leaving our only connection to Stinkpot in a public area, on the fringe of a public park, unlocked and vulnerable. A quick step away from the water’s edge revealed that the boat “disappeared” behind the berm quickly, so a would-be miscreant would have to know there was a boat tied up there, or stumble upon it. We threw caution to the wind, tied the boat bow and stern to hold the bow into the current, and walked away through the park.

Our first stop was at a nearby luncheonette. The real deal—counter service with a smile. The food was, for better and worse, exactly like you would expect. Nothing ostentatious, solid “diner” fare, and service with just enough attitude to make you smile, but not so much that you might gripe about it.

After lunch, we walked the sun-beaten streets a bit, but the allure of the air conditioned museum nearby was quickly more than we could bear, and so we entered the Star Trek Original Series Museum and Set Tour. This is an exact replica of the sets used to film the original series, built from the original blue prints that were willed to the museum’s founder, and recreated with exacting detail, including enduring modifications made for specific episodes. There are many collected artifacts that were used in the filming as well. For fans of the series, like us, it’s a feast for the eyes, and nearly nothing more. They have a strict, “look but don’t touch” policy in every space except Enterprise’s bridge where everyone in the tour is invited to sit in Kirk’s famous chair to strike a captainly pose. Interestingly, William Shatner comes to the museum a few times every year for events and has been photographed in the same chair many times. Word is, he claims it feels very familiar.

We finished the tour, and, on our way back to Li’l Stinker, stopped at a very small museum exhibit in a former mill building, dedicated to the industrial past of Ticonderoga—to wit, paper and pulp production and, naturally, graphite products, including the eponymous pencil. Before long, we were once again in the dinghy and underway back to Stinkpot with a sizable following current for most of the voyage. After a peaceful night aboard, we continued north up the lake.

Our next stop was in Arnold Bay, named for the traitor himself. We spent one beautiful night here, took our first swim in the lake. I rowed the dinghy ashore for a sunset stroll and to read the historic marker (pictured) that detailed the story of how Ferris Bay became known as Arnold Bay.

Monday, July 22, we weighed anchor and made our way up Otter Creek to the town of Vergennes, VT. Otter Creek was a very cool little diversion. Like Ticonderoga, it’s a town built around a scenic waterfall with a connected industrial past. Again, we were pleased to tie up to a free dock with shore power. The park where the dock was located was a War of 1812 shipyard that, under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Macdonough, built the US Navy fleet that won the battle of Plattsburgh in 1814—a fleet that included the USS Ticonderoga, to bring our “Champlain as battlefield” historic education full circle.

While in Vergennes, we did walk about a bit. Enjoyed more than our share of local ice cream, dined at the nearby pizza joint (which was the only restaurant in town that was open while we were there), and took in the local wind band which played a concert on the town green one of our two evenings there.

While we were out on one of our walks on Monday afternoon, something happened aboard with electricity, and when we returned to the boat an alarm was going off and every warning light on our AC breaker panel was angrily greeting us—not to mention, the voltage gauge that should read 110-120 volts was pegged at 150 volts, and the acrid smell of electronics death was wafting through the air. Not good. I shut off the main breakers and disconnected us from shore power. I tested the voltage on the shore power with my multi-meter, and it was normal. I started the generator and started turning on breakers one at a time until the culprit, which once again spiked the gauge to 150 volts, was found. Our main battery charger had failed, and because the voltage spiked the breaker didn’t kick (I’ll not wax philosophical here about Ohm’s Law). Fortunately, it seems the battery charger was the only casualty. Everything else seems functional. Parts are ordered and will greet us in Maine next week. My spare “automotive” battery charger has been temporarily installed to keep things working, though at 15 amps, it’s a slow charge for a big bank of batteries.

On Tuesday morning, my dear friend and former colleague, Johanna, joined us for breakfast aboard Stinkpot. She came toting a bakery bag of muffins, a croissant, and a scone, which was dispatched with caffeinated beverages in short order. Like all such visits, this one happened fast and ended too soon, but it was great to see her.

After Johanna’s departure, we, once again, took to hoofing it around the town. We walked to the “other” waterfront park, across the creek from Stinkpot to grab a couple “baby photos” and then back to town for a "maple creemee" (Creemee is apparently what they call soft serve in Vermont). It was decadent. On our way back to the boat, we realized some of the other dock space in the park was suddenly occupied by a fleet of small, recreational steamboats—the real deal. The air was thick with woodsmoke, which I have to admit smells better than diesel exhaust. They didn’t stay long, but they were quite a sight to behold, and one or two of them gave us a hearty “toot” on their steam whistles on the way by.

After one more peaceful night within earshot of the white noise of the falls, we spun Stinkpot on her heel and back out the creek to Lake Champlain. We ran up as far as Converse Bay where we anchored on the leeward side of Cedar Island for a peaceful night. Following a morning swim, we got underway Thursday for Willsboro Bay, which we were told was a “must see” place on the New York side of the lake. It didn’t disappoint, with mountains and foothills rimming the bay, it reminded us a bit of the fjords of Norway.

We anchored at the southern end of the bay where we would be protected from most of the wave action from the evening’s predicted winds. With really no place to go ashore other than a nearby marina and no real reason to go ashore, we settled in, took in the sunset and had a peaceful night aboard—until our anchor alarm went off around 5AM, just before dawn. (…continued below gallery)

We began the scramble to assess the situation. We were dragging, it was slow, but not slow enough to ignore. The wind was blowing, and not in the predicted direction and at a far greater strength. I surmised that the mountains and hills probably funnel the wind in odd ways, making it difficult to predict. We threw on some clothes, raised and cleaned the anchor, which came up loaded with plant life and clay (which is why we dragged when the wind came up). With the engines making slow turns, we watched the sunrise as we made our way out of the bay. Once on the lake proper, the winds came around to the forecasted direction and settled down to the expected, gentle breeze.

At about 7:30AM, our voyage for the day was over, and we anchored behind Rock Point in a clearly enviable spot about a mile north of Burlington. We napped a bit. Shrugged off our morning, and then dropped the dinghy and ran the mile or so to the town dinghy dock by the Burlington Community Boathouse Marina. From there we hoofed around town, had lunch at Church Street Tavern, and then meandered over to the local, impressive food co-op to pick up some fresh produce before finding our way back to the dinghy. As cool as Burlington is, and it is, we just couldn’t manufacture a reason to remain. It’s the sort of place that has so much going on that, if you don’t intend to spend a week ducking in and out of cool watering holes, museums, and historical spots, it’s hardly worth the trouble. We trudged back to the dinghy with our booty, and made way back to Stinkpot.

Saturday, after a leisurely morning, we weighed anchor around noon and made for Malletts Bay, which we semi-circumnavigated, cruising the northern shore along Niquette Bay State Park, down the eastern shore, and across the southern shore nearly to Moorings Marina, where we ultimately had the hook down a bit after 4PM. We did row ashore to the Bayside Park dinghy dock for a short walk before sunset, but the mosquitoes aggressively drove us back to the safety of our screened vessel within about a half hour. It’s a pretty area, but there is no real commerce—not even an ice cream stand within walking distance.

Sunday morning, we again took our time, ultimately getting underway around noon, and made way to Pelots Bay, anchoring in the northwestern part of the bay. We did dinghy ashore for dinner at Drifter’s Boathouse at the nearby marina. The place was packed; the food was OK. The service was decent. The management was non-existent. Our server made a $4 mistake and had no way to void the error because the manager was “off.” We asked him to just give us $4 in cash, and he said he couldn’t do that, and implied we should just pay the $4. Ultimately, another server who had been there longer “helped” and we walked out with $4 cash in our pocket. I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but if you own or manage a restaurant, never leave it without at least one employee who can void transactions in your absence.

We returned to Stinkpot for the balmy evening which gave way to cool, comfortable sleeping weather. Monday, we weighed anchor and “completed” a circumnavigation of North Hero Island which had us within about 5 miles of the Canadian border before turning south again, ultimately anchoring in Middle Bay in Pointe Au Roche State Park in Plattsburgh, NY. We did dinghy ashore for a very pleasant walk in the park and had a refreshing swim off the boat, as the weather was quite warm. I tied up the dinghy “on the hip” since I expected we’d probably stroll again in the morning.

The NOAA wind forecast was for gentle westerlies, so it should’ve been a very pleasant night. It wasn’t. At about 11PM, the breeze started coming in, which was refreshing at first, and then it got stronger…and stronger. We ended up taking a thrashing from the south with 2-3 foot waves. I got up around midnight and re-stowed the dinghy (not easy since both Stinkpot and her tender were pitching on the waves, and then put out storm scope on our anchor rode. Returning to bed, neither of us expected to sleep well, but my eyes did close around 1AM, and the next thing I knew it was light out. The wind had let up a bit, but we were still in an uncomfortable place. I suggested we get underway and cruise south to the leeward side of Treadwell Bay, which we did. After we had the anchor down, a sailboat that was in a better place vacated, and we re-anchored in his spot. The wind was still going, but we were out of the waves, and that was all that mattered.

I then set about to doing laundry so we would have less to worry about it came time to pack for our trip to Maine. We needed to charge our batteries anyway. I started the generator and got to work. After an hour or two, I realized the generator exhaust sounded louder than it should. I know that sound. It happens when the seawater flow that cools the engine isn’t “flowing.” I immediately checked the generator’s temperature, and it was clearly overheating. I shut it down immediately.

Stressed by the morning, the lack of sleep, and now the generator, I suggested to Stacey that we should just give up and go into Mooney Bay Marina a day early, if they’d have us. She agreed, I made the call, and they agreed. We got underway, and were tied up in a slip at the marina around 2PM yesterday (Tuesday).

Once we were settled in, I continued working on our laundry, and being in a marina meant we could use the dryer in the bath house instead of line-drying everything. While I was out there working the washing machine, a large, late-model, Quebec-registered Sea-Ray backed into a slip near us. No sooner had they made their lines fast to the dock, I heard a man start yelling hysterically in French on the next dock over. His words were too fast and too emotional for my high school French to kick in, but our new neighbors understood and ran while I was still twisting foreign words in my head, and I saw people from all over the marina start running as well. I thought perhaps someone fell in, and decided with the rush of people who ran over, I would be nothing but in the way. Our neighbors’ teen-age daughter came off the boat and, in perfect English, filled in any blanks we still had. A man had just been found floating and unconscious in the water on the next dock. They were just dragging him onto the dock and beginning CPR and kept it up until the EMS showed up. From our vantage point, we saw the defibrillator get used to no good effect. Then the crowd broke up as people began dejectedly walking away from the scene as the heavens opened up and a deluge poured down for about 20 minutes, the likes of which I have rarely seen. When we emerged from the boat after the shower, the body was still on the dock, covered with a towel, awaiting the coroner.

Exhausted by our own ordeal of the last 24 hours and emotionally drained and a bit shellshocked from what we’d just witnessed, we walked up the dock to the restaurant very near its end. It was good. The bartender, Kim, was very nice, and clearly sensed we’d benefit from some friendly chatting. We had a good time and a good meal. We returned to Stinkpot and slept.

And so, here we still are, at the marina, and preparing to leave in our own car to Maine for my gigs early tomorrow. We’re still working out our return path, and that will be part of another blog.

​I’m still a bit at a loss for words over what we saw yesterday. I don’t know if I will ever find them. Life’s short. Hold your loved ones close.

As many know, I have had some health challenges of late. It started months ago when we were going north, but seemed to subside until dropping like a ton of bricks while we were in Canada. It was concerning enough that we did an about-face in St. Jean, Quebec and started running south. My health insurance is an HMO, so in order to get care on anything considered chronic (as opposed to emergent), I'd have to go to Florida, where our health insurance is based. To wit, I visited an Emergency Room in Albany, NY, and they checked me for a cardiac situation (none found), and told me to get to Florida. We managed to get as far south as Croton-on-Hudson, NY, where we left the boat at Half Moon Bay Marina (great spot!) and flew to Florida where we stayed for about two weeks with our dear friends, Gary and Liz, while I had several visits with doctors and convalesced. I have since received a diagnosis of "erosive gastritis of the antrum," which was fully responsible for all the odd symptoms I was experiencing, since it was irritating the vagus nerve. It was very uncomfortable and very scary, but we are cautiously optimistic that I'm on the mend with the suggested dietary changes and acid-reducing drugs. 

On Monday, September 9th, Stacey and I returned to Stinkpot, and we got underway on the ebb the Tuesday morning. Our aim is to get closer to our car and vast support system in the Chesapeake Bay region. We had good weather and favoring tidal currents and took full advantage of it, running all the way to Manasquan Inlet and anchoring near the southern end of the Point Pleasant Canal in New Jersey. Wednesday, we went back out the inlet and ran all the way to Cape May where we anchored in front of the Coast Guard Training Center. Thursday, we cruised all the way up Delaware Bay, through the C&D Canal, and onto the northern end of Chesapeake Bay, dropping anchor on the Bohemia River. Friday we cruised down to the Sassafras River where we spent two nights at anchor. We were pleased to be whisked away for a much-needed grocery expedition on Saturday morning by some considerate and wonderful new friends, Phil and Christyne. 

This past Sunday, we got underway again and made our way back up the Northeast River, anchoring just outside the familiar McDaniel's Yacht Basin—the very same marina where we spent much of May and all of June. We are now there in the very same slip in the marina that we occupied then. We were going to wait until winter to give Stinkpot some TLC, but this seems like a good time to hit pause and knock some overdue boat work off the list. 

In the meantime, I have a lot of missing blog posts to get up here—adventures we enjoyed over the last couple months, but that have not yet made it to this page. I will get caught up, I promise. There are so many stories to tell, and I will be trickling it all out as my currently limited spare time allows.

Today we crossed the border into Canada—my ancestral land.

Here we have very limited internet data allocation, and this blog will go mostly silent while we are here, as will our Facebook page. I have a great blog post to share about our last weeks on Lake Champlain. That will wait too.

We may be making limited posts to our Facebook page from free hotspots and such, but pictures, stories, and even our "Where's Stinkpot" page will mostly go on hiatus for the duration of our Canadian cruising in an attempt to not use all of our allotted data that Stacey needs for puppy videos.

As soon as we arrive back in US waters, we will begin to trickle out all that you've missed while we've been busy and/or gorging on poutine. There will be lots of stories to tell. Stay tuned….

It never gets old. Really. Sometimes it seems like it should, but it still doesn't.

Here we are docked in the cool, little berg known as Fort Edward, NY, where there indeed was a British, French and Indian War fortification, named for a royal—Edward Augustus, the Duke of York and Albany, grandson of King George II and the younger brother of King George III. They called it a fort, and it was located on a bend in the river, but we are well above the fall line in Troy, NY, so the river would have been essentially unnavigable by anything larger than a canoe before locks were constructed here for the Champlain Canal. As such, it truly wouldn't have been a fort so much as a barracks or garrison. 

How we find ourselves here is relatively interesting, since the last week has had us traverse the stunning Hudson River from Croton-on-Hudson, NY to here, with some very nice, notable stops along the way. We weighed anchor off Croton Point on the morning of Wednesday, July 10—just a week ago—and began working our way north on the river. Once you get much north of there and cross the salt/fresh line, the river opens up to some beauty reminiscent of the fjords we recently saw on our cruise in Norway. 

Our first stop on this leg of the voyage was in Kingston, NY on the free (with meal purchase) dock at Ole Savannah Southern Table and Bar, a wonderful restaurant that we enjoyed very much. Once docked, we sidled up to the bar and asked the bartender if the two-hour dockage limit indicated on the signs applied to those skippers who intended to eat well and get thoroughly soused. He was so excited to have us there that he cut me off mid-sentence, as if to fully understand the question before it was asked, and informed us that we could, indeed, stay the night on the dock. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Stacey immediately set to ordering nearly every dish off of the happy hour bar menu (not to be confused with the restaurant menu which had many of the same items for considerably more money) while I enjoyed a lovely, local lager. 

After our meal, which came out on a large tray and resembling an order for at least four diners, we then took an evening stroll around Kingston to enjoy this historic waterfront town/deep(ish)-water port. Such a cool stop—oozing with undeniable maritime history and cool architecture.

The next morning, in an effort to wait out the ebb, we delayed our departure as long as we could, but could wait no more when the restaurant opened. We didn't want to be taking up their precious dock space during business hours, so we cast off just after 11AM, making slow turns toward Coxsackie, NY. I didn't bring the throttle up to our usual cruising speed of  7.4 knots STW (Speed ThroughWater) until we encountered slack-to-flood current in the mid-afternoon, carrying us onto Coxsackie's relatively new, free (though flimsy aluminum with nylon cleats) town dock at Riverside Park at just after 4PM. 

We settled in and prepared to meet our friends, Roger and Patsy (of m/y Gypsy Star, currently tied up at Atlantic Yacht Basin in Great Bridge, VA) who live in nearby Albany, at Patrick Henry's Waterfront Tavern. It was good to see them, and we all enjoyed a wonderful meal. I had an excellent fried chicken sandwich while the rest of the gathered masses enjoyed the gourmet pizzas (which were also very good—I did try a slice). The beer selection was also quite nice, satisfying our varied tastes quite well. 

After our meal, we parted company, allowing Stacey and me to enjoy a trudge around the village to see what it was all about. All told, it's a town that is clearly in the process of reinventing itself. It likely had its "boom" years in the late 19th to mid 20th century, followed by an extended period of "bust" years. There are now businesses starting to rehabilitate and repurpose dilapidated buildings, and I can see a time in a few years when Coxsackie Village will be an exceedingly charming stop. It's already a worthy stop with limited choices. 

The next morning saw us underway at 6AM enjoying the flood until we stopped at Donovan's Shady Harbor Marina in New Baltimore, NY for fuel, water, and a black water pump out. We arrived about 90 minutes before they opened, so we filled our potable water and showered while we waited. Fully serviced, we cast off before the flood was exhausted and we coasted as far as we could with it, pushing through Albany around slack, and pushing through the beginning of the ebb around the time we were entering the Federal Lock in Troy. 

This is where things got weird. We were following a Kadey-Krogen—about a 50' pilothouse trawler—into the lock. The skipper was running her VERY slow and was making very unpredictable moves. He pulled to starboard as though he thought he was in the chamber while still in the wider vestibule. He corrected his mistake and then started making way into the chamber, but pulled to starboard alongside the miter gate, as though he was intending to make fast to it. I picked up the VHF and encouraged him to proceed INTO the lock chamber. Ultimately he made his way in and made fast to the wall, we did the same, and a third boat tied up in the chamber on the wall opposite us. We all locked up, and transited out of the lock, the Krogen continuing to make odd moves, running slowly and erratically. We gave him a wide berth until he slowed to an almost crawl before some bridges where overtaking him would've been unwise. I again radioed him and informed him he was not in a "no-wake" zone, and implied I would overtake him if he wanted to remain at that speed. He informed me he would speed up, which he did. 

We finally arrived in Waterford, NY where we were intending to moor at the Erie Canal Visitor Center for the night. The Krogen, clearly intending to continue on, called the wrong lock (E-3) instead of the lock he was approaching (E-2). He caught his own mistake quickly and corrected himself. He then informed the lockmaster of his intention to lock up, which was acknowledged. He then proceeded to take up the entire fairway in front of the lock and the Visitor Center docks. I again called him to let him know we were intended to dock just forward of his position, and he offered to move out of the way, which he did. While we were docking, I heard him again call the lock to ask to lock through, and this time was told it would be 15-20 minutes before the lock would be ready. 

We docked and began to settle in. We paid our $10 in the office for shore power, and returned to the boat. A little while later, a fisherman walked by on the wall, saw me and asked, "Did you see that last boat that locked through?" I said that I had, and then was regaled with what happened with Captain Krogen after we stopped paying attention to his antics. In his excitement to get into the lock chamber, he piloted his vessel up close to the lock's miter gates. When the gates opened, he was SHOCKED(!) to be looking at a lock full of vessels wanting to get out of the lock. He panicked, and in his haste to get out of the way, he sideswiped a docked, steel trawler. Later, I learned from the Canadian owner of the steel trawler that Captain Crunch opened his wallet and offered $5,000 for the damages to keep the insurance companies out of it. The Canadian thought this gesture too generous and offered to take $4,000. Money changed hands, then the Krogen proceeded into the lock and disappeared from our sphere.

​The thing is, what we witnessed, I'm told, was not inexperience. That vessel and her master have completed the Great Loop at least once, and I'm told he talks a good game and has been boating for decades. Word is that his skills are almost certainly leaving him with his advancing years, and like grandma has to give up her car keys after a point, someone is really going to need to take this gent's yacht from him at some point, which is almost certainly why he didn't want to involve his insurance company. ​

In our time on the Waterford dock, we enjoyed a couple great meals at nearby McGreivey's Irish Pub, walked the bridge across the Hudson to the nearby Hannaford's for groceries and Walgreens for drugs for my still-persistent cough. I enjoyed "docktails" with the loopers on the dock on the second night. It was a good stop, but after two nights there it was time to move along. 

Sunday, July 14, we dropped lines and made our way back onto the Hudson River and pointed north to Lock C-1 of the Champlain Canal. It was a hot day and we are not in a hurry so we stopped after two locks and pulled onto the free wall in Mechanicville, NY. This wall also has free shore power and potable water. The entire wall was dusty and dirty, but everything worked. We got settled and went ashore to walk to the nearby hardware store where we bought knurled knobs for my helm chair and got keys made for our salon door's padlock. Upon returning to the boat, the keys didn't work, so I hoofed it back alone, lock in hand, to have them recut.

Later, we walked the 0.8 miles each way to a local watering hole that got 4.5 stars out of 5 called Devito's (clearly no relation to Danny, despite what it may say on Google Maps). It was the quintessential neighborhood joint that probably hasn't seen a coat of paint since 1968, and most of the patrons have had the same buzz going since the Clinton administration. The room still smelled like an ashtray from decades of second-hand smoke, even though smoking in such places has been banned for years. The jukebox was blaring the obligatory oldies, and we ordered a pizza from the bartender who claimed to make the best pie in the county.

The entire experience was forgettable, though, I'm pretty sure neither of us ever will. While we were waiting for our meal, a woman who was playing pool across the room suddenly started yelling, throwing billiard equipment around (not the balls, thankfully), and opening and slamming doors. The bartender allowed it to go on for a moment before interceding and showing the woman out the back door. The bartender came back and apologized to us for "all that," explaining that she had been drinking Jack and Cokes for most of the afternoon. He left and soon returned with our pizza, which did not live up to the hype. We ate what we could and returned to the boat with leftovers. 

The next morning, we topped up the potable water tank and got underway, and found ourselves almost immediately in Lock C-3. While we were locking up, the lockmaster stopped by and asked what our "air draft" (AKA: "vertical clearance" or "bridge clearance") is. I replied that we needed 16.5' of clearance. I was then informed that the next bridge was 15.5', and we would not make it through unless and until he dropped the pool level (depth), which would take him approximately two hours. He advised us to tie to the lock wall immediately outside the chamber after locking through, and he'd begin dropping the water level. He went on to say that they should have asked us at Lock C-1 (they didn't). 

When the lock opened, we made our way to the wall and tied up as instructed. About 90 minutes later, he radioed us and said we should have sufficient clearance. We thanked him and got underway, and cleared the bridge with room to spare. We proceeded up through some gorgeous country through three more locks and one guard gate, ending our day in Fort Edward, NY on another free canal wall, again with power and water. This one, kind-of-absurdly named "Fort Edward Yacht Basin," is where your humble scribe is currently scribing. 

Tonight will be our third (and hopefully final) night here. We had intended to leave this morning, but weather and mitigating circumstances conspired to encourage us to amend our timing—all of which I will elucidate in due time. 

We arrived here Monday just before 4PM. After getting tied up and shore power connected, we immediately made our way to the only local watering hole that seemed open on a Monday, called Dalias On the Hudson. We shared a couple appetizers—potato skins which arrived cold and congealed and cheese-steak empanadas which were hot out of the fryer, but entirely unremarkable. The dry martini I ordered was, likewise, not dry, but after our experience in Mechanicville, neither of us had the belly for complaining about, well, anything. "Everything is fine," was our answer, when asked. After dinner, we took a kick about town to see what it is all about, ultimately getting ice cream cones at the nearby Stewart's convenience store. 

After a good night's sleep, we woke and our morning "interneting" took us until nearly 11AM, at which point we decided to seek out brunch. We went first to Ye Old Fort Diner and selected a table. The waitress stopped by, and when she learned that Stacey was reading the breakfast specials on the board, informed us that they were switching over to lunch, but she probably could sneak it through. In truth, I'm not a breakfast person, and do not even enjoy egg preparations, so when we have brunch at such a place, I often will get a BLT. To me, the bacon makes it breakfast-y without requiring me to get flapjacks or waffles, which is really my only unsatisfying recourse at a breakfast-only counter. When the waitress returned for our order and I said I'd have the BLT, she informed us the "chef" would not do a mixed ticket—meaning combined breakfast and lunch. We stood up and walked out on that news and moved to another diner-like joint a few doors down called Mamma's Cafe, where Stacey got her eggs, which she tells me were good, and I got a grilled chicken club (with bacon!) that was also quite good. 

After brunch we walked to the area's historical sites—notably the Old Fort Edward Junction Lock and the Old Fort House Museum, the latter of which is actually named, not for the town or its namesake fort, but for one of the families that lived in that historic colonial edifice. Their actual surname was "Fort." Confused yet? At one point, when the house was being used as a tavern, Gen. George Washington and his men stopped there to dine, not just once, but twice. Hanging on the wall in the entryway is the original handwritten invoice for one of their meals. All told, it was a fascinating tour, and many of the pieces in the house told more than one story, which pleased this history buff. 

Following our stroll through history, we returned to the boat and enjoyed a mostly peaceful afternoon/evening, until a powerful storm cell came through and knocked the local power out and winds flattened a tree scarcely 50 yards from the boat. Power was not restored until the wee hours of the morning today. 

We arose this morning with every intention of getting underway to Whitehall, NY. We made preparations to do so, when the skipper of a neighbor boat informed us that Lock C-8 was still non-functional due to power not having been yet restored. I was able to confirm as much, and we decided to remain until we were sure we could continue locking through. About 10:30AM came the word that the lock was functioning again, but a quick look at the weather revealed that we were going to have more unsettled and rainy weather this afternoon, so we decided to just sit still until tomorrow when we might have a good run at Whitehall. With any luck at all, we'll be relaxing at the end of the Champlain Canal tomorrow evening and celebrating another cruising milestone.

Adventuring on the water can present its challenges, and we’ve had our share in recent days. I’ll get into that shortly, sparing some of the most-gruesome of the gruesome detail, but suffice it to say we are fine and enjoying our place in the world at the moment. Where would that place be? Well, as I’m typing these words, we are anchored on the Hudson River, just north of Croton Point on the eastern side of the river. We tucked in here yesterday evening to get out of the chop from the south wind, while still being able to enjoy its cooling influence. Our intention was to anchor across the river in a place familiar to us, Haverstraw Cove, but yesterday’s heat made me seek out the breeze, which the cove likely would have largely lacked.

Winding back the clock to the end of the last entry to this blog, we had just finished the Norway cruise, and we were preparing for my concert in Alexandria, VA on June 29 (which went very well), and also preparing to cast off with a rough destination of Lake Champlain. We did select a marina on the lake where we would leave our car and ultimately dock Stinkpot when I’m on tour in Maine in early August.

Within 48 hours of returning from the cruise last month, we both developed a bad “summer” cold that failed several tests, as we tried to confirm whether or not it was a COVID-19 variant. We can only surmise that it was not, but it was a miserable few days. For me, it was the gift that kept on giving as it turned into bronchitis that I’m only now starting to shake some three weeks later. I somehow managed to drug the cough away long enough to perform on the 29th, but other than that short, pharmaceutically-driven reprieve, I have been coughing like a tuberculosis patient since mid June.

During our final weeks in North East, we visited with as many friends as we could and completed most of our provisioning for our voyage. The morning of the 30th, we got in the car and drove first to the airport in Plattsburgh, NY—about seven hours—where we picked up a rental car we had reserved, and with the two cars, we made our way to Mooney Bay Marina where we parked our own steed until we arrive there July 31 aboard Stinkpot. We then turned around and drove back to North East, MD in the rental. July 1, I made a few last-minute store runs to pick up final provisions and then returned the rental car to the Avis location in Aberdeen, MD. My good friend, and the owner of Argo, Jeff, picked me up and returned me to Stinkpot.

I assessed the currents for the next day and determined that a 10:30 departure would allow us fair tidal current most of the way to our intended anchorage, and I let Jeff know since he intended to “stowaway” for the first couple days of our journey. The morning of July 2 arrived, and we were underway at 10:41 and enjoyed a following current from Turkey Point all the way to our usual anchorage on the Conhansey River. Delaware Bay is a two-day affair for us, and the Cohansey is one of the few decent anchorages along its length and gives us wonderful views, and a perfect midpoint at which to stop for the evening. It’s also prone to be filled with accursed greenhead flies. They bite.

For those who have been following our recent comings and goings, you know that Stacey and I docked Stinkpot in North East, Maryland a few weeks ago for a concert I played on May 18 in the same town and thought it a perfect place to stage from as we took a cruise through the fjords of Norway on a cruise ship from June 8-15. What follows is a description of the trip with a voyage overview laid out in prose. After that will be a quasi-chronological photo-dump with captions. The captions will be the detail that is lacking in the prose.

​The cruise, which was organized by Irish Music Cruises, and had me playing fully four times aboard the Celebrity Apex for the assembled group of savvy world travelers, while we all enjoyed the amenities of the vessel, four foreign ports of call, and scenery that was to die for.

The itinerary? Well, we boarded in Southampton, UK and cruised overnight to our first port of call in Bruges, Belgium, where we enjoyed some time ashore walking around (but neglecting to take many pictures) on a pleasantly, but not overly warm, sunny day. We then cruised across the North Sea, which was a little spicy with 14-foot seas, to the Norway coast, ducking inside the barrier islands for shelter from the wind and waves in sight of Hellisøy Lighthouse. We then proceeded to make our way in sheltered waters overnight to Sognefjord which led us to Aurlandsfjord and the quaint town of Flåm, where we, again enjoyed walking around in a picturesque area. We decided to enjoy these towns they way we would if we were cruising on our own boat, and eschew the cattle-call shore excursions and tourist traps. We walked about five miles in Flåm, enjoying the views of the steep, snow-capped mountain walls around the town, waterfalls, streams, quaint neighborhoods, and a stunning beach area right on the fjord with crystal-clear water. From Flåm, the ship returned to coastal waters by way of a port of call in the village of Olden (I pause here to point out that Olden is well inland, and we cruised overnight back to the coast, then up Nordfjord and Innvikfjorden to get there), where we also walked extensively, and enjoyed touring two historic churches (the old church, now rarely used, and the "new" church, which was build in the 1930s to allow the 300-year-old predecessor to be more of a tourist location and an alternate meeting space for special occasions and religious holidays). Dropping lines, Apex proceeded back down the fjords to the coastal city of Bergen, where we also stripped five miles off the soles of our shoes. This was, by far, the most interesting stop from a walking-around perspective. Re-boarding after Bergen, the ship once again got underway and set course back down the North Sea to return to Southampton, where we went ashore and flew home.

Getting there from the US? We parked our car at our friend, Kim's house (Thank you, Kim!). She drove us to Baltimore/Washington International Airport where our flight from the US to Old Blighty began. The first Icelandair flight dropped us in Reykjavik, Iceland (technically Keflavik, I guess) where airport construction and crowds preempted any time for a bathroom break, before loading us on a connecting flight to London's Gatwick Airport. Once on the ground in the UK, we were herded through customs, to baggage claim, after which we consulted Google Maps for transit directions to Southampton, which required use of two consecutive trains with our considerable luggage in tow. Once in Southampton (where we could've spent a month exploring), we walked to our hotel (about 1/2 mile from the train station), checked in, and proceeded to, on foot, enjoy our evening in a very historic city, even meeting up with our Florida friends, Gary and Liz, for fish & chips (with mushy peas) at the Red Lion Pub. In the morning, parsimony won out over expediency as we trudged the 1.3 miles, bags in tow, to the quayside, where we were processed aboard Apex. 

Our return to Southampton after the cruise was far less exciting. We waited our turn, and when our number was called in the late morning, we were herded off ship into a waiting van that delivered us and our luggage to London Gatwick for our flight home, once again via a toilet desert that is Reykjavik, and back to BWI and a waiting "Kim's BMW" to our own vehicle that we drove, sleep deprived over a VERY long day, to dinner at Applebee's in Aberdeen, MD (the only thing open at that hour in the area) and our bed aboard Stinkpot, some 23 hours after rising from our comfy berth on Apex.

The entire trip took 8 days from beginning to end. We knew we'd be encountering long hours of daylight above the Arctic Circle in mid-June, but nothing really prepared us for what that would really be like. We were torn between seeing the sights from our large stateroom window overnight, and using the very effective black-out shade (the latter often won the battle most nights). The sun did ultimately set, usually around 11:30pm local time (GMT -1), but the final crimson reminder of its last position would not fade to black, but, instead, circle around the horizon from west to east where it would rise again mere hours later. Night was not night again until we descended back below the Arctic Circle. It was stunning and amazing to witness.

This cruise may well be among the last of its kind. In 2026, a new law will be going into effect that will prevent cruise ships that burn diesel, bunker oil, or other "dirty" fuels from Norway's fjords. They will make exceptions only for so-called "zero-emissions vessels," but the regulations are so restrictive that it's unlikely that any members of the existing fleet will likely make the grade. Plans are apparently underway to create a small fleet of hybrid cruise ships that might get a pass, but that remains to be seen. Ultimately, if a trip like this entices you, book it now. You might not be able to for long.

​

Twenty-six days ago was the last time I recounted in any detail our travels on this page. A shade over three weeks ago, and yet it feels like years ago. So much has happened since then. So many anchorages, docks, new friends, meals—twenty-six days feels like an eternity that just happened. It’s a sensation that, at once, confounds and energizes the soul. It’s why we’re out here living this crazy life. No routine means that we are always forming new memories, and new memories are what prevents time and our very lives from mercurially fleeting and leaving us to wonder “where did the time go?” That’s the blessing of adventure. The curse is, of course, constantly operating outside of comfort zones, but even that has a way of mellowing you out. We take things in stride that would have been untenable as part of our land-based existence.

Twenty-six days ago we were in New Bern, North Carolina where we spent an entire week. We left there on the morning of April 23, and headed back out into the relentless winds that have typified our spring voyage this year. We had a schedule to keep after all, needing to be at the AGLCA Spring Rendezvous in Norfolk in early May. Of course, we had no way of knowing if the winds would be with us or against us. We still had to get down the Neuse River, and up through the dreaded Albemarle Sound (Stacey’s nemesis). The wind forecasts pretty much demanded that we stick with the canonical ICW route and not enjoy cruising Pamlico Sound, as I had hoped. We got a good early start out of New Bern on a favoring, wind-driven current. Our first “bail out” spot of the day was R.E. Mayo’s dock which we breezed past due to the early hour, opting to continue up toward the Pamlico River, which we crossed, heading up the Pungo River. I had thought we’d stop in Belhaven, but the evening’s forecasted SW winds had me deciding that we’d be in better stead to anchor in the nearby Scranton Creek, which is a well-sheltered, shoal draft anchorage.

We had the hook down in the late afternoon sun and settled in for what promised to be a peaceful night in a nice anchorage. As promised, the wind did come up over night, and the wave action outside the creek started reflecting off the Broad Creek Point and set up “harmonic/sympathetic wave action” in the middle of the night, so while the wind was holding Stinkpot bow-to, the wave action was on the beam. The result was an uncomfortable night’s sleep. We have encountered that kind of wave action before. There is no energy behind it, but it is uncomfortable and relentless when it does happen.
​
As we sat there at anchor, I planned our next steps. The wind forecast was continuing to be annoying, and it looked like we would sit still, perhaps moving to a different nearby anchorage for the upcoming change in wind direction, and then run the Alligator-Pungo Canal and up the Alligator River and position ourselves in South Lake for a Saturday (April 27) Albemarle crossing. About the time we had all that decided we noticed our friends Jenna and Darlene moving by on their boat, Timeless, headed for the canal. I contacted them on Nebo, and Jenna said they were going for the Albemarle crossing that very afternoon, promising that the sound would be laying down about the time they got there. I pondered this, but was not willing to commit to it.

We readied the boat to move to the better anchorage on the upper Pungo River and got underway. As soon as we left the shelter of the anchorage, we started taking our lumps in the form of a beam sea from a not quite angry, but clearly frustrated Pungo River. Once we made it to the navigation channel, I was able to make a turn, putting the sea on our stern. We had a choice to make. I could put the seas on the beam again to turn into the new anchorage, or we could keep pushing into the canal and the flat water there. It was an easy decision.

I told Stacey at that point that we would continue to assess whether to continue and how far we would run based on the conditions. When the canal dumped us into the southern end of the Alligator River, we assessed that the river looked fine. We ran up the river nearly to the Alligator River Bridge, at which point I radioed ahead to Timeless and asked how the Albemarle Sound was treating them. Jenna assured me that it was absolutely doable. We called for an opening at the bridge, and instead of making the turn to head to South Lake, we continued onto the dreaded sound. It was not flat calm, but it was not completely dreadful either. About ⅔ of the way across, it did rain for a little while, forcing us temporarily to the lower helm station, but we made it across the sound and ended our day in calm waters in an Elizabeth City, North Carolina anchorage between Anson Point and Hospital Point, just before sunset.

We awoke on April 25 to a bright, sunny morning. We didn’t need to be in Norfolk/Portsmouth until May 5, so with a full 10 days to go 50 miles, we decided to make ourselves comfy on the Jennette Brothers’ free dock for a few days, just north of the Elizabeth City Drawbridge. To wit, we weighed anchor just in time to get through first post-rush-hour opening of the bridge, and spun ourselves onto the dock. In our four days on that dock, we enjoyed many of the local eateries (part of the quid pro quo for docking on a commercial food distributor’s bulkhead). One day, I put my bike on the ground and rode to the local Harbor Freight to buy a 5-gallon diesel can.

By this point in our journey, we hadn’t filled our tanks since Wacca Wache Marina (just above Georgetown, SC), and they were starting to get uncomfortably low. There was a place on Chesapeake Bay with a really good diesel price, so I had been biding my time until we got there, but I didn’t want our extensive generator use while on the bulkhead to bite our hiney. I figured we were using about a gallon a day, so I decided I’d “put it back,” which is exactly what I did, buying 5 gallons at the local fuel stop and dumping it into our starboard tank, which was just enough to move the fuel gauge above ¼ tank, which was enormously gratifying and very much alleviated my burgeoning fear that the tank was getting untenably low.

The fuel plan was to pick up just enough fuel in the Norfolk area to get us up Chesapeake Bay to Fairbank Tackle which was promising a very good price on Waterway Guide, so with my new-found confidence that our new fuel sending units were not lying, we continued to take in the culinary delights of Elizabeth City, leaving off the wall for the Dismal Swamp Canal just after noon on the 29th with the immediate plan to run at dead slow speed and time our arrival for the last locking of the day at South Mills, and spend the night on the bulkhead just beyond the lock, which is exactly what we did. The wind was still howling, but we were on a winding river with hardly any wave action to spoil our fun. The sun was out and warm, and we made our way to the lock, locked through, and tied up on the wall just before the bridge. We walked around the neighborhood there. I even filled my diesel can and gave the starboard tank an extra 5 gallons for good measure while making a beer run to the local store.

As the sun was going down, other boaters who were “trapped” with us between the lock and the drawbridge chatted with locals on the edge of the canal, just off Stinkpot’s port quarter. Friendships spawned, and one of the local guys trudged off to his house and brought back gifts for all of us. He gave me a frozen package of duck breast that he harvested while recently hunting nearby. One of the other boats received a gift of venison. The hunter’s wife came by cuddling a baby bunny in her hands and allowed Stacey to enjoy holding the slumbering creature—an experience she is still talking about now, almost three weeks later. Inevitably, the dark descended, and all of us returned to our boats and homes.

Morning came, and we all were ready to go when the lock/bridge tender opened the bridge for us all at 8AM. Stinkpot kept her place at the head of the pack and we all made our way to the Dismal Swamp Visitor’s Center (which is also a highway rest area), a cruise that took all of an hour at headway speed. Upon arrival, I spun the boat around and tied up so that the south breeze might keep us cool as the temperatures were starting to warm during the day. We checked in, filled our water tanks, off-loaded our trash and recycling to the nearby containers, and then donned our hiking boots to enjoy the Dismal Swamp State Park’s trails, across the canal by way of the floating bridge. It was a perfectly lovely day, followed by a lousy night’s sleep (at least for me) precipitated by the bright lights of the rest area. The next morning, we decided to continue on and ran to Deep Creek Lock to stay two nights on the Elizabeth Dock where we also enjoyed free shore power!

While there, we walked to the nearby Food Lion to restock the larder, which was far easier said than done. It really wasn’t far, but the drawbridge we had just come through on the boat needed to be crossed, and it was under construction, and the sidewalk was closed. We were towing our trusty four-wheeled cart, and our rush-hour arrival at the bridge presented a difficulty. Ultimately, we stopped traffic in both directions, much to the consternation of the unsympathetic drivers also trying to cross the bridge. We did our shopping, enjoyed burgers at Hardee’s, and, upon our return to the bridge, decided to join the traffic that was going our way. The driver behind us was so amused by our antics that he held traffic back until we were safely out of the lane of travel and traversing the nearby church parking lot in the absence of a sidewalk. The next day we made the same journey in a far more simple manner (and without a cart behind us), but this time to the nearby Mexican restaurant in the same strip mall—a place called El Puente, and it was quite good. They even had a house-made hot sauce that was amazing. We both had fajita salads.

Friday, May 3, we dropped lines and locked out of the Dismal Swamp Canal. It was a rather large 12-foot drop in the lock owing to it being low tide. Once again in brackish water, we made our way to Top Rack Marina to grab a little fuel. My intention was that we’d take on 85 gallons for $3.78 per gallon, which should be just about enough to get us to the significantly cheaper fuel at Fairbank Tackle up the bay. While we fueled, the dock attendant pumped out our black water tank. Stacey was reading the numbers off the pump to me, and I thought it remarkable how fast the fuel pump was working. We had tanked 85 gallons in no time flat, or so I thought. When I got to the counter to pay for it, we had taken on 22.5 gallons which came to $85. Stacey was reading the wrong numbers on the pump. No matter, we had some fuel, and I decided that we should continue on to claim our spot on the High Street Landing free dock before other people got there ahead of us. I found another place nearby with a similar fuel price and decided we would top off in Portsmouth before running up Chesapeake Bay.

We arrived at High Street Landing and grabbed the only spot left on the “normal” bulkheads. I had intended to take the eastern side, but decided not to fight the relentless east wind for it, and this turned out to be just fine. I took the western side and let the wind "dock us." We spent two nights there, enjoyed some of the local cuisine, first at Roger Brown’s Restaurant (what we got was surprisingly good, but I wasn’t crazy about the place). The next day we sampled The Bier Garden (meh) in between worthy visits to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum.

Sunday morning, I called the Tidewater Yacht Marina, where we were to tie up for the Rendezvous, as soon as they were open to ask how soon we could get in, and they said, "now." We dropped lines and were tied up mere moments later with power, water, and all the good stuff. Our cruiser friends, Larry and Erin also came and got us so we could tour their boat, which they are trying to sell. Nice vessel, but it will not be the “next” Stinkpot, alas. In the marina we were surrounded by loopers, and got to know several of them that evening at docktails in the marina’s restaurant, Fish & Slips (where we also enjoyed the decent hot wings at happy-hour prices).

Monday through Wednesday we spent at the looper Rendezvous across the river in Norfolk (which required a stupid-long walk on either end, with a $2 ferry ride in the middle—we stowed away in cars and Ubers as much as we could), meeting folks and working the Argo table. We had fun getting to know so many new folks, many of whom have been following our adventures for a while. The Rendezvous is a big event of which our part was small and repetitive, and our part was done by Wednesday night.

Thursday morning, later than I would’ve liked, we dropped lines, fueled “around the corner” at Portsmouth Yacht Center (Erin and Larry’s marina), taking on 70 gallons at a surprisingly very reasonable $3.43 per gallon and pumping out our black water tank yet again. We pointed the bow into the bay and had a lovely run up to Deltaville, Virginia on a favoring current, anchoring in a favorite spot that we’ve used in the past. We tried to get a spot at the nearby Fishing Bay Yacht Club, but we didn’t make contact before we were anchored, and by then we were content to stay anchored despite getting an invite to the T-head.

The next morning we left Deltaville intending to run to Tangier Island, but the winds were building on the bay, and we ultimately changed course to soften the blows of the waves and ended up heading to the familiar waters of Reedville, Virginia instead. As soon as we changed course, I emailed our friends Walt and Mary who own a piece of paradise there on the water. In the meantime we docked at the Reedville Market’s free dock, and hadn’t been there two hours when Walt emailed and waved us in to his dock. We dropped lines and headed straight over, tied up, connected the shore power and water, and headed up to the house to chat with our hosts. Walt was alone at the moment, but Mary came in within a few minutes and we made plans to dine with them on our own food—they already were planning to eat leftovers, but Mary was going to toss a salad to share. We returned to the boat where I threw together some quesadillas, and, at the appointed time, we assembled around Mary’s fancy Viking stove where I heated our food through while Mary reheated their leftovers in the microwave. Everything ready, we moved to the table and enjoyed a lovely meal with excellent conversation and fun! In the morning, we dropped lines and continued pounding up the bay.

Chesapeake Bay can be angry. It wasn’t. It was a trifle miffed the entire time though, and tired of the wind and waves, we put in at Solomons, Maryland and spent the night on the T-head on Southern Maryland Sailing Association’s dock after a couple Facebook messages to the right person secured us an invitation (I have played music for them in the past, and will again, likely this fall, on our way south). We decided to have an “app walk,” which is when we take a walk to nearby restaurants sampling one or two appetizers at each. We had the fried pickles at the Tiki Bar which were pleasantly crunchy but lacked flavor, and then moved to The Pier where we enjoyed fried haddock bites with a creamy sriracha dipping sauce and split a Caesar salad, all of which was quite good.

Sunday, May 12, we dropped lines early, hoping to get out on the bay ahead of the promised strong southerlies and morning rain. Unfortunately, the winds had been going all night, and when we started leaving the Patuxent, the waves were thrashing us pretty hard. We were operating at the lower helm because of the showers. I put the sea back on our stern and ran behind Drum Point to regroup. About the time we were back on flat water, the sun peeked out. We prepared the flybridge, and turned back toward the bay. The flybridge is a much more comfortable location to operate from in those kinds of seas—especially for Stacey—and it’s a far better vantage point to see crab floats in rough seas. It took the better part of an hour, but we got out into the bay and finally put the chop on the stern, giving us a reasonably comfortable ride north up the eastern side of Tilghman Island and into Dun Cove where we dropped anchor for the evening, enjoying dinner aboard.

With first light, we were firing up the engines and we ran back down to the northern end of Tilghman Island where we entered Knapps Narrows, went through the drawbridge, and turned to port into Fairbank Tackle. It was a tricky docking, stern-to the bulkhead between two pilings (and two crab boats). This is a commercial fisherman’s fuel stop, so there are no dock hands, and no frills, but the diesel price of $2.99 per gallon makes it very much worth the trouble. We pumped 225 gallons of fuel into Stinkpot at that price—which means we had 75 gallons left aboard. In boating terms, that’s running on fumes.

Fully fueled, we continued out of the Knapps Narrows and up the bay to the mouth of the Patapsco River where we turned inbound and made our way toward Stoney Creek and our next destination—another private dock belonging to some new friends who have been following our exploits for some time—but first we had to take in the enormity of the Key Bridge disaster. We grabbed a few photos of the Dali, helplessly marooned on the riverbed with tons of debris still on her bow. This was the same afternoon they were to set off explosives on the bridge structure in an attempt to somewhat free the ship, so we captured some of the very last photos of the freighter with the bridge trusses laying across the bow. There was a 2000 yard security zone around the area, so we were steering very deliberately toward Stoney Creek so that we would not have to explain our presence nearby, and we were docked before long on Kathleen’s and Michael’s dock in a manner that certainly Stinkpot is rarely accustomed to—flanked by boat lifts bow and stern.

Kathleen gave us a lovely lunch on her deck, we shared some stories of our recent adventures, and they took the nickel tour of Stinkpot. Soon though, they left us to attend to some other social events that they had committed to before they knew we’d be coming through. We settled in and then went for a walk to see where we were. Somehow we found ourselves in a local watering hole called the Pit Stop Pub that was quite good. We were enjoying some decent ribs with the fixings when the explosives on the Dali were set off, and we never heard it.

We walked back and donned our bathing suits. Our hosts had invited us to make use of their hot tub in their absence, and we were all too glad to do so. We relaxed and simply enjoyed ourselves for the evening. In the morning, with overcast skies and southerly winds once again building, we said our goodbyes and dropped lines to continue to Havre de Grace, our intended stopping point for this leg of our journey north. It was a rough run, similar to previous days on the bay. We ended up “tacking” back and forth to avoid taking the seas on the beam as we came out the Patapsco and started turning north. It wasn’t until we were abreast of Pooles Island before the seas were fully on the stern and we could relax a little. Of course, the overcast gave way to showers, so we had run from the lower helm for quite a while. Arriving finally in Havre de Grace just shy of 1PM, we pulled up to the fuel dock to pump out our black water before taking our spot on the end of the pier.

Returning to the marina office to fill out the paperwork for our stay with the dockmaster, Steve, we were blindsided by what came next. Steve told us that the price of a one-month transient stay at the marina had increased from $9 per foot to $20 per foot, and he apologized profusely for neglecting to warn us. This really was an unexpected and untenable increase given our budget for this part of the voyage. Steve stood there with us for the better part of the next hour making phone calls and trying to help us secure affordable dockage. He’s a real friend, and we very much appreciate his help. Ultimately, after calling nearly every marina within easy driving distance of Havre de Grace, and even visiting one that seemed promising, we ultimately concluded that staying still was our best option. We paid the bill and settled in.

Our friend, John, came and got me and brought me to our car which was waiting for us reasonably nearby. We drove to the grocery store and stocked up on some staples. We slept well, despite the relentless south wind gently rocking the boat all night.

Wednesday morning, my phone rang. It was a woman named Tina whom Steve had referred us to. She manages a currently closed marina in North East, Maryland—about 15 miles away—that is about to re-open under new management. She invited us to come on over for about half what we were paying in Havre de Grace. Stacey and I agreed it was a good plan, so I went and saw Steve. He refunded us for all but our “overnight” in the Havre de Grace marina, and we got underway again, making the two hour run to North East in wind and rain (with minimal seas), running all but the entry to the McDaniel Yacht Basin from the lower helm. Tina guided us in over the phone and met us on the dock. We secured Stinkpot in this large and mostly-empty marina, and couldn’t believe the luck. This place is just beautiful. This will be home until mid-June if not the end of the month, and we could not be more pleased with where we’ve ended up. What’s more, this marina is a mere mile or so from the church where my May 18 concert will be held, and the concert promoter, John, gave me a ride back to Havre de Grace to retrieve my car on Thursday afternoon. We are, once again, settled in, and loving the novelty of our new temporary town.