Day 45...Mill Creek #2 to Mill Creek #3

SUNDAY, MAY 13, 2012

     We left the anchorage at 6:30 a.m. this morning.  I took a picture of Gary as we left the anchorage.  

     We got out onto the Chesapeake at about 7:20.  We passed many beautiful houses on the bluffs overlooking the Patuxent River.  By the time we got to the mouth of the river, the bluffs seemed to be at least 100 feet high.  The guide calls them cliffs and says that they are a favorite destination for amateur paleontologists, who unearth fossils and sharks teeth near the shoreline.  In some places they were barren to the water’s edge as if the water had eroded them.  

Is this a lighthouse or someone’s house? 

    

     The trip was fairly routine until we finally went whizzing by a sailboat.  OK, so we just passed him a normal speed, but whizzing sounded good.   Didn’t it?  He gave up after we went by and started to take his sails in.

     As we approached Annapolis we understood why some people call it America’s Sailing Capital.  There must have been at least 100 sailboats sailing in the bay.  There were so may we had to weave our way through them.  A few looked at us as if to say, “How dare you get in my way.” 

     There were two sailboat races going on along with all of the weekenders.  We had to run almost right through the middle of a race of at least 30 smaller boats to get to our selected anchorage off Whitehall Bay.  Gary said that they might be star-class boats since each one of them had a star on their mainsail.

     After we entered the anchorage at yet another Mill Creek (Yes, this is the third one so far.  The next one is too shallow so I guess we’ll pass it by.), we saw a yellow American tug we had talked to on the radio earlier in the day.  We told SNARK it was nice to see him again and discussed the weather.  It is supposed to be rainy tomorrow and even worst on Tuesday.  We’ll probably stay tomorrow and see how it goes after that.

      We had anchored for a few minutes when a little sailboat with two young guys and a shaggy dog aboard came zipping by.  About 200 yards later they capsized and threw everyone in the water.  They were knocked over by a gust of wind.  The dog was swimming away.  A small runabout came over to help them and picked up the dog for them.  At first the guys tried to right it by jumping on the keel.  That didn’t work so a bigger boat came over and threw them a line.  After a few tugs, the sailboat righted itself.  After they transferred the dog back, the sailboat went right on off like nothing had happened.  

We thought we had had our excitement for the day, but … 

    We were relaxing after supper and heard something go KERTHUMP!!! on the bow of the boat.  We immediately looked out to see a rower right in front of the boat.  Gary asked if he was OK and he said that he hadn’t seen us.  He rows facing the stern of his shell and didn’t look behind him until after he hit us.  I took the picture out of the closed window because Gary said it might embarrass him if he saw me taking his picture.

     We had a restful, quiet night in our Mill Creek anchorage.  Here is a photo of the view out of our starboard windows.   

     We finally traveled 53 miles today in 7 hours and 17 minutes.  We’ve traveled a total of 1029 miles.  It looks like our 3000-mile estimate may be short.