MARYLAND - ST MICHAELS, HERRING BAY, SOLOMONS ISLAND

He Said:  How is everybody??  All is going just fine.  We departed as we had planned on Tuesday, October 1 from Annapolis.  It is always nice to travel to new and exciting towns.  We fueled up, pumped out, and hit the water at about 9AM.  Of course having Ray shove us off made our departure a piece of cake.  We were very excited about our diesel usage, we got about 2.2 MPG.  For people who have never fueled up a 740HP, 28,000 lb. boat it made us happy, believe it or not. 

Our trip to St. Michaels was very much on target, about 3 hours or so and about 30/35 miles.  We arrived there in time for lunch.  We love getting to port on the early side and not have to deal with changing conditions as the day goes along and of course dark, especially with our shorter days coming up.  We backed into our space with no problem and spent 2 nites in St. Michaels.  We loved this little town.  Everything was all of about 5 minutes from the boat on foot.  We love this when we are wheel-less, this is terrific.  We found a few cool little happy hours, and landed ourselves in a cute little Irish Pub called Blackthorn.  They had quarter oysters on the half shell.  I didn’t even know if I liked them, but how in the hell do you say no to a quarter??  A hand full of quarters later and a few bucks later we were enjoying an appetizer and hanging out with the owner dude.  They also sucked me in with $2.50 Bud Lite cans - you got that right, sort of like being in heaven.  The next nite we came back for seconds, and the special was fifty cent wings - can’t beat that!

 

St Michaels - view from MTB
 

We left the following morning but enjoyed our little town very much.  Now we are heading across the Chesapeake to Herring Bay which was also very cool.  Another 3 to 4 hour day and all went great in the water - a slight wind and hardly no waves to deal with.  We still feel like beginners after 5 months and really enjoy calm weather.  We only spent 1 nite in Herring Bay and of course found 2 little cool bars on the water.  We took the dingy over for Happy Hour -  2 buck tacos and 2 buck beers.  We had a great evening.  It is so very cool to pull the boat up to the dock and hop on the bar stool about 20 feet away.  Of course you also hope to not fall in the water when exiting the boat, especially upon departure after a few cold ones and with the dark evening setting in.
 

Jack arriving at Skipper's Pier by dinghy for Taco Thursday
 

We left Herring Bay the next morning and traveled about 40 or so miles to Solomon Islands. We spent 2 nites on a mooring ball and loved it.  It’s pretty cool to not have neighbors and have the dingy dock about 100 yards away.  Once again a very cool town, but it was about 1.5 miles down the road.  We rented bikes on Sat. so one of us could search for a pub that stayed open later than 10PM.  The Buckeye/Northwestern kick-off was 8 here in the East.  We found The Tiki Bar.  They told me they normally stay open until mid-nite as long as they have customers at the bar.  They had 2 at least - actually they probably had a good 100 people hanging.  Only a few Buckeye Fans, but I am OK with that.  Earlier in the day their Maryland Terps  took a 63-0 whipping from the Seminoles, so they could give a shit about OSU.  We did win by 10 and covered the point spread on the crazy last play of the game. I heard that goofy fumble in the end zone that we recovered turned Vegas upside down by approx. 4 million bucks.  Oh well, we were just happy to get a W.  We got back to the boat about 1AM following the game after about a 30 minute walk.  Maybe if I walked straighter it may have only taken 20 minutes.

Inside the Tiki Bar where we watched the Buckeyes defeat the Wildcats!
 

Our game plan is to head out of the Solomons on Monday morning and head to Deltaville where we will once again try and have the anchor system repaired.  This will be the 4^th time so wish us luck -  we must need it.  Once is Deltaville we will only have about 50 miles left of the trip down the Chesapeake.  Hope to arrive in Norfolk by mid week depending on the anchor and weather conditions.  Then we’re on to the Intra-Coastal.

That’s it for now.

Take Care, Jack

 

She Said:  We’ve had a great week.  Traveling the Chesapeake has been a lot of fun. 

We pulled out of our slip in Annapolis, went to the fuel dock (fuel economy down to 1.6MPG), then hit the Chesapeake.  It’s amazing how easy it was and how comfortable we were getting underway.  We have really come a long way.  We couldn’t have had a better day on the water.  The temps were great, the water and winds calm.  Our destination was St. Michaels.  It’s across the Bay from Annapolis, then up the Eastern River.  A lot of the cruising on the Chesapeake involves detouring up a variety of rivers.  While enroute we got a text from our bank about possible fraudulent use of Jack’s credit card.  While we were cruising we were able to stop his card and arrange to have a new card sent overnight to the marina in St. Michaels.  It’s hard to believe that all of that was accomplished while we were at sea. When we were about an hour outside of St. Michaels we called ahead to confirm our arrival and get our docking instructions.  It was to be a stern-in/port tie-up.  Jack had an hour to agonize over the stern-in docking; I had more than enough time to setup my lines and fenders for the port tie-up.  I don’t want to get too full of ourselves, but we came in like experienced boaters.  (I hope that doesn’t jinx our future dockings.)

 

 

The town of St. Michaels was a short 2 block walk from the dock.   What a cute town.  Everything (including the grocery store) was an easy walk.  Great stores, bars and restaurants – a really cute town.  This quickly moved into one of our top five stops.  It was the opening day of oyster season and the Blackthorn Irish Pub was featuring local oysters on the half shell for 25 cents each.  I’m not a fan of raw oysters and Jack had never tried them.  He surprised me when he tried one.  I was even more surprised when he liked it.  We decided to come back for happy hour and dinner.  We enjoyed the food, drinks and boaters we met – it was a fun night.  We went back the next night for 50 cent wings with our dock neighbors – a couple who started their trip on Lake Michigan and were heading to their home in Ft. Lauderdale.  We got a call from our friends – Courageous Couple – saying that they planned to be in the Chesapeake in a few days and planned to meet up with them.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work out, but we hope to get together somewhere along the ICW.   

 

St Michaels
 

Our next stop was Herring Bay (the nearest city is Deale, MD).  It was back across the Bay not too far south of Annapolis.  We had another pleasant cruising day.  We were pleasantly surprised upon our arrival.  Not only was it an easy arrival, but the area had a lot of activity.  We put the dinghy in the water and cruised the marinas.  We found a fun restaurant, Skipper’s Pier, which was having Taco Thursday.  Since we’ve only had Mexican food once since leaving Phoenix, Skipper’s was high on my list.  We checked out the Tiki Bar and found out that they were having $1.50 drafts, so that was on Jack’s list.  We went back to MTB, settled in, and got dressed for another big night out.  We took the dinghy to Skipper’s – that food and patrons were great.  We took the dinghy home and walked to the Tiki Bar for a $1.50 night cap. 

 

Skipper's Pier - Dinner by dinghy in Herring Bay.
 

 

We got up early the next morning for a 40 mile trip (which is about a 5 hour trip for us) to Solomons Island.  It was another beautiful day on the Bay.  We’ve gotten so comfortable with the boat that we move around while we’re underway.  Upon arrival in Solomons Island we were greeted by several Naval fighter planes running test missions.  There’s a huge military population in the area.  All four branches of the military are working on an aircraft here that will hover.  There’s also an area in the Bay that’s set aside as a target area – we will be sure to stay far away from there when we leave Solomons Island.   

 

This was the first marina we’ve found since leaving New York that has mooring balls.  We hooked up on a large ball waiting for a medium sized one to become available.  When the smaller one finally became available we quickly moved to it.  We used to worry about catching a mooring ball, and now we don’t think twice about moving between balls.  We forgot how much we enjoyed being on the ball.  The only thing that we don’t like about the ball is that we don’t have power.  We have the generator, but it’s just not the same.  As we go forward, we plan to split our time between anchoring and being in a slip. 

Zahnizer’s Marina in Solomons Island was a great place – it even had a big swimming pool with an outdoor restaurant/bar, but it closed Labor Day weekend.  We caught a ride into town Friday night and had a very nice dinner at Stoney’s Kingfisher right on the water.  Back in Phoenix this would have been a special night out – we sat at a regular table and there wasn’t a visible TV.  But being on the boat alone together 24/7, I now prefer sitting in the bar area of restaurants – it’s much more social.   

 

Sunset on the Patuxent River - Solomons Islands

 

 

We grabbed a couple of bicycles the next day and rode all over town.  It’s a cute town on the Patuxent River, but very spreadout.  The bikes were a great way to see everything.  (I kept both wheels on the pavement the entire time.)  We found a cute bar where Jack could watch the Buckeye game Saturday night.  The game ended around 11:30pm and we had over a mile walk back to MTB so it was a late night for us.  We planned to have a lazy Sunday, get some laundry done, and do some boat chores.  But things don’t always go quite the way we plan.  We checked the weather when we got up and it was changing for the worse.  We decided to leave ASAP for Deltaville.  It took almost an hour to get packed up, fueled up (happy to have 2MPG) and underway.  Good-bye Maryland.  Here we come Virginia. 

Happy birthday to my sister, Donna!