As Intracoastal Mile Marker 0 silently disappeared off Countess' stern, we didn't make much of deal over its passing, countless others markers have done the same as we have slowly worked our way up the eastern ditch. Other than a long stare at this special mile marker, about all that can be said regarding the event was our sense of accomplishment and satisfaction at reaching this milepost still in one piece, still floating with only Countess' keel slightly buffed and scratched from her occasional interludes with a muddy bottom here and there. As the red zero marker became another entry in the log, we turned our attention to crossing Hampton Roads and locating the entrance to the Hampton River where, just a mile or so further on, was the Hampton Yacht Club. On our way we passed wall-to-wall docks filled with Naval ships of all classes, shapes and sizes, and a moored pod of submarines basking in the mid-day sun. Crossing the 'Roads' provided us with our first glimpse off to our starboard of the Chesapeake's yawning vista looking more like an entry to the ocean than to a bay. Other than crossing its northern reaches one early and very dark December's morning to do some goose hunting on Maryland's Eastern shore when Chance and I were spending the Christmas holidays with her mother in Butler, Maryland, I have never actually been on the Chesapeake. I still didn't have a clue of the Bay's enormity until Countess brought us into its southern beginnings. From a boater's perspective the Chesapeake is definitely one big chunk of water. And that's not including all the rivers with their own bays and coves which add-up endless cruising opportunities. All you need is time.....and a good fathometer! But for the moment, gawking at this imposing body of water had to go on hold, our attention must be paid to the shipping traffic entering and leaving Hampton Roads and the rivers: James, Nansemond and Elizabeth.

Norfolk is a very busy harbor with just enough channel markers to challenge you chart reading, and lots of ships which could easily use us as their tender. As we entered and began crossing Hampton Roads, off to our portside, a huge aircraft carrier accompanied by several escorts (pilot boats, I presume) and a swarm of helicopters buzzing overhead was slowly making its way toward open waters. And quickly coming up on our starboard was a large cargo freighter stacked skyscraper-high with containers. The enormity of these ships is such that their speed over ground is somewhat deceiving, and if you're not mindful of it, they can be in your backyard before you know it. We held-off crossing the channel until this freighter glided quietly by us. Like some wall-to-wall steel box, this solid mass just slipped along the channel's mirrored-plate surface right in front of us. Only the bulbous nose at the bottom of its bow like some abnormal growth gave any real indication of just how fast she was moving as this protuberance erupted the smooth water in front with small oily waves peeling off its rounded sides. The throbbing cadence of the freighter's engines drumming in concert with churning of the propellers sent vibrations throughout Countess' hull. We could actually feel these subtle pulsation's through our bare feet as we piloted from the bridge. Me thinks we were a tad too close!

After the channel, we had to dodge a school of fishermen scattered throughout several of the very channel markers we needed to navigate past to get to the Hampton River entrance. Proceeding on, courteously passing in and out of the maze hoping not to collect any of their out-stretched lines, we mischievously thought if we were that freighter or better yet, the aircraft carrier, there wouldn't be any of this 'broken-field running' to put up with. Might has right! After picking-up the river's entry buoys, it was just a matter of staying in the channel and proceeding about a half mile up the river to where we carefully nudged up and tied-off to the Hampton Yacht Club's visitors dock. It's a nice little facility with friendly members who accepted us as one of their own. This was one of the very few yacht clubs that has allowed us reciprocal yacht club privileges. That evening we went to dinner with Frank and Susan Cowling from Hampton who we previously had met in Beaufort, NC just about a week ago. They told us about the club, and insisted that we contact them on our arrival. That's the way most boaters are, friendly and generous right from the get-go.

The following day marked the beginning of our summer cruising both sides of the Chesapeake. Today's destination was 72 miles north to Pitman's Cove just off the small Indian Creek which winds its way inland past the town of Kilmarnock, Virginia. Once past Thimble Light (just outside Hampton Roads), the first of many unoccupied, octagonal lighthouses strung up and down both sides of the Chesapeake, we felt that now we were officially in Chesapeake Bay. Although these lighthouses standing stoically like lonely sentinels firmly anchored to the Bay's bottom, shine with regularity at dusk 'til dawn, a lightkeeper is no longer required as in bygone years when whole families actually resided in these wooden clapboard outposts. They all have a narrow walkway that wraps around the building and a small, vertical-standing cylinder affair hanging out on one side about fifty or so feet above the water. After a little thought was given to this structure, we correctly figured that it was the outhouse dangling out there. Bombs away!

Rounding Thimble Light and pointing Countess' bow north on a 16-degree heading, I strained to make out the Bay's eastern shores, but had to settle for a few scattered, shimmering spots on the horizon. This bay is expansive. Our new course put us on-line with the next lighthouse, Wolf Trap, and with a slight heading adjustment at there, we passed the Windmill Point Light at the northside entrance to the Rappahannock River. Once by Windmill Point, we took an arcing turn to the west to avoid its outreaching shallow shelf, and headed into Fleets Bay, a wide-open, 'C'-shaped bay offering numerous creeks worth exploring. It didn't take long for us to realize that, basically outside of the main trafficking channel, the Chesapeake is not very deep, and it's commonplace to cruise for hours on end with only seven to twelve feet of water between you and the muddy bottom. Panning the binoculars along the bay's wooded shoreline, we eventually picked-out the first set of small red and green markers which would lead us to the entrance of Indian Creek. Slowly winding our way up this little, lazy stream over depths not exceeding eight feet, we passed modestly sized homes tucked slightly back into the dense forests lining the creek's banks. At buoy #11, according Chesapeake Bay Magazine's newly published cruising/gunkholing book, is an even smaller creek just off to the left. Idling up this little tributary, Pitman's Creek we figured it was called, no name was given by our reference, big droopy cottonwoods among other trees---ash, maple, oak, etc., gradually closed in us as the creek just did its thing twisting further past the first bend and suddenly disappearing around a second bend and into the forest wall. It was getting uncomfortably skinny to follow the creek any further than the first bend so that's where we dropped our hook in eight feet of water undoubtedly sinking it soundly into some pretty mucky stuff judging by the amount of air bubbles breaking the surface. All alone with no other sounds than those of numerous local birds and a lone heron who, with pterodactyl-sounding screeches protested our arrival...we probably screwed-up his concentration at catching dinner. With the sun setting, a warm, golden glow soaked the area adding to an already tranquil setting. All around us the forested reflections sparkled and danced with the sun's gradually fading brilliance. We sat on the aft cockpit bench watching the on-off tiny blips of light from lightning bugs (aka fireflies) that flitted in and out of the thick bushes on the opposite side of the creek's bank. Only after the gnats and some other species of voracious insects discovered us---a quick meal overlooking the water, did we hastily retreat from nature's little light show back into the screened safety of Countess' interior. It was a very quiet, restful night with nary a tidal or stream current to excite a rumbling from our chain as it can often do when it rolls and tumbles across the bottom of an anchorage as we casually swing overhead. Even the jellyfish (stinging nettles) which proliferate throughout the summer months in the rivers, bays and estuaries of the Chesapeake Bay, decided not to party that night. This was an anchorage we'd love to return to whenever we're in the neighborhood again.

The next day had us up early in anticipation of making passage to the mouth of the Potomac River where we planned to anchor in Horseshoe Bend on the St. Mary's River just adjacent to St. Marys, one of the earliest settlements on the east coast and first capitol of Maryland---later to be relocated to Annapolis. This, I have been told, is where Chance's forefathers arrived in the mid-seventeenth century aboard the Ark and the Dove which landed at Church Point just below the bluff where they eventually established the town of St. Mary's. The original two-story brick capitol building still stands not far from the bluff's edge and affords a beautiful overlook of the river and surrounding hills. Currently there are numerous archeological digs going on around the settlement's primary area. Several foundations have been unearthed and buildings such as the first hotel/tavern owned by a Mr. Van Swinnergan have been replicated on their original sites. The campus of St. Mary's College is also located next to the original town site.

We arrived at Horseshoe Bend just past noon, a trip of only 47 miles from Indian Creek under partly sunny skies and warm, southerly 10 knot breezes. You can pull up to the college's docking area to top-off on water and spend a few hours touring the area which is precisely what we did before going back out in the bay to drop our hook. A little later, after having walked the campus, toured the old settlement and cemetery and gobbled down a hamburger at the college's cafeteria, we returned to Countess and cast-off from the school's docks in search of a spot for the evening. Once the anchor was set, we kicked back to watch a summer sailing camp stage a mini-regatta using Countess as its windward mark. We kept a keen, yet nervous eye peeled in case fending-off became the order of the day should one of these young skippers accidentally plow into us. We were, however, pleasantly relieved that there were no ramming-speed jibes or such to spoil the remainder of the day. Still we maintained a mindful vigilance 'til they all returned to shore for cookies and koolaid. We know full well that Murphy was once a sailor too. Later, near dusk, we shared our anchorage and sunset with seven other boats--all sail, but one Bayliner-type 25-footer. It was a pleasant evening with just enough of a breeze to help keep the area's pesky, flying squadrons from their mission to eat us alive. Outside of some cavorting ducks on our transom platform that night and an early morning wake-up call from an obnoxious peacock on shore, we were out for the count.

By 0630, with a freshly brewed cup of rich cappuccino peaked with steamed milk in hand, we summoned Countess' ponies to the ready, and weighing, hosing down and putting our ground tackle to rest, we glided slowly back out St. Mary's mirrored surface towards the broad waters of the Potomac. I was surprised at how wide the mouth of the Potomac was---at least five miles across at its mouth, and eventhough it gradually narrows further upriver, it manages to stay about a mile or two wide about two-thirds of the way to Washington, DC. Outside of its well-marked channel, the river becomes quite shallow right up to its muddy banks. Because the Potomac's channel markers half way up are just far enough apart to be difficult to pick out, especially when there's a morning haze as was the case today, we plugged about six of the more widely separated buoys as waypoints into our GPS just to eliminate any guesswork. Fog would have really made this passage interesting. Today would go down as our longest passage since crossing the Bend last January: 105 miles and almost eleven hours in the saddle. At least this trip wasn't boring, lots of shoreline gawking and enough water traffic---mostly from the large Quantico Marine base's marina part way up, to keep us attentive to our coarse. We hadn't really planned on such a long day, having previously picked a river out called Maddawomen--- approximately half way to DC as our next anchorage, but the day, temps and sun were outstanding, so we just continued on.

The countryside along both sides of the Potomac---Virginia to port, Maryland to starboard going upriver, is beautiful, dramatic and continually changing the further up we traveled. Heavily wooded flat areas along the river's banks gradually elevate to majestic bluffs and hills offering plantation-like settings. Stately mansions overlooking acres of groomed turf and orderly woods purposely gladed to provide panoramic views from the owner's prominent residence randomly occupy the hill crests. Some of the grounds reach right down to the water's edge as in the case of Mount Vernon. This is an absolutely beautiful and imposing estate providing us with an incredibly impressive view from the river looking up. The river narrows noticeably about two-thirds of the way up to the Capitol, but navigating by sight becomes easier as the channel markers come closer together. With the channel now swinging much closer to the bank and the river bend more giving up all those comfortable downriver straight stretches we previously traveled with under autopilot, we needed to pay closer attention to our strip chart. There was still a lot of shallows just waiting to snag our keel.

The massive bastions of Fort Washington come into view about five miles from where Alexandria and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge begins to make its presence known. The channel runs right next to the fort's wooded hillside and its crusty-looking, massive stone-block walls. It's shortly thereafter that you realize you're about to enter a mass of happenings and humans. Helicopters begin their comings and goings...often singly, but mostly in tandem, flying low and using the river as their flight path. On the whole, they all seemed heading towards the capitol more than coming from it. Must be delivering the clowns, I mean, the politicians, or at least someone more important than us. Lots of air traffic going on at International. Heading towards the Woodrow Wilson Bridge which crosses the river to connect Alexandria to what I can only guess is a part of DC on the other side, you come face-to-face with all these oncoming commercial jets taking off. 747's, DC-8's, 777's---you name it, fly directly at then over you at no more than hundred feet if that, their landing lights like two lazier orbs burning intensely through the city's dusky haze. Quite an impressive if not noisy welcome to DC! What a memorable sight, especially with the light just getting that early evening softness and the lights of DC, the Anacostia Naval Airbase off our starboard coming on. Hard for us to believe that here we were at the nation's capitol on our boat heading right into the heart of the city with the towering Washington monument shooting skyward like some squared rocketship and getting larger the closer we came to the Washington Canal.

We didn't have to wait for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to open, there was plenty of room for us to get under. But sailboaters who obviously can't clear the bridge's span, have to call ahead and make an opening reservation then drop a hook just off from it to wait for its only opening which is some time around midnight, I believe. Our mooring was either going to be on the hook in the channel, a cement bulkheaded-cut about eleven feet deep and 250-300 feet wide, or, if we were really lucky, perhaps a slip at the Capitol City Yacht Club should one be available. We later found out that people make moorage reservations at the yacht club well in advance of the Fourth of July...like nine months in advance! We called the club as we headed up the river hoping for an overnight, not even considering that the Fourth was just three days away, and the city was most certainly to be absolutely packed. The cruz'n gods must have been on-board because the club had a slip available, and since we showed up first and the dock manager being obviously an astute opportunist, let us have it for our stay in DC. And to make things even better, we got a 10% moorage discount because of Chance's membership in Women Aboard, an organization I'll tell you about later in this log. How sweet it is! Besides, I didn't relish the idea of having to set two anchors which is a requirement to stay in the channel. Guess I should've immediately gone out and bought a lotto ticket. Ironically, the people, Henri and Anne Monnier, who actually lease the slip we had just backed into, were away on a cruising vacation at the time. Later we met and spent time with them at Solomons Island, Maryland while attending TrawlerFest in mid-October.

The Capitol Yacht Club is located just a short, small hill climb away from the heart of the city, about a quarter of a mile away from the Washington Mall and the Washington Monument, and not much further a walk to the Viet Nam and Korean Memorials. Every morning I made it a habit to jog past the Jefferson memorial and up the hill to the Washington Monument then down one of the two wide paralleling dirt paths under spreading trees which delineate the famous Washington Mall that connects the monument grounds to the Capitol building. Lots of street people hang-out on the benches along the paths or just aimlessly wander the grassy medians in-between. Some real interesting characters who have no problem getting lost in the hordes of visitors constantly frequenting these grounds. There's always something happening festival-wise on the mall. At the time we were there a Southern-roots Folkfest America thing with at least a dozen big tents taking up the Mall. Inside the tents you could sit and listen to some bluegrass bands, eat all sorts of ethnic-based foods or purchase T-shirts and other souvenirs. The energy level all over this area never seemed to wane, and neither did the crowds. This kind'a stuff goes on year-round! Despite all the people and the amazing amounts of daily garbage left behind, the whole mall area is kept surprisingly clean. Early every morning crews are out enforce sanitizing. If you're not familiar with this area, a majority of the buildings and exhibits which every tourist comes to DC to see are within walking distance of the Mall. The Smithsonian, my favorite place to get lost in, is almost within shouting distance of our marina. Also there's a Safeway was just a short walk up from us; however, it's not the most inviting place to shop at. Price-gouging is definitely suspect at this predominately minority-frequented store. Right in front of our pier and next to the yacht club house is a very good Phillips Seafood Restaurant. Every night this establishment puts on a humonguous international-style buffet with enough food to keep the bellies of all those starving kids in China stuffed. The yacht club's dockage is at the end of the canal, and right next to it are at least a half dozen fresh fish markets. Mega-loads of shrimp and crab, cooked (steamed or boiled in spices or au natural), mussels, clams, oysters, and more types of fish than you could shake a lure at are placed on beds of ice just waiting to be taken home and hoovered down. It's like a national holiday for all the Orientals who have a field day pawing and jabbering over the offerings. It's smart to move on to another vendor if they have the one you were hoping to buy a couple of pounds of shrimp or whatever from tied-up. I'm told their buying practices could go past an hour. From the early morning hours 'til somewhere around nine o'clock at night there's a constant flow of customers at this marketplace.

While we were in DC we visited the Viet Nam Memorial which seems to be always crowded. The monument consists of two adjacent jet-black tapered marble walls carrying thousands of chiseled names of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Along the base of the two long walls are offerings ranging from single roses, service medals and infantry badges to mounted letters and framed photos all of which make this memorial not only impressive, but extremely sobering and somewhat deeply and emotionally draining. It's where many come to be healed, others moved and still others to wonder the tragedy of it all. Even after leaving it, it doesn't leave you. More like a shrine with its rows after rows after rows of abbreviated obituaries, this poignant monument of the Viet Nam War is almost too much to fathom...even for those of us who were there. To its immediate left is an exceptional sculpture of three soldiers dressed basically in what all of us who served in Viet Nam will never forget having to live with: flak vests, baggy, multi-pocketed fatigues, jungle boots and floppy-brimmed hats that could carry a number of amo rounds or cigarettes in its outside hatband. And in two of the three grunt's hands were our somewhat trusty M-16 rifles.

Up from the 'wall' is the relatively new Korea Memorial which is much more dimensional, but no less dramatic as the Viet Nam one. Sculpted stone soldiers, deathly gray and silent are frozen in time as they cautiously advance in squad formation towards an intended objective somewhere up the sparsely treed and terraced grade. Amplifying this realistic setting is a singular, paralleling medium-gray marble wall---eight feet in height and perhaps seventy-five feet in length, with servicemen's and women's faces and assorted combat photos thinly etched into its highly polished surface. You have to gaze intently at the wall to pick-up all its ghostly elements. An extremely moving tribute to those who served in the Korean War.

I could go on and on about the Smithsonian. Suffice to say every visit we made to this outstanding landmark was an experience. I know we didn't see everything, there's so much to take in. The Museum of Natural History was excellent excepting for the masses who descended on the building at about the same time I visited it. The heat generated by all those bodies and the unruliness of many of the kids shortened my visit from what could have captured at least two full days of my undivided attention. And I wasn't completely 'stoked' on having to wait in line for about an hour before entering the National Archive building only to discover that I had to continue standing in line inside as all of us were hastily herded past long glass cases filled with numerous documents and correspondence pieces pertaining to key events in our history. These type of exhibits take time to study and contemplate. Tours of this nature could make 'rage-gawks' out of even the most gentile of visitors. At the center of the semi-circular exhibit was our Declaration of Independence hermetically sealed in a thick, green-tinted glass case that hydraulically ascends from and descends into its own vault. I'd have to say I was mildly impressed with the document, knowing from all the reproductions what it's supposed to look like. But being able to view the original, as faded as it was (even Hamilton's bold, sprawling signature was difficult to make-out completely), was actually worth the line and the wait. Viewing the Constitution, having more clarity, was a better example of our beginnings. On a previous visit to DC we took in the Aerospace Museum so we opted to pass that one up this time. We did go into the Industrial Museum which had a pretty good American Indian exhibit. If you're a museum nut like I am, my best advice is, if you want to spent quality time visiting DC's exhibits, do so in the dead of winter when the crowds are most likely thinned out. Summer is not the time to tour DC.

While at the Capitol Yacht Club, we had the good fortune to meet Maria and Dave Russell. Both are ex-school teachers from the St. Louis area and have been liveaboards for the past seven years while managing to raise two outstanding, well-mannered kids, Kate and DJ---16 and 14 years old respectively. Dave is a computer consultant and Maria is the editor/publisher and the primary driving and spiritual force behind Women Aboard, the superb women's cruising organization of which Chance and quite a number of our female cruising friends are proud to be members of.

One of the highlights for me was to visit with my only cousin on my mother's side, Carol Harkins-Miller, who resides just outside of Alexandria in Springfield and works at the Pentagon. We managed to get together for two enjoyable visits and a superb Thai meal in old-town Alexandria. There are so many outstanding restaurants in that small historical core that you could spend a good week feeding you face and being gloriously satisfied with every wipe of the napkin. Your banker and/or Visa Card will love you for it too!

The Fourth of July celebration in Washington DC....WOW! What more can I say than it was an out-and-out awesome pyrotechnical display. The Fourth celebration started at the yacht club with an early evening, all-you-can-eat buffet of hamburgers, BQ'd chicken, hot dogs, corn-on-the-cob, tomato salad, baked beans and watermelon for the nominal fee of $5 per head. Around nine that evening we, along with cruising friends, Bill and Sharon Blanton off their sailboat, "Hanalei" (we met several months earlier in St. Augustine), gathered on our bridge to watch what had to be the most spectacular, longest fireworks display that any one of us has ever witnessed. There were tremendously large explosions projecting multi-colored bursts of mini-galactical proportions one right after other interspersed with flare-like showers of slow-burning flare-like doodahs that snaked their twisty, puffy contrails out in every direction from the central blast. A light-show extraordnaire. We spent a good twenty-five minutes watching taxpayer's dollars go up in smoke! Thank you America for making our Fourth so memorable. Needless to say Countess managed to collect a fair portion of the show's fall out. Gritty, black granules were all over her. Well, she needed a bath anyway. We have found that when visiting large cities, airborne urban grime is a fact of life and necessitates routine washdowns.

It's now July 7, and we're ready to bug-out of our Capitol digs and head back down river to the Chesapeake. The passage to the Bay is about 110 miles long and needs to be broken-up better than we did coming up to DC. So we spent an overnight at Colonial Beach marina in Virginia before crossing the river to the Maryland side and dropping a hook the following night in Deep Cove at Smith Creek, a small tributary between St. Mary's River and immediate west of Point Lookout on the Chesapeake. Our anchor disappeared in the cloudy brown water and was promptly swallowed by the mushy bottom seven feet below us. We can generally determine where the shoal spots are in these little places because of the twigs poking up like branchless wooden stick plants. Never did learn if there was any fishing or other aquatic significance to all that, but venture too close to those sticks and you'll be stuck in dah muck just like those sticks.

The following day, at the uncivilized hour of 0640, we weighed anchor and putted-out through a light gray, fog-like haze that just hung heavy and wet on everything. Countess' outside was so shiny damp it looked like she had just been dipped in tub of clear acrylic. Our destination today would be Solomons Island, Maryland, a mere 38 statute miles up the Bay. Actually the reason for our 'jack-rabbit' start this morning was to avoid the afternoon thunderstorms NOAA weather had warned listeners about during their 0600 broadcast. The temperatures promised to deliver some sweltering 90-degree plus heat and the mild southeast winds weren't going to offer much relief. Luckily there was some added comfort being on the water. Our seas were following, and after rounding Cedar Point and heading up the Patuxent River toward Solomons, the rolling all but disappeared. We had planned to anchor just past Zahnizer's Marina up Back Creek, but too many other boaters had the same plan so in lieu of going over to Mill Creek, opposite Solomon's neat little commercial core and their excellent maritime museum, we elected to tie-up for the evening at Zahnizer's. So once secured to the dock, we proceeded to give Countess a well-deserved bath. The heat was now reaching a 'fry-the-egg-on-the-sidewalk' level, and our thoughts of holding out on getting air-conditioning were rapidly melting---excuse the pun! A whispy light breeze was still only teasing us with relief. I wasn't sure we had made the right decision tying up at the marina docks when, around 2200 hours one of those big-time thunderstorms with incredible winds paid a surprise visit to the area. I watched with great interest---more like high anxiety, as a rather large sailboat start drifting towards us...dragging his anchor no doubt, and several other sailboats anchored in the area quickly drifted way past their rode's scope and were free-wheeling it towards Zanhizer's also. Fortunately, the captain of the boat we were most concerned with realized something wasn't quite right and hastily popped topsides, started his engine and headed away from us. There was all of 25 yards or so remaining before he would have solidly broadsided us. It took him two more trys to get a firm set on his anchor, and by that time the winds had dropped as the more violent part of the storm made it exit eastward. But the rains intensified pelting us with a monsoon-like vengeance. Lots of water came down, but that's okay....our house floats! We waited out another day as a cold front passed through. But instead of paying the spendy $1.20 per foot and $4/day electrical hook-up at Zahnizer's, we prudently moved over to the Solomons Island Yacht Club's dockage and paid considerably less for a really nice tie-up that was right in the middle of all the shops and local eateries. The across-the-creek Town Center Marina had a great price on diesel at .84/gallon---one of the best prices in the Bay so we made sure we didn't leave without topping-off. Sure beats Florida.

Solomons was named after Isaac Solomon who relocated his oyster processing plant here at the mouth of the Patuxent after the Civil War. A fishing community ensued, but is slowly being replaced as the area has become one of the more favorite ports for recreational boaters and land-locked tourists to visit. Prior to World War II, M.M. Davis' yacht-building facility added diversity to this small town, and for a time built mine-sweepers for the Navy. Also during the War, Solomons Island became a naval amphibious training base where tactical landing exercises were conducted. As a town Solomons is unique in as much as there appears to be no town proper. There aren't the concentration of municipal buildings we generally associate with organized and invariably incorporated communities. Rather, Solomons seems more like a spread-out residential area encircling several creeks and lining the eastern side of the beginnings of the Patuxent River. There's an intermingling of old houses turned gift shops, seafood restaurants---some good, others not-so-good and a fair number of marinas. The crowning glory to the area is the Calvert Maritime Museum featuring one of only a couple original screw-piling lighthouses, the Drum Point lighthouse, which initially was located at the entrance to the Patuxent River. From excellent environmental and maritime displays to wooden boat restorations and local historical exhibits, there's something for everyone at this museum.

After a couple of days we were getting itchy to make it to Annapolis, one of our favorite spots to visit whenever we were back in the Maryland area on business or visiting family. So at 0616 on July 11, our lines quietly slipped the yacht club's cleats, and we headed out to the headwaters of the Patuxent, around the infamous 'Flats' (a large, triangled shoal section with not much more that two, possibly three feet of water that splits the entrance into Solomons and its various creeks) and out to the Chesapeake's open waters. Our passage was one of those auto-pilot kind'a days for fifty-one miles to the entrance to Back Creek, the community of Eastport and Bert Jabins' Marina. From Jabin's it's just a hop- skip-and-a-jump over the Eastport Drawbridge and Spa Creek to the heart of old Annapolis and its vibrant harbor. Jabin's is not the fanciest or cleanest of marinas in the Annapolis area, it's more a working yard, but it's location and fees make up for it. There's a second Jabin's, much larger and more complete further down Back Creek, but where we were was just great. Nice, quiet and laid-back with several excellent local restaurants to hit, and far enough away from the summer craziness of Annapolis; i.e., mega-people, boats galore, tourist buses, etc.

While in Annapolis (Eastport), we spent the better part of a day at the Naval Academy's museum. This was the second time we have visited this excellent facility where both the Navy and the school's history is on display. The museum is rich in tradition and exhibits of early naval individuals, uniforms and weaponry are extremely interesting. We also went to the campus' chapel where John Paul Jones is interred in an impressive rotunda complete with all his medals and a pair of stoical Marine guards whose silence is only compromised by answering visitor's questions. On a couple of other occasions, we took bike rides around the campus observing all the new plebes going through their indoctrination and training prior to the upper class, mid-shipmen reappearing for the beginning school year near the end of August. In fact, on several occasions when we were getting up in the morning we could hear the plebes going through their drills shouting cadences and other orchestrated replys to their drill instructors all the way over at our dock in Eastport.

During our stay in Annapolis who should show up at our dock's door step but Tim Bitney with his crew-cat, Tristan. In case you haven't been following our past logs, Tim we met and spent a week fogged-in with at a marina on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain at Slidell, Louisiana eight months ago. We had been e-mailing each other off-and-on a number of times during our separation, and it was outstanding to all of a sudden have him as a dock neighbor for a couple of days. That's another neat thing about cruising the waterways. No matter where you go, sooner or later you'll come across somebody you met a while back at some other anchorage or marina. It's always great to reenergize the friendships and catch-up on all the waterway gossip. Even on the ICW, the world can get small!

Bastille Days---July 14th, came and went as it does every year, and once more we failed to celebrate it with a beheading or two. Annapolis carried on much the same way without taking notice of the "Frog's" independence day. Perhaps it was due to a lack of frogs? In reality, I'm sure it was the heat. Nothing short of a roasting chili pepper could have enjoyed the sort of oppressive temperatures and humidity that had descended upon the Chesapeake this summer. We tried to keep our cool and even refrained from singing, "I wish I were an Oscar Myer wiener." Our week's stay in Annapolis was becoming absolutely uncomfortable for doing anything short of soaking in a tub of ice water. Temperatures were hitting and surpassing record highs for the next couple of weeks pushing into and past the 100-degree mark with heat indexes over 105-degrees. Needless to say, the air quality was reaching an unsavory, chewable stage---very unhealthy. By this time, our aspirations of holding out from buying Countess some air-conditioning totally evaporated, so to speak. The time had come to brutalize our house account once more in order to chill-out. Unfortunately chilling out could not come fast enough for it would be another week before the air-conditioning people we contracted to install the unit would be able to schedule us in. So instead of hanging-out in Annapolis for another horrendously hot week, we decided to do the short cruise up to Baltimore and link-up once more with our good friends, Sally and Gerry Farley onboard Tiamo who were having their daughter Chris and granddaughter Taylor from Brownsville, Texas visit them for a week.

Under sunny skies, mild 10-knot westerlies and one-foot waves we departed Back Creek and Annapolis for Anchorage Marina in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The trip was straight forward and nothing much to contend with outside of passing the Sandy Point Lighthouse just north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Which brings up the fact that between Virginia and Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay, I'd say we passed by more than a half-dozen Sandy Points. Now our hailing port....Sandy Point, Washington....doesn't seem like that exotic or neat a place to claim due to being so common-place back here. Should've put Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii on our transom board instead...haven't see any place named that on our trip so far! It's only a 31 mile trek north to Baltimore, and the shipping channel to the harbor is wide, deep and well-marked. Just before entering Baltimore you come to a split in the channel and there in the middle of that fork is Fort McHenry with its surrounding, well-groomed park grounds. The British, during the War of 1812, tried unsuccessfully to level the fort while attempting to land forces further up the channel which would march on the Capitol in Washington, DC. In fact, in the harbor during one of the barrages, Francis Scott Key jotted down a poem on a cocktail napkin or something of that nature which later became our national anthem. Anyway, a fair amount of our country's history surrounds the Baltimore area. We visited the Fort later on, and the exhibits are outstanding as are the well-maintained grounds and structures. It's worth a tour if you're ever in the neighborhood. Anyway, Tim Bitney, left Annapolis for Baltimore a couple of days before us and was tied-up at a marina further into the city's harbor than we were. We got a hold of him one evening, and along with the Farleys, went to dinner at one of the numerous excellent restaurants in Fells Point about a mile down the road from our marina.

One of the real highlights of our trip thus far was when we decided to rent a car in Baltimore and drive up to Gettysburg. Having never studied the Civil War to any great extent other that what was required in my high school American history class, I found our tour of the actual battleground(s) and the time spent inside the visitor's building taking in all the exhibits and battle objects to be far more engrossing than any classroom lecture or school book could ever be. The armament collection alone was overwhelming. I never realized how many different muskets and rifles let alone sabers and pistols were used during the war. I'd have to say that this had to be one of the finest, most educational national parks I've ever visited. Judging by the enormity of what was on display, one would think there's nothing more to be found in the area, but ever so often someone kicks up a musket ball or some other war relic out on one of the battle sites. Later I read a very interesting book given to me by my mother-in-law which delved into the personalities of the key military figures during this three-day battle. The tactics or what could be said were tactics were spread out over a considerable amount of terrain which varied from corn fields and fruit orchards to thickly wooded hills and rocky outcroppings at fairly steep elevations. The whole area was beautiful in its peacefulness, yet hard to imagine the incredible bloodbaths that took place on the very spots we were standing over a hundred and fifty years ago. The battlefields are loaded with monuments siting honors to the various state regiments and battle groups that participated in the numerous attacks and defenses. On the way back to the city we stopped off for an enjoyable visit and dinner with Chance's mother, Gill and her long-time companion, Mike, at their comfortable country home in Monkton. Overall the day was enormously gratifying. I can only hope that there will be many more rewarding excursions similar to this in the future.

Baltimore has an incredible aquarium at its inner harbor, and no one should ever pass-up the opportunity to take it in. Touring this multi-leveled building is the closest thing to being in a fishbowl yourself. Stairs spiral the innards of the cylindrical tanks, and as you descend or ascend its way, you can marvel at all the aquatic life swimming around you. Quite unnerving to have several species of large sharks lurking just over your shoulder, their steely eyes glaring at what might appear to them as roasted turkeys with all the trimmings. One probably is saying to the other ones, "Ought'a try one of them tourists....they're good n' crunchy inside, ya know!" To watch all the fish silently, almost effortlessly glide by you can be dizzying. And that's probably why the aquarium provides handrails on both sides of the walkways. We also took in the dolphin show which goes on twice a day at a special waterside theater where we sat on bleachers and were thoroughly entertained as eight performers along with four trainers went through their acts. Just like well-trained dogs, these amazing creatures, reacting to hand and audio commands, performed incredible acrobatic stunts much to the total delight of the audience, the majority of whom were kids, of course. Micheal Jordan has nothing on these guys when it comes to jumping. Absolutely incredible the heights they can reach!

A couple of overcast, drizzly days while in Baltimore gave us the chance to consolidate some unused United Airlines mileage-plus coupons and two credits all which were just about ready to expire on us. It's one of those 'use it, or lose it' scenarios. So we booked a March trip back to the Northwest to take care of our annual health obligations, i.e., doctors and dentists, and to visit with lots of our land-locked friends who we have dearly missed over the past sixteen months. Our cross-country travel plans will also allow us an opportunity to pay a visit to my dear father in Denver who I haven't seen for several years.

With our week's stay fully consumed, we turned our attention to returning to Annapolis to get our much-anticipated air-conditioning installed. The Saturday morning's heavy haze had us running our radar for a couple of hours before the sun won the battle of the elements, and a bright, warm day allowed an incredible collection of boaters to come out and demonstrate just how idiotic and careless people can be when given the chance. Being the weekend and being Annapolis---a drinking community with a sailing attitude, there were several mini-regattas just off shore as we approached Back Creek. We managed to wander through the courses making sure not to disrupt the races or steal anyone's air. But I couldn't believe the high disregard many powerboaters had for what was going on with all the traffic in front of Annapolis. I've never witnessed such boating chaos. Borderline suicide best describes weekend boating on the Chesapeake...at least around here.

It took about four days to complete the air-conditioning operation. With the temps starting to tease the nineties once more and that heavy, sticky humidity hovering above the uncomfortable zone, it wasn't a moment too soon when we fired-up the unit and savored the cooling effects of cool air being blown with authority all over Countess' interior. Ahh, relief at last. The unit can reverse cycle thereby becoming a heater by extracting the heat from the water. But it's not too efficient when water temps drop below 45-degrees so that means no bueno in Puget Sound.

During our second stay in Annapolis, the Farleys sailed down from Baltimore and camped out on a town mooring buoy in the middle of all the craziness on Spa Creek and Annapolis Harbor. But, as I mentioned earlier, we were only a quick mile bike ride over the bridge from the main part of the town so linking-up with the Farleys was nothing major. As usual there were lots of grins and giggles as we literally ate our way once more through a number of good restaurants and pubs with prices that were surprisingly modest considering the time of year and this being a major Maryland city. But good times always seem to have a temporary end to them, and after a few days it became time for the Farleys to press-on and discover the hospitality several of the Eastern shore's neat little villages like Chestertown, St. Michaels, Oxford and Crisfield. These places were on our exploring itinerary also, only later though. So once more we bid adieu to our cruz'n buddies and could only hope that we'd cross wakes once more in the Chesapeake before we all began heading south in the fall. Rounding out our week was a get-together with Cathy and Barry Carbaugh who, although residing in Pennsylvania, keep their sailboat, 'Two Drifters', at Jabin's. We met the Carbaughs earlier in Norfolk, and it was great to enjoy a dinner with them when they came down to check on their boat.

It was the beginning of August when we finally brought in the lines from Burt Jabins' docks and left Annapolis. Truly a memorable stay, but we had a lot of other ports on the agenda and were anxious to be on the go once more, this time to a small fishing town on the Eastern shore called Rock Hall. The town, known for its fish and crabs, is actually close enough for all Baltimore and Annapolis boaters to access it on short day trips. This means that the town's body count swells during the summer months and takes on a serious 'get down & party'-like atmosphere. We shied away from the main part of town and opted to anchor up a small tributary called Swan Creek just a little north of the town's marinas, restaurants and mad-cap happenings. While checking out the creek we noticed an open mooring buoy and decided that it needed to have a line through its ring. And, so we spent a quiet evening securely joined with a once lonesome float. We actually tried hailing the adjacent marina which seemed as though they might have something to do with the managing of the dozen or so buoys that were out there. Unable to raise a response, we just hung-out---so to speak, thinking they'd get in touch of us. Nothing happened which prompted us later to dub the facility the Bates Marina having not seen anyone around the premises during the remainder of the day and on into the next. Well, heck, what's wrong with a little free night's lodging, anyhoo? On our return south, we would once again visit Rock Hall for just a night to break-up a long passage up the Chester River to Chestertown.

Under sunny morning skies, respectable 12-15 knot northerlies and temps touching mid-sixties, we let loose of our gratis-overnight digs and gingerly creeped over shallow water, lining up on a couple green markers to starboard and a red directly behind us in order to reach the main north/south Chesapeake channel and begin our trip to Havre de Grace, Maryland. The passage was all of 44 1/2 statue miles over mildly lumpy seas and wet bow railings. Locating the buoys marking the entrance channel to Havre de Grace proved a little difficult due to the distance between them plus the one right-angled turn and not-so-straight marker alignment. The channel was relatively wide and provided us with 13-foot average depth readings as we threaded our way through the Susquehanna Flats. One to two foot depths are one's reward should straying off course be part of the day's plan. Of course, it's easy to detect the out-of-channel shallows, just look at all the feeding shore birds standing not more that fifty to seventy feet off either side of the channel.

Havre de Grace, a small town of some historical significance, comfortably sits on the western banks of the Susquehanna River's entrance so named after the local tribe, the Susquehannocks. The river is the Chesapeake's primary fresh water source--half the Bay's supply, having its origins some 450 miles to the north in New York State. According to geologists, the Chesapeake is actually the valley of the Susquehanna which over time sank at least four times eventually sinking low enough to allow sea water intrusion while cutting off all the river's main tributaries and actually 'drowning' the river itself. Havre de Grace gets its name from General Lafayette who passed through the area on several occasions during the Revolutionary War. The British did a number on the town during the War of 1812 shelling and burning most of its buildings. One brave citizen whose name escapes me, singly stood off the British navy for a while as he manned a battery of cannons on a point of land known as the potato patch. Later he was captured and spent a little time on a British prisoner ship until his family managed to have him freed. This same point is where the Concord Lighthouse was built in 1827. It still stands, and although decommissioned, the lighthouse continues to provide navigational aid for boaters. The town itself reminds me of several of the mid-America towns I have driven through years ago. It's a quiet, sort of a sleepy place where people come out in the evening to walk the neighborhood and river boardwalk and visit in a couple of the small parks in the heart of town. I thought it a little unusual that the town's alleys were all paved, immaculately clean and, according to their erected sign posts, designated as lanes.

One of the most unusual museums I have ever visited is located here in Havre de Grace, the Decoy Museum. This part of the Chesapeake is renown for its decoy carvers. And the museum's collection is both impressive and incredibly beautiful, and the carving and hunting exhibits life-like and truly educational. They represent in-depth a way of life not only of the dozens of local artisans, but how the people living in the Bay's environs utilized a number of methods in hunting waterfowl. Punt boats, sneakboxes, flatboats and such provided the means for hunters to nearly decimate the winged wildlife on the Bay. Thanks to Maryland's increasingly stringent bird-hunting laws, the hunting debacle was brought under control by the mid-1940's.

We spent several peaceful days in Havre de Grace, and finished-up our visit with Chance's mother, Gill along with Mike and close friends, Mary and Bill Boniface all of whom drove over to join us for an enjoyable dinner at the Tidewater Grill, a pleasant little waterfront restaurant. All-in-all, I'd have to say that outside of its laid-back nature and the decoy museum, there's not a whole lot going on in Havre de Grace. And I'm sure that's okay with its denizens.

The following day after a hearty breakfast at the local 6-to-2 Cafe, we were off and cruz'n towards our next destination, the Sassafrass River on the Eastern shore just south of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, the Chesapeake's northerly exit for the Intracoastal. There's plenty of water at the mouth of the Sassafrass, its entrance being about three and a half miles wide. The terrain along the river rises up into pastoral spreads of agricultural fields occasionally interrupted with rich green splotches of heavily treed mini-forests. The cruise up the river to Back Creek where we planned to drop the hook was scenic and made even more enjoyable with the mirror-like water reflecting the warmth of the day's sun. The trip could have been more comfortable, but for the boat traffic we encountered after entering the river. Today was Saturday, and we should have guessed. The Sassafrass is a favorite hang-out for everything from large mega-yachts to those annoying little personal watercraft....the bane of all conscientiously sane cruisers. We figured that Back Creek, being behind Knight Island would shelter us from the noise and the incredible wakes from all the traffic. Well, it sorta' did, at least the action from the larger boats, but the smaller ones liked coming in close to the creek thereby sending row after row of wet shock waves across the otherwise still anchorage all afternoon. We decided one night on the Sassafrass was about all we wanted. We anchored in about five feet of water, and no sooner was the hook set than we went swimming in the stinging nettle-free, 79-degree water. I wasn't too comfortable dog-paddling around Countess through the semi-murky water...just couldn't get my mind off those dead Potomac River fish we witnessed floating by our boat all dead with pinkish-red lesions eating through their sides. For once, I kept my mouth shut until I popped up on our transom platform and exclaimed that any more swimming would be done in a pool, thank you! Things did quiet down later in the evening, but we were convinced that Sunday would make a good travel day down to Rock Hall, figuring the rowdies from Baltimore would be out of that harbor by early afternoon.

The morning's peace was soon being rudely shattered by the screaming-whines of those highly rapped PWC engines and the throaty growls of cigarette boats cranking-up and ripping their way through numerous unannounced races and/or speed trials back and forth on the river's already crowded channel. This scenario totally convinced us that vacating the vacinity was a good idea. Rock Hall was only 37 1/2 statute miles south past a couple of promising east side anchorages like Worton and Fairlee Creeks, both worth a visit when we return to the Bay.

Rock Hall, as suspected, was crawling with city boaters from the 'other side'. Fortunately, we found a spot on the end of a narrow pier at a marina where its use obviously out-paced its upkeep. We were now just a few hundred yards away from The Waterman's Crab House where everyone hangs-out on the restaurant's open decks scarfing-down tray-loads upon tray-loads of steamed Blue Crabs just out of a peppery Old Bay Seasonings sauna all piping hot and zippy, and stacked precariously high in defiance of all we know about gravity. The crabs are tasty and satisfying, especially when accompanied with liberal dosages of cold beer. I think the best part of a lay-over in Rock Hall has to be an opportunity to really pig-out on crab. It's a lot of work to go for the meat and it takes about a dozen or so to make a good meal. I still think these blue crabs can't hold a candle to the Northwest's dungeness both in taste and the amount of meat in each crab. Of course the dungeness is about twice the size of the little blue crab. In comparison, it only takes two and a half to three dungeness to pooch out my tummy, and there's not near the work to dig the meat from the legs and body cavities.

We figured one night in Rock Hall, and it's out-of-here and up the Chester River to the neat little country burg of Chestertown. The trip is a twisting 26-miles from its official beginnings at Love's Point on the Chesapeake. Winding our way up the river was absolutely delightful right from its broad three-mile opening on up to where it dwindles down to probably no more than a couple of hundred yards at best in width. Pastoral views dominate the vistas of farm lands with their freshly plowed or planted fields overviewed by tasteful colonial-styled mansions perched proudly on the ridge lines of the numerous rolling hills. Thickly wooded patches of forest off-set the estates agricultural endeavors and add much to the color and variety of the landscape. It was very peaceful and quite enjoyable to let the eyes wander over the countryside picking out interesting objects here and there on the far hillsides then quickly putting the binoculars to eye for closer inspection. The Chester River itself is rated as the second longest river on the Eastern Shore. And on our passage up to Chestertown, we passed at least a half dozen joining tributaries that splintered-off the main course offering beautiful anchorages which make this whole river area such an enjoyable region to cruise and explore.

We tied-up at one of two small marinas next to town called Scott's Point with about a foot or so of extra depth at low-low to keep us from pressing the bottom. It's just your basic home-spun facility run by a very accommodating and agreeable couple, Frank and Edna Mench, who ironically, are more into land-cruising in their mega-sized motorhome land yacht rather than play in the shallow waters like the rest of us. Next door, or more exact, across a dirt lot soiled here and there from years of sloppy oil changes and housing several blocked-up boats in various stages of repair, is the town's main marina complete with a small, but well-stocked ship's store and an attached family-style restaurant serving fairly good food at a fair price.

Once we washed down Countess and tidied her insides, we jumped on our bikes to do a first of several tours of this small colonial town. Many of the old post-revolution homes have been beautifully restored and closely hug the old narrow streets many of which remain paved with well-worn, burnt-red bricks. The streets are canopied with ancient overhanging oak trees and the town's little central park (every Saturday a farmer's market is held on its grounds) is smack in the center of the town's original beginnings. The heart of Chestertown is right out of what I think we all perceive a small, all-American town should look like. The core certainly adds more historic flavor and down-home ambiance to a village already saturated with charm. The small, but impressive Washington College has been operating in Chestertown ever since 1782. According to fact, this is the only institution to which George Washington personally gave his permission for the use of his name. Everyone familiar with the Boston Tea Party might be surprised to learn that back in the Spring of 1774, Chestertown also staged its own tea party when frustrated colonialists dumped a cargo of tea from the British merchant ship, Geddes, into the river. Nowadays, the citizens still celebrate the fact with a festival every late May. While visiting Chestertown, about all I can say I did of any historical significance was to change Countess' oil and filters.

While in Chestertown, we were fortunate enough to connect with Chance's aunt and uncle, Frances (Chance's father's sister) and John Edelen, who graciously loaned us a car for the time we were there. During our week's stay we managed to have a couple of dinners and some quality visit-time with Frances and John. We also had the pleasure of meeting Al and Sue Martens on board their 42' Krogen, 'Northern Light', tied-up at the end of one of the piers at the town's marina. Al used to be an engineer for 3M and Sue was a school teacher. Both retired last year and chose the sublime lifestyle of cruising liveaboards. Their Krogen is the first one I've ever had the chance to go aboard, and I must say they are very 'shippy' and comfortable boats. Lots of storage and elbow room. It's a stoutly built pilothouse trawler of full displacement and powered by a single, moderately powered diesel. In Northern Light's case, a 135-hp Lehman. I was impressed with the workmanship and layout. This is an excellent extended-cruising vessel for any couple. Al and Sue showed up at several more ports we visited later on during our summer cruise of the Chesapeake.

Conditions weren't the best the day we decided to leave Chestertown after seven delightful days, but we wanted to get down the river, through the Kent Narrows and into the small port of St. Micheals before the predicted weather was to turn crummy with rain and thunderstorms later that day. We shoved off Scott's Point dock at 0930 knowing we would be well ahead of the ensuing late afternoon T-storms and winds by the time we tied-up at St. Micheals' Town Docks. Well, so much for planning ahead. By the time we reached the confluence of Gray's Inn, Lanford and Corsica Creeks---about two-thirds down river from Chestertown, a solid broad, ominous thickening dark wall of serious weather off to our immediate north was gradually creeping towards us like some huge band of jet-black india ink thickly broad-brushed across the horizon. Naturally the winds were beginning to go beyond the level of fresh as the increasingly agitated chop slapped loudly against Countess' hull. We decided that St. Micheals could wait another day as we began searching for the elusive red channel marker far off our port side which would indicate safe entry into Corsica Creek and a protected anchorage. No sooner had we begun scanning of the eastern shoreline for the creek's entrance than the winds like some banshee in heat---if you can imagine that, screamed past our stern as if to shriek, "Gotcha!". The river's state instantly changed from a moderate chop to one of three-foot, closely spaced waves with frothy white crests which the wind was literally being peeling off and making visibility much like looking through fogged glasses. As hard as we tried we could not locate the creek's marker and didn't feel comfortable getting any closer to shore and shallower water just to hunt for it.

So hack-on we did towards what showed on our charts as the marked channel leading to the Kent Narrows. The conditions were down right sloppy, but we'd been in worse, besides in a matter of minutes we should be picking up the first channel marker. Well, Murphy must have been on board that day. Much to our dismay we could not locate the Narrows' channel markers. Three times we came about, turning up river, head-on into the watery, three-wiper blast of the front's northerly welcoming, and three times we failed to see any channel markers. This was becoming increasingly frustrating because we knew there was nothing wrong with our GPS and the waypoints we had previously plugged in for the channel were double-checked after we failed to locate the markers on our first attempt. We redid the coordinates, rechecked the charts and rescanned the shoreline. Nothing. Then we figured, hell, let's start looking over in the direction of the Narrows, and maybe we'd see a boat coming out towards the river. Then we'll just hail him on the radio and ask what's going on, and how the heck can we get there from here. Sure enough, we spotted a couple of vessels heading out to the river's channel about five miles or so off our starboard. Fortunately, we were able to raise one of the two captains who in turn saw us and proceeded to give us some very good instructions, i.e., shoreline objects to shoot for and navigational tips once in the channel---the approach is notoriously shallow, and wouldn't you know it, we were approaching it just after slack low. Anyway, life gets a whole lot better when things actually start working out for the good! We finally got on track and headed along the fairly shallow channel with readings of 4 1/2 and 5-feet keeping all eyes from straying from our depth meter and heading. The mystery of the channel was cleared up once we pulled into Mears Marina at Kent Narrows to top-off on fuel. It seems that in the Spring the state decided to relocate, shorten and dredge a new channel---the old one, the one we couldn't find, had been abandoned due to all the problems boaters had with its difficult tracking and continual shoaling. They also had pulled the old markers. Oh, no kidding!

Having yet to get under the old Kent Island bridge, we held-off leaving the fuel dock until it was close to the bridge's 1330 opening, then, quickly hauling-in our looped lines, did one big turn, radioed the bridgetender and passed on through without any further delay. We were on the other side of the storm which continued to rage behind us on the north side of the Narrows. Now in the lee of the land and island and entering the wide, thankfully deep waters of Eastern Bay, the sea state was much more civilized. It was only another hour and a half of cruising with a foot's worth of following chop to live with before entering the Miles River. From the northern side of Deep Water Point, a trident-shaped peninsula like several long, boney fingers on a witch's hand reaches out to form the southern boundaries of Eastern Bay and the beginning banks of the Miles River. From here it's just a couple of more miles, and several buoys to go 'til we passed our lines off to an attendant at the St. Micheals City Docks. And who was standing on the docks grinning like some Cheshire cat and being up close and personal when we arrived? None other that Al Martens no less. Sue was just climbing over Northern Light's railing to quickly come over and catch our stern line. Great thing this cruising lifestyle: pull into a new port and see familiar faces....all part of the grand package. The Martens had come down the Chester River a couple of days before our departure and spent the last two days peacefully anchored inside Corsica Creek. Well, next trip, we'll just have to make sure we find that creek's elusive red entrance buoy.

St. Micheals, Maryland. What a pretty place. Pretty setting, pretty upscale, pretty expensive. Actually, St. Micheals is very charming and popular, and if I could put a tag-line to it, I'd call this town new-original. Most of the surrounding residences and commercial buildings have been refurbished to nearly new condition or freshly built in the architecture of what surely must have been the town's original colonial-style look. The retail core lines both sides of one long drag for probably two miles while the residential section is sandwiched between lush forests and two small harbors dotted with a few marinas and waterfront restaurants. Beyond some very nice shops and a refined party-like atmosphere, St. Micheals boasts one of the best, if not the best, maritime museum I have toured thus far. I thoroughly enjoyed taking a day to visit this complex which offers everything from the original Hooper Strait Lighthouse (1879 to 1954) and an extensive antique boat exhibit and restoration facility to an extensive and fascinating ecological section about the Chesapeake Bay and in-depth look into the seafood industry with particular attention given to that illustrious local resident, the blue crab. The maritime historical presentations were extremely well done. We spent three days at St. Micheals and enjoyed every hour of them. However, I must say that I couldn't make a steady diet of this town because of its popularity. The place does get choked visitors from both land and sea.

Our next destination, Oxford, required a bit of back-tracking out the Miles River and westward across Eastern Bay. Then, with a sweeping turn to port that seemingly lasted forever, we once again entered the wide-open waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Plying southward through moderately choppy waters, we passed Tilghman Island where Knapps Narrows, a popular short-cut over to the Choptank River, cuts through the island. According to reports its boasts a controlling depth of nine feet, but we wanted to remain stress-free today, and besides, we were enjoying our 'outside' cruise, which would take us an extra six or so miles further down the Bay to Blackwalnut Point. Rounding the point had us passing through a virtual 'minefield' of crabpots for about a mile before turning east into the heart of the Choptank River and then a little northeast towards the Tred Avon River to the delightful town of Oxford. The Choptank River is quite open, and if we were to turn almost due north and venture up Broad Creek then peel off to starboard a short distance to enter San Domingo Creek, we'd find ourselves smack on the back doorsteps of St. Micheals. Further into the Choptank, east-south-eastward is Cambridge, another town we were planning on visiting, but passed-up the thought after hearing from several cruising friends that it's worthy of only a night's stay at best. Seems this once prosperous town is sorta' on the skids and not one of the better places to spend an extended visit.

During the late seventeenth century, Oxford was a port of entry that rivaled Annapolis in size. Originally known as Thread Haven, Oxford phased through a couple of other names: Third Haven and Tred Avon, before settling on its current handle. Oxford is also the final resting place for General Tilghman who was an aide-de-camp to Washington during the war, and gained real notoriety when he brought official notice to Congress that Cornwallis has surrendered at Yorktown.

Passing through Oxford should be done slowly.....very slowly. In fact, visiting this town at the pace local Oxfordites take life is to fully appreciate this little slice of heaven. And that's precisely how it should be, just ask anyone there. Knowing that there's a radar trap at the town's southeast end should convince new-comers that slow is an operative must, any faster and you might be hard-pressed to think you just went through a town while the officer writes you up for going over the 25-mph speed limit. There's a half dozen marinas tucked away on Town Creek which borders Oxford on its eastern flank while the expansive waters of the Choptank do the same on its western front. Morris Street, named after the Revolution's biggest financier, Robert Morris, is the town's only main street bisecting it for about a mile before abruptly dead ending at the Belleville/Oxford Ferry Landing. Started in 1683, this ferry is the oldest, free-running ferry in the continental United States providing a link between the two cross-river communities of Oxford and Bellevue, The ferry also offers only other way out of town if you don't want to do a round-trip on Morris Street.

Passing the town's firehouse at the southeast end of town---this is where deputy dog with his deadly ray-gun likes to hang out, you come into Morris Street at the corner where the Oxford Inn/Pope's Tavern is located. An ancient-looking, mossy stone Episcopal church set back under an umbrella of trees is just off to the right of the Inn. Cruising down Morris Street you begin to think you're just driving through a neighborhood as you pass under thickly foliated, over-hanging oak trees lining either side of the street, and whose root systems have, over the years, caused the rusty red-bricked sidewalks on either side to become two undulating ribbons fronting unpretentious, yet very attractive colonial-styled two-storied homes. The giveaway that there might be a town here comes about halfway through Oxford when you arrive at the town's central park. Here visitors and locals alike picnic and relax while watching all the boating and commercial fishing activities out on the Choptank River. When we first visited the park there was a three-day log canoe regatta going on.

Log canoes are as indigenous to Chesapeake Bay as other specialized bay boats such as skipjacks, bugeyes, sneakboxes and punts were way back whenever. Anyway, these boats have their beginnings at least a hundred and some odd years ago. As their name implies, canoes were built-up from four or five logs pinned together side-by-each and then shaped inside and out with basic woodworking tools such as the adze. When completed, the canoes sport a very long bowsprit, are ketch rigged and carry an uncommonly large amount of sail for their size which I'd estimate to be about thirty-plus feet in length, not counting the bowsprit or what looks like an elongated bumpkin six feet or so aft of the stern where sits the helmsperson dangling precariously out over the water all by their lonesome while the crew does their thing onboard. There's hardly any freeboard to these boats, and with a swing keel, it's all the crew can do to keep the boat upright when the sails are full and they're cookin' on a beam reach. Which brings up another interesting feature of the boat. They're crewed by anywhere from six to nine, perhaps ten members, all squeezed into what appeared to me to be maybe a six to seven-foot wide interior at best. The real wildness of the log canoe comes when it begins to catch enough wind to hike over. That's when the crew gets out on a singular long hiking board that extends way out over the boats gunwales. Imagine a twelve foot skinny diving board crammed with five or six crewmembers literally hanging-out from three to eight feet off the water to counter the boat's heeling as the it speeds along at a ten, possibly twelve knot clip. It's truly a dramatic style of sailing---literally by the seat of your hiking shorts! There's no doubt that this type of sailing is incredibly exciting if not a tad on the crazy side. It reminds me a lot of vintage car racing....the majority of the log canoes that were racing in the regatta were over eighty years old, one was nearly 110--- built, owned and raced through the generations by the same family that originally built it in the 1800s. As Ripley would put it, "Strange, but true."

Are you still with me? Anyway, getting back to the park, Oxford's midway point. In the park's immediate vacinity is the town's primary commercial core consisting of two minuscule roadside grocery stores: one very old, very original complete with the old soda fountain and owned and operated by Bill and his ninety some-odd year old mother. The other's a bit more upscale with wine racks and gourmet goodies in lieu of the soda fountain and a lot more inventory. Both stores sandwich a bike shop which is more a general store than a bike one. Next to Bill's grocery store in an old, non-descript two-story brick building is the town's museum which has a surprisingly extensive collection of original items of the area beginning with pre-Revolutionary times onward. Across the street is an inconspicuous restaurant known as Jacqueline's, owned and operated by a family (the father is a CPA) from New Jersey who come down just for the summer season to serve only breakfasts (incredibly delicious) on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. A little unorthodox way to run a biz, but I gathered it was more a hobby than anything, and at least it got them out of Jersey.

Well, that's Oxford. Actually there's more to the town than meets the eye. I only described the part that meets everyone's eye. At the end of Morris Street, just before the ferry landing, there's the Robert Morris Inn, named after who else but old Bob himself. A portion of the restaurant at the inn is actually part of his original house. If you were to take a right at the Morris Inn you'd be on what is known as the Strand, a long, crescent-shaped run of sandy beach that forms a quasi cove where most visiting cruisers as anchor. The holding is not the greatest, but the setting is worth several tries at getting a solid set on your anchor. In fact, when we arrived, the Farleys were at anchor here, and we once more enjoyed several days together before they set sail for Washington DC.

There are a number of streets which parallel and intersect with Morris Street filled with well-maintained, modestly sized private homes that constitute the main residential part of Oxford. On my runs through the neighborhood, I can't recall noticing any house that wasn't tastefully refurbished to its original state or any new house that didn't blend and complement all the others. Very charming, very clean, very inviting to reside in. For a short period, during the mid-1800's, Oxford was the home of the Maryland Military Academy, and the commandant's house still stands in all its majesty mid-way on Morris Street next to the park. At the end of the Strand is the entrance to Town Creek where a half dozen marinas/boat yards are located. During the late 1800's and into the first quarter-plus of the 1900's, Oxford had several yards that housed renown boat builders. There's still a couple of highly respectable yards that do excellent restoration work on wooden boats in the area.

We spent our first night in Oxford tied-up at Crockett's Boat Yard about a third of the way up Town Creek. Al and Sue Martens, the couple we first met in Chestertown and who we have remet in St. Michaels, were also in Oxford, docked further up at a private residence which they had told us about earlier. No sooner had we secured Countess to a skimpy little pier out just about to the end of the yard's transient section than Al and Sue came putting over in their dink to inform us about the incredible deal they had at this private dock, and that there was room enough for us too.

Before committing to the vacancy, we took a bike ride over to scope out the situation. There were already two other sizable boats besides the Martens' 42' Krogen moored there. One boat, a fifty-plus footer...sorta' Hatteras-looking, was owned by a very personable Walt Everson, a retired professional pilot who used to ferry planes over to South Africa during WW II. Walt's been doing the seasonal ICW circuit from the Chesapeake to his condo in Key Largo for at least the past 25 years, an admirable undertaking considering he's now 86 years old. The other vessel on the dock was a beautiful custom-built 52' double-ender designed by Sparkman Stevens and personally built and owned by Dale and Kaye Denning, who also owned the dock and the small, two-story house at the end of it. The Dennings also do the seasonal back-and-forth trek (20 round-trips thus far) from Oxford to their winter home in Marathon on Boot Key. Anyway, everything checked out much to our liking...especially the rent: fifty cents/foot, water and electricity included. And because we were staying over a week, Dale gave us an additional break so our rent was reduced to $12 a day. Unbelievable! Ironically, right next to the Dennings is John Shannahan's Grand Banks dealership where daily we would watch a couple of new GB's being commissioned, and numerous other currently owned GB's of various lengths pull-in for service. We were definitely had something in common with Oxford.

Around nine the next morning we left Crockett's marina and proceeded up the creek with ample six to seven foot depths courting us all the way to Denning's dock. Easing past the Martens' boat, we carefully worked our way next to the dock's side and tied-up for what would turn out to be one of our most enjoyable and memorable long-term stays in the Chesapeake. What made it even better were our new landlords, we couldn't have asked for a more gracious and interesting couple to rent from. They were the greatest: soft-spoken, genteel and conservative to the core---Dale and I often would discuss domestic and foreign affairs and comment on articles we had read in the Wall St. Journal. Dale is a retired mechanical engineer and Kay, a renown designer/manufacturer of fine ceramic jewelry. Together, the Dennings treated us like family right from the start. And just about very morning Kay would stop by and unload fresh produce from their organic garden which is on a little 5-acre plot just on the outskirts of town. They are ardently into organic farming and cultivate their produce with a great deal of energy and will. In fact, near the end of our stay I believe I ate more fresh figs than I had in all my previous years. Dale also was the designer and builder of the Oxford dinghy, exceptional 8 and 10-foot sailing/rowing tenders. Unfortunately, he sold the business several years ago, and I not quite sure if the new owner/builder is still in business. What a great dink to have. According to Small Boat Journal, the Oxford dinghy is one of only two of the best sailing/rowing tenders made---the other being a Trinka which has a solid reputation as a fine sailing dink.

A couple of days after we arrived in Oxford, the Farleys pulled anchor and headed across the Bay to Solomons, then up the Potomac to DC to visit Jerry's brother. We agreed to try to rendezvous in Crisfield later in September, this being late August. Al and Sue departed the next day also on their way to Solomons and then also up to DC for the month of September. We eventually linked-up with them at Solomons in early October during TrawlerFest.

While in Oxford we rented a car on several occasions to travel about ten miles to Easton for some serious shopping. A couple of times we actually drove to the big mall in Annapolis which was only about 45-minutes away from Oxford. And one time we drove over to Cambridge to visit with Chance's cousin John Edelen and his wife, Lockette, who own and operate a lumber business there.

During our stay we got to thinking about one of those small DSS satellite dishes and checked on a unit at a video store recommended by Dale Denning. Everything sounded good, the price was certainly palatable---with the installation rebate, the system came to a hundred bucks. We splurged and soon I found myself creating a pedestal mount on the flybridge to carry the dish. Now instead of constantly repositioning our rabbit ears, we suddenly, at the flick of a finger, have a whole slug of channels to choose from. Thus life on board has now become a little more complicated. Decisions, decisions, decisions! We can even get the news and weather from the ABC affiliate in Seattle.

After spending nearly four delightful weeks in Oxford it was time to move on. The Marine Traders Owners Association was about to begin in Crisfield, and being members---MTOA has lots of members who own boats other than Marine Traders, we wanted to attend the free instructional seminars that cover everything from valve adjusting and getting the most out of your 12-volt electrical system to first aid classes, GPS and autopilot systems. There's even a hands-on session on boat handling for the women which proved to be a very popular seminar.

We covered 78 statute miles on our trip to Crisfield. High overcast skies, some sun and no wind provided a comfortable cruise allowing us to let our auto-pilot guide Countess most of the way past the few waypoints we previously had plugged into the GPS system. Cutting through Hooper Pass meant turning off the auto pilot and paying closer attention to the steerage as the route would take us out of the Bay proper and into Tangiers Sound and through some shallow water. Once clear of the pass, we turned south and went back on auto for a pleasant hour and a half run before arriving at the multiple dog-legged channel leading into Sommer's Cove at Crisfield.

Crisfield is definitely a waterman's town---waterman being the given name to the Chesapeake's professional fishermen and crabbers. It's not a particularly large town, if any thing it's probably losing rather than gaining in population due to the gradual decline of the small guy in a big-time seafood industry. There's just one main road coming in from the east, splitting the town's commercial core and dead-ending at the wharf area where a sizable crabbing fleet resides. Crisfield hangs it's 'oil skins' on its reputation as "Crab Capital of the World". We feel they deserve the crown. Perhaps the best crab cakes we've ever had were served up here.

The MTOA rendezvous lasted five days and was very well attended. During our time there we met some excellent cruising folks. Ron and Sally Huhn aboard "Serendipity" stick in my mind the most. That's probably because Sally has a computerized embroidery set-up onboard, and while we were in port with them she took the time to embroider several of our polo shirts with conch shell, sea turtle and dolphin designs along with our boat's name. Plus they had two of the biggest cruz'n-cats (Toby and Max) I can ever recall seeing on a boat. Ron is a retired engineer and they live and keep their boat in Melbourne, Florida. We stopped by for a quick visit on our way down to Naples in the Fall, and Sally handed us a new 'Toad' burgee au gratis. What grand people. We also were reunited with several other couples we had previously met on our trip north to the Chesapeake like Martin and Betsy Basch aboard their 40' Willard, "Serenity". We met them and the Wysers six months earlier at Jekyl Island, Georgia. Fortunately, our good buddies, the Farleys, managed to time it right by getting out of DC, down the Potomac and over to Crisfield's Sommer's Cove by the time we arrived. There they were securely anchored as we chugged into the harbor. So for the time we were in Crisfield we had good friends to bike around the area and enjoy lots of grits and giggles with.

Through the Farleys we met Larry and Jo Ann Ryon on 'Lagniappe', a 40-something foot Morgan sailboat. They're both teachers (Larry's a prof and school administrator) from Corpus Cristi, Texas, and were getting ready to do a return trip home. One day Jo Ann drove the Farleys and us for a trip into Salsbury for a bit of shopping at Sam's Club. We had previously learned from the Martens about cutting dramatically our phone bills with a Sam's Club phone card, and our mission this trip was to get a couple of them. These cards we now use religiously for all our long distance calls. The calls are prepaid when you buy the card which pencils out to be only 17 cents a minute. You can buy the card in 100 or 500-unit increments...a unit equaling a minute, of course. Everytime you use the card (it's an 800-number access), a recording will give you your balance remaining. And if need be, you can 'recharge' the card by charging either 100 or 500 units to you credit card at the same cost as when you initially bought it. For 500 minutes it's $85, and that's a lot of phone time. It's really a great deal and well worth the effort when doing extended cruising. For that matter, perhaps it's even a better deal than what you're getting at home.

Just prior to the MTOA function ending, a cold front passed through delivering 55-mph winds and brief heavy rains. A couple of cruisers lost some canvas like ripped bimini tops, but overall, everyone escaped any major damage. Sure had people scrambling that evening. Chance was temporarily in the doldrums with a touch of the flu so we decided to layover an extra couple of days until she regained her strength before heading across the to the west side of the Chesapeake and Solomons Island.

With Chance on the mend, we decided to gobble-up the better part of a day by taking the tour ferry to Tangiers Island. So one sunny, warm day we loaded our bikes onto the ferry, and spent the next. hour-fifteen minutes under clear skies and balmy temps with not much more to look at than a sliver of an island with a rather impressive hunting lodge on it. I believe the captain of the ferry mentioned that the owner had built the lodge many years ago and over time he slowly stopped using it. In the end, he donated it to the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Foundation.

Entering the eastern harbor of Tangiers Island we passed a series of connected piers and docks linking quite a number of waterman crab/oyster shacks together. Nets and crab traps accented with colored buoys and miscellaneous boat and engine parts left little doubt that this small island-bound community's economy relied almost entirely on the commercial harvesting of crab, oysters clams, and a variety of food fish. Obviously the two tour boat trips per day bringing tourists to this quaint community augmented the local's income. Evidently its a very close-knit collection of families many of whom can trace their roots and names directly back to the island's original inhabitants.

Tangiers Island was settled in 1813 by John Crockett and his sons. The Crockett and Pruitt names and descendants still survive as do a slug of their ancestor's headstones which occupy several plots scattered throughout the island. I'm convinced that there are more marked graves than people on this island. Graveyards/sites are numerous and in the most unusual places such as backyards and little open spaces not more than 12 x 20-feet in size which abruptly appear between two houses and hold maybe four to six plots. A couple of the sites were just vacant with headstones neatly stacked against one portion of a knee-high, white picket fence that bordered the site's sides and the sidewalk it fronted. Naturally there's a couple of well-established graveyards, the main one located on the grounds of the town's rather large, white-washed church. The other containing even more graves is just across the street on a residential-sized lot. But there's no vacancy there either. It became apparent that if anyone were to check-out now, there'd be no room at the inn. I suppose the community would either have to start building burial tiers over existing sites or simply deport their family and friends to the mainland for planting. Any open space remaining on Tangiers is established tidal and marsh lands and not conducive for burial. It's obvious were no planning boards on the island. Building and population growth simply outstripped gravesite availability. I guess the islanders didn't figure on so many staying on island...in one fashion or the other. I suppose this situation speaks well of just how close-knit this community has been for over the past couple of centuries. In fact, the population, who are reportedly very devout Christians and teetotalers to boot, remains so removed from the mainland that they actually have retained a quasi, dialectical speech which dates back to when the island was first settled. It sounds similar to what you'd expect was spoken during the Elizabethan times---understandable, yet noticeably different. There's one continuous road about the size of a double-lane sidewalk encircling the island and several bowling alley-wide, cris-crossing paved streets that'll take you past overgrown, rickety old fences separating the streets from the old clap-board houses and yards. Part of the tour included a hot, boarding house-style lunch ranging from crab cakes (of course) and sliced ham to potato salad, pickled beets, cold slaw, freshly baked bread, ecetera. Anyway, there was a lot of food for the price, and it was pretty darn tasty.

After few days passing, Chance had regained her spunky composure, and we decided now was the time to bring in our lines and head over to Solomons in order to be there ahead of the crowds and the beginning of the much-touted, West Marine-sponsored TrawlerFest. A cold front was due to quickly pass through the region by late afternoon and marine reports said winds northeast 10-15 kts, seas one to two feet. No biggy. And it seemed that way as we followed the channel markers, zigzagging our way away from town all the time paralleling the narrow strip of land which extended westward from the harbor's entrance and shielded us from the blow coming down Tangiers Sound. Things dramatically changed once we left the protection of that little piece of real estate and rounded red marker #8 to head north. Our light choppy seas instantly changed attitude and became sizable three to four foot steep, closely spaced waves letting us know in no uncertain terms that we were in for a long, long uncomfortable ride. This promised to be one of those three-wiper days should we continue this passage. It didn't take long to convince us, after several slam-dunks, that desecration was the better part of valor. We quickly pulled a timed 'bout-face' between a cresting wave and following trough and headed back from whence we came. Back to Crisfield. Back to the crab capital of the world. Back to another three days of waiting out an annoying northerly blow and for the seas to settle. Finally on September 27 we had another shot at breaking away from Crisfield's claw hold. Enough crab already!

After going back-and-forth on whether or not to depart until we almost became lock-jawed in verbal procrastination, we decided to do the 46 miles now rather than wait for another impending front to pass through. It was a little lumpy up Tangiers Sound to Kedges Strait, but once into the straits and out into the more open, deeper waters of the Chesapeake, our ride became more comfortable with just a bit of a rock and roll from a 15- kt northeasterly wind. It took just under five hours to complete the trip having been slowed by several sailboaters whose course intentions were in question, not only by us, but I suspect by themselves also. We finally managed to clear their "which way do we go" decisions and without giving them a rude wake to also think about, proceeded on past to Hog Light and towards the 'Flats' just outside Solomons' harbor entrance. Once again we tied-up to outside of the Solomons Island Yacht Club's dock for the evening. Staying temporarily here gave us a chance to price-out other moorages even though we were holding reservations at the Holiday Inn's docks for the following day. The Holiday, at the very end of Back Creek, would be hosting the TrawlerFest activities, but they weren't giving any breaks to the cruiser attendees. We came across a better moorage rate (.43/ foot, power included) at the Comfort Inn's Beacon Marina just behind the maritime museum's grounds and only a short half mile bike ride away from the Holiday. Guess where we docked!

The week prior to all the happenings scheduled once TrawlerFest kicked-off, allowed us an opportunity to putter around Solomons at our pace with no other obligations than a morning jog, cocktail hour and meals. There's a used book store, The Lazy Moon, where I spent many hours browsing through a fairly good collection of maritime books eventually purchasing three out-of-print or first editions: Wallis' discovery of Tahiti, a very in-depth account of the Bounty Mutiny and a thick biography on Horatio Nelson. Even found a book on organic growing of herbs for health which I fired-off to Kaye and Dale Denning who by that time were on their way from Oxford back to Marathon. Between the books I found and my collection of Patrick O'Brian novels, I have enough reading to take me well into next year! I also spent some time revisiting Solomons' maritime museum where I never fail to notice or learn something new each time. Great place. Even rented a car one day and drove up to Alexandria to have dinner with my cousin Carol Ann again. The weather was outstanding with non-stop sun and siesta-inducing temps in the mid-seventies. Weather like this allowed us to really clean Countess, rid her teak decks of a couple of months worth of grim and rewax some surfaces that are prone to oxidizing.

TrawlerFest was quickly approaching, and there was a noticeable increase in trawlers of various makes and design showing up in Back Creek. Surprisingly, there were also quite a few sailboats coming in for the Fest also. There's good anchoring with generous swinging room and a short dink's trip to the Holiday at the end of Back Creek and many of the attendees took advantage this. This time was also beginning to be like old home week at our dock. First Dave and Maria Russell, who we met at the Capitol Yacht Club in DC back in July, and their two kids, Kate and DJ pulled into "T" adjacent to us with "Discovery," their 40-ft Californian. Kate's 24-foot Bristol sailboat "Miss Kate" docked just two slips down from her parents. If you recall, I mentioned that Maria heads up the Women Aboard organization, and the powers behind TrawlerFest regard this organization so highly that they invited Maria to put together a panel and conduct a couple of seminars on extended cruising and living aboard. Chance was one of the panel members and did a great job of talking about some concerns such as communications, vessel prep and finances to make extended cruising a reality. The sessions proved to be two of the most popular for the week. As a side note, with the Women Aboard so strongly represented by attending members, it was only appropriate to launch the initial, and not-so-formal beginnings of the flip-side of the organization. Thus the "Sea Cocks" were created complete with our own official uniform---T-shirts screened on the back with an outstanding graphic of the cartoon character, Foghorn, the pompous, Southern boss-rooster standing behind a spoked-wheel and wearing his captain's hat.

More friends started ambling down our dock. The Caywoods, Tom and Ann, who we met almost a year ago in Kemah, Texas, and who had generously provided us with tons of information on cruising the ICW, drove into town from Louisiana where they left their 42' Present, "Manana" at the same marina we stayed fogged-in at in Slidel last December. Once more our wakes crossed with Al and Sue Martens when they pulled in at the Krogen dealership across the creek from us. And the Wysers, Chip and Barbara and their cat Bonnie, AKA the B-Cat, who we met last spring at Jekyll Island, cruised down from their home in Newburyport, Massachusetts aboard "Freestyle", their classic New England-style lobster boat. And finally, a couple we had met in Naples last February, Lou and Pam Vandenbosch from Dearborn, MI who take their 30+ foot catamaran, "Polecat" throughout the Florida waters while their friends up north shovel snow, dropped by to spend the day with us.

TrawlerFest was unquestionably a success bringing together an outstanding mix of cruising enthusiasts from all over North America for four days of great seminars, informative exchanges on passages, anchorages, ideas, etc., dinners under the big tent and lots of laughs. It was camaraderie at its finest level. Even had a respectable turnout of 'blow-boaters' (sailors) who mostly seemed interested in making the move from sail to power, and were there collecting information and touring a number of the trawlers that several brokerages had brought in for display. I would say that about 85% of the trawlers owners we currently know were at one time sailboaters. It seems to be the most logical transition for continued cruising with dignity.

It's October 12 and TrawlerFest has ended. Just about everyone was making ready to head south ahead of early Fall chills. Temps were becoming noticeably cooler. During the last half of September and the first two weeks of October the majority of boaters begin vacating the Chesapeake for to the warmer climes of Florida, the Keys and ports in the Bahamas. About this time the annual Annapolis boat show takes place and ends around mid-October. Cruisers want to put as much distance as possible between them and the huge sportfishing boats that begin powering their way south in droves for the Fort Lauderdale boat show immediately after the Annapolis show ends. Each of the vessels has the ability to create its own set of pounding mini-tidal waves as they come racing up behind us slower boaters. Naturally, we cordially pull-back on the throttles in hopes that these behemoth wave-makers will pass with some civility (slower speeds). Some do, some don't. When one of these yahoos ignores this unwritten rule of decent seamanship, generally the thrashed boat will quickly get on the radio and warn all the other boaters ahead of him of the impending arrival of this jerk. Naturally the Coast Guard monitors the channel (16) and with any luck will nab the culprit. That alert will more than likely follow that wave-maker all the way down the ICW. On some occasions, much to the delight of us trawler-crawlers, bridgetenders will hold their bridge opening causing the sportfishers to go into a holding pattern until us slower boats who had been rocked earlier by these speed merchants show up. Short, but sweet revenge.

Anyway, it was time to part company and say aloha to all our old and new cruising buddies. Several we would see again in the various ports and anchorages along the way as we churned familiar waters going south. Chip and Barbara Wyser with "Freestyle" were going to head out the same time we were, and had the same plans to make it to the gulf side of Florida as we did so traveling in tandem was a welcomed change from all the soloing we had done in the past. Together we left Solomons the following morning at 0812 under sunny skies and a southeast 10-knot wind. Our destination was Fishing Bay, a nice anchorage just off the Piankatank River on the opposite side from Deltaville. We chalked-up 68 miles and arrived at Fishing Bay at 1530 hrs. dropping our hook at a16-foot depth and paying out a 3-to-1 scope of chain. Plenty of swinging room even with more cruisers showing up as the day wore on. That evening Chip dinked over and picked us up to have dinner on Freestyle. What service, what hospitality, what a meal!

Our original plan was to try the Dismal Swamp as an alternate route once past Norfork. This 22-mile manmade canal had its beginnings back in 1764, and is considered by many cruisers to be one of the highlights of the Virginia portion of the ICW. When we came north we elected to go the Virginia Cut route across Corrituck Sound thinking that on the way back down, the Dismal Swamp would be our choice of passage. However, things don't necessarily follow set plans. Due the incredible drought the Chesapeake Bay region was experiencing this summer, the Dismal Swamp didn't have enough water to make passage safe so the Corps of Engineers had it closed when we came by. There was no other choice but to replay the route we did coming up. Hopefully there'll be next time, and we will do this canal. The general consensus now was to just gut it out and log some fairly hefty miles to stay ahead of the chilly weather which now was beginning to keep us from wearing our normal cruising uniforms---T-shirts and shorts.

The following day's trek was one of distance, good weather, impeccable timing and lots of luck. At 0710 the next morning, anchors cleaned and stowed, we retraced our previous day's path marker-by-marker out from Fishing Bay and into the Bay's main channel all the while sipping tepid cappuccinos on the bridge and watching one of those brilliant postcard sunrises greet us face-on. Today's passage seemed to drag on forever eventually proving to be a long nine hour,72-mile passage. As we approached Hampton Roads and Norfolk at 1300 we decided not to anchor off Hospital Point right off of Portsmith and across from Norfolk, but to continue on up the Elizabeth River in hopes of clearing all five bridges and one lock to finally tie-up at Atlantic Yacht Basin. This proved to be a very anxious 12-mile run. Three of the bridges closed for the late afternoon business traffic between1530 to 1700 hours, and the last bridge just before the locks would not open between 1600 to 1800 hours. After approaching the first bridge, a railroad one, which was closed for an approaching train, we had to tred water for about thirty minutes. The clock began to tick louder. By then four more trawlers had caught up to the Wysers and us and became part of our little fleet. After this initial frustrating delay, our luck turned for the better. Each bridge we came to would open just about on our arrival, and there was a guarded thought that...hey, we just might go all the way. I think we all went into a holding pattern only once more and that was an agonizing 15 to 20 minute delay while the bridgetender held for a slow-approaching sailboat coming from the other direction. Helping our cause, or so we thought, was a commercial tow we had caught up with about midway up the river. They have the clout for openings if the bridges are under those two-hour restricted traffic times. We thought we had it made from that time on. Not. We lost the tow (it had to turn off to a small industrial dock) with two bridges and the locks yet to go. Defying all doubts, we were actually doing pretty good on the time, and had minutes to spare by the time we arrived at the last bridge. Once past the bridge, it was just the lock and we'd be home free to tie-up at Atlantic Yacht Basin. The lockmaster had already been alerted to our mini-flotilla from one or two of the bridgetenders back down river so the locks were holding their gates open waiting our entry which went without a hitch. Because it's impossible to make a reservation at Atlantic Yacht Basin---no one ever answers the radio, you just show up and hope to hell there's space, we still weren't sure where we were going to spend the night. Once clear of the locks, we immediately began searching the marina's super long dock, which stretches for at least 100 yards along the river's western bank, in hopes of finding a couple of openings. Fortunately for both the Wysers and us, we managed to squeeze into a couple of spots at either end of that dock with at least a dozen other boats between us.

We now set our trek south, having spent an extra two days at the yacht basin waiting out a passing cold front and some really wet, lousy weather accompanied with strong northeast winds. These fronts were starting to get a rhythm....setting-up and rapidly passing through every couple of days. Northern Lights (the Martens) had tied-up our last night at Atlantic Yacht Basin, and we decided to buddy-boat with them the next day to Coinjock some 36 miles further south putting us within an hour's reach of crossing the often unruly and rough Abermarle Sound. Chip and Barbara needed to hold-over an extra day or two while the yard repaired Freetstyle's crimped working boom. We wanted to get Corrituck Sound's somewhat frustrating, singularly marked channel which double dog-legs across a mostly exposed large and shallow body of water behind us so we elected to press on to the Midway Marina in Coinjock, North Carolina on the other side of Corrituck Sound. This would be where we'd wait for the Wysers to catch-up and sit out the next salvo of cold fronts due in that evening. We wanted to make darn sure we had good weather conditions when we crossed the Abermarle.

While Chance and I are waiting for the Wyers to catch-up to us at Coinjock,I think this is a good time to end this segment of our cruising log, it's long enough and would just get too tedious to read I tagged on the rest of our passage south to Naples and Marathon in the Florida Keys. So until the I finish writing the next segment to our growing log, may you all have calm seas and clear skies.