Annapolis to Longboat Key - October 4, 2009 - Day 1

After much preparation, we finally pulled away from our dock on Spa Creek in Annapolis at 10AM. "Twice Blessed", our 49' Beneteau was finally provisioned for the 24 day trip down to the Florida Keys and then back up the Gulf side of Florida to its new home (and ours as well) in Longboat Key, FL, which is off of Sarasota. It was a bit melancholy as we have had "Twice Blessed" slipped in Spa Creek for the past two years at a super location with a great view of Annapolis.

Vicki is still in Texas helping her daughter, Cassidie, with her first baby, so my brother, Steve, sailed with me as "first mate". He lives in Wilmington, NC. With some luck, the plan is to drop him off as we pass through Wilmington in about a week and pick up Vicki. Steve is at the helm (kindof) in this pic.

Our hope was to make it to Tangier Island, VA before the sunset, but we knew that tides, darkness, and questionable depth into Tangier channel would make this difficult, so we were going to see how things progressed before deciding on an anchorage for the evening.

It was a beautiful sunny day with a good bit of wind. We cleared the Severn River and turned south about 10:25AM, running under both power and sail. Winds were 15-25 knots out of the NW. Our speed across ground (SOG) was almost 10 knots.  

We have a Raymarine E120 chart plotter to plot course and track progress. We are off of the Thomas Point lighthouse in this shot, at the mouth of the South River. 

Winds were brisk until we were down near the Patuxent River. At this point, we were running against the tide with light winds, doing about 8 kts SOG. We dropped sails and headed on under power, arriving off of Point Lookout at the mouth of the Potomac around around 5:15PM. Local sunset is around 6:40pm. Anticipating that our arrival would be after dark, we chose what appeared to be a safe anchorage that we could reach safely after dark. Mill Creek, off of the Great Wicomico River in Reedville, VA looked like the spot. The hope was that the full moon would provide good illumination as we motored into the Great Wicomico around 7:15PM. Unfortunately, things had clouded over, so the chart plotter/GPS would hopefully get us in the last 1.5 miles in the dark. The only concern was snagging a crab pot, but luck was on our side. There were a few other anchor lights nearby, but we dropped anchor around 7:50PM and finally could start thinking about dinner. The trip for the day was about 87 nautical miles.  The anchorage is shown in the pic of the chartplotter to the right.

Steve fired up the grill and cooked a couple of steaks while I whipped up a batch of Kraft Macaroni and a salad. We crashed around 10PM.

Comments

[Leadership Connextions International]

Paul
Hey nice job with the blogsite.
It has a great clean look which is great for what you are doing.
Well done.
Have fun and I'll follow your adventures.
brian