Day 47...Mill Creek to anchorage at Chesapeake City, Maryland

 TUESDAY, MAY 15, 2012

     Well I got mixed up yesterday when I first posted the blog and put that we had gotten to Chesapeake City a day early.  If that’s the only mistake I make, I’m doing well.   I’ve fixed the title and if you haven’t read it yet…What mistake?  I don’t know what you’re talking about since you know I never make mistakes.

     We woke up to light rain then harder rain and then light rain again.  We checked the radar on TV and it looked like the back side of the rain was going over us.  We didn’t see any more rain coming so we decided to go.  It was sprinkling when we left Mill Creek about 7:55 a.m.  That signal means bring the anchor "UP".  

     It was cloudy as we were going under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, but it got progressively clearer so we kept right on chugging.

       After we went under the bridge, we made our way over to the east side of the bay.  Since we left Sara’s, we had been traveling up the west side of the Chesapeake.  We’re fairly close to shore (within about a mile).  We’ve been gone 3 hours and we can still see the bridge…just barely though.

   
     There were bluffs everywhere.  At about 11:30 we passed Mitchell Bluff, the one in the first picture.  I guess it is named after Gary.  We haven’t found anything named after me yet.  It’s turned out to be a beautiful, sunny day.

    Just as I was saying how nice it was with no boat traffic, Gary spotted two big powerboats behind us.  So much for a no wake day.  We left the Chesapeake at 2:30 as we passed Turkey Point, which is the northern most point on the Chesapeake.

     We started up the Elk River that takes us to the 14-mile long Chesapeake & Delaware Canal near the mouth of the Susquehanna River to the Delaware River near Reedy Point.  The C&D canal was “open for business” in 1829 to connect the waters of the Chesapeake Bay with the Delaware River, but has undergone many improvements to become the 450 feet wide and 40 foot deep canal today.  Look what we found in it.  It was huge and close.  Gary wanted you know if the writing on the side "tug"was for us.  I don't think so.

     There are sets of posts that have boxes on them spaced along the banks on either side of the canal.  I read where they were part of the system used to monitor and safely move the commercial traffic through the waterway.

     We arrived at the anchorage at Chesapeake City at 4:00 p.m. after we went under the Chesapeake City bridge.

     Seven or eight boats were already there in the anchorage.  We cozied up in the corner by a strip of land that had a cut-out of a fox on it.  We guessed he was there to scare the geese away, but it didn't seem to be helping.  Can you find him in the second picture?  He's really tiny.

     SNARK, the tug who had shared our anchorage at Mill Creek was tied up to the free dock.  Two other boats we had been listening to on the radio, MEANDER and OOPICH (some kind of owl), were rafted right in front of him.  When you raft at a dock, the first boat ties to the dock and the next boat ties to him and so on until there are no more boats.  LAST DANCE who was in front of us at the Dismal Swamp Welcome Center said he had seen as many as 8 boats rafted off of each other there.  We anchored and put the dinghy in the water to take the garbage in and to meet the crew on SNARK.  We ended up meeting all three couples.  It was nice to put faces to the voices we’d heard on the radio.

     We walked around for a while and took a few pictures of the park near the dock and some of the houses.  We were pretty tired so we didn't walk too far.

     At 6:00 p.m. what seemed to be the town siren blew, then at 8:00 p.m. and then again at 12:00 a.m.  Of course by then we were asleep.  We couldn't figure out why the sirens and the other boaters didn't know either.  Here is the calm (water), but not so quiet anchorage.

     We traveled for 8 hours and 8 minutes covering 57 miles.  We have gone a total of 1086 miles.