The entire weekend is free—no baseball games, no birthday parties—just you, your family, and some quality time on your boat. What will you do and where? Here are some tips for answering those questions and picking a great weekend cruising spot.
The Chesapeake Bay offers hundreds of great marinas and anchorages. With so many choices, it can be bewildering to choose where to spend your precious few days on the boat. Blindly pointing a finger at a chart and going where it lands may get you to a great spot or may set you hard aground. With chart in hand, pondering a series of questions to narrow your choice of destinations will more likely lead you to happy cruising grounds. With these answers in mind, a session with a local cruising guide will yield some excellent options for places to explore on a weekend cruise.
What does your boat draw?
Taking account of the depth of your keel either opens up or eliminates a whole lot of cruising spots. Our boat draws six-plus feet. That knocks out anything with “narrows” in the name. It still leaves plenty of towns and secluded anchorages all along the Eastern and Western Shores for cruising.
How far are you willing to travel?
Are you looking for a spot to drop the hook at the end of an eight-hour daysail? Or do you prefer a short two-hour sail to a destination? For that matter, would you like to sail the whole time, or is motorsailing or just plain motoring an option? Once you know how long you want to be underway and how fast you think you may go, you can calculate a radius within which you can search for suitable destinations.
What do you want to do when you get there?
Knowing what you want to do once you stop sailing helps determine where you should go, and reading other cruiser’s reviews on Active Captain can fill in some of the details that local cruising guides don’t cover. Some Chesapeake anchorages hop on summer weekends, but calm down tranquilly during the week and off-season. Checking local calendars and spinsheet.com for festivals can also inform your decision.
Once you’ve decided on a list of possible destinations, the conditions of the weekend should decide where you want to go.
Are you meeting friends or traveling alone?
If you are meeting friends for a rendezvous or raftup, any limitations imposed by their boat’s draft or mast height should be taken into account.
Most importantly, what’s the weather forecast?
The predicted wind speed and direction can help you choose the winning destination from among your list of appealing spots. It helps to take account of forecasted wind speed and direction for both your initial and your return trip. If Saturday’s forecast would take you 30 miles in four hours to your destination, but Sunday’s forecast would have you beating your way home slowly in chop, then another spot may have more appeal.
Wind speed and direction also play a key role in determining the smoothness of your anchorage and how many bugs come to visit. If anchoring in spring or fall, try to choose a spot sheltered from the wind without a long fetch for waves to build up. In summer, anchorages somewhat removed from the protection of land can catch more breeze and fewer mosquitoes. Fortunately, the Chesapeake has many deep, winding, sheltered creeks and inviting bays. Think about the potential for thunderstorms and how that could affect your anchorage. Have an exit plan in mind while you anchor in case you drag during the night and have to react quickly to avoid running aground or hitting another boat.
What’s your back-up plan?
Finally, consider where you will take your boat if your chosen anchorage or marina is full. One time near Solomons, we found all the creeks full and moorings taken after dark. The need for a previously thought-out back-up plan became strikingly clear and has since become part of our thinking process when deciding where to go.
Even though the Chesapeake offers up such beautiful, peaceful, and forgiving cruising, the whims of Mother Nature always trump human aspiration. If you come up with a list of cruising spots you’d like to explore and choose one based on the weekend’s predicted weather, cruising bliss beckons. If you point your finger at a chart, sometimes you’ll win the lottery, and sometimes you’ll end up all wet.
