Chestertown. 74/45, sunny, WNW10-15
Morning mist, coffee, watercolors, ukelele, and sailing Agility. Perfectly beautiful day. Ashore: pumpkin spice muffin, Decoy Museum, lunch on a bench, meeting new friends and old, tall ships, and bluegrass! Evening: Dinner aboard and, wrapped in a blanket in the cockpit, fireworks!
67/56, sun & clouds, S5
Another beautiful, serene day. We took our time getting underway this morning, doing a last load of laundry and enjoying the marina coffee. I even showered again, luxuriating in the hot water running through my hair. I can bathe on Grace, but my hair's long and it's too much trouble to try to wash it in the sink.
Underway, we'd motored to just above Comeagy's Bight when a little breeze filled in. Yay! We sailed the rest of the way to Chestertown. As we approached the anchorage, Spartina (Steve, and friend Matt) sailed out to greet us. Nice to see them again. There were already about 10 boats anchored! We sniffed out a spot and, on the second dry, got the anchor to set. Feels and sounds like sandy bottom, either loose and deep or loose on top of hard pan. Regardless, we got a good bite and then spent the remainder of the afternoon playing music and taking it all in. It's great to be here!
66/51, partly cloudy, E5
10 days is TOO LONG without washing my hair! Time for a marina stop to shower, do laundry, plug in, and reprovision. Heading toward the Chester River, we caught the 8:30am bridge opening at Kent Narrows and then sailed, beating in light wind against an ebb tide (can you feel the pain?), until the wind gave out off Queenstown. Kalmar Nyckle and Lady Maryland were anchored nearby. From there, we motored up to Lankford Bay Marina. I borrowed the courtesy van and drove in to Rock Hall to shop at Bayside Market. Cheers to Rock Hall for maintaining a REAL store (selling necessaries) on Main Street. There's also a fantastic little joint - That Place On Main - that helped me satisfy a pizza craving. Back home on Grace, Dobbs was working through the mound of laundry. We shared the pizza, showered (huzzah!), and then enjoyed a little ukelele practice (me) and some quiet time reading.
66/49, sunny, N5-10
From anchor in Marshy Creek, Dobbs rowed us to and from the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center (twice). We walked every trail and enjoyed birdwatching and being in land-based nature (smell of pine straw, crunch of fallen leaves underfoot, long views across mash). Late afternoon, several diamondback terrapins were swimming near Grace.
67/51, sun & clouds, W5
Foggy morning. We left Oxford around 9am and were delighted to find a bit more than 5 knots of wind out on the Choptank - enough to carry us, beating, to Knapps Narrows before 2pm. We proceeded through and headed north. Light air nudged Grace up into Eastern Bay, and then we motored the remaining 7 or so miles to Marshy Creek. It's a pretty spot - fairly surrounded by marsh, the condos distant and ignorable (the road noise not so much). The last two nights, the rise of the full moon just after sunset, when the sky is still washed rosy purple, has been breath-taking.
67/51, sunny, NE5
We launched our dinghy Agility and Dobbs rowed us to the town dinghy dock for a morning walk and, again later, to see the Tred Avon Players perform "Ravenscroft". The play was excellent!
64/46, sunny, NE5-10
The nor'easter has moved on, taking the wind with it, but leaving us with sunny, blue sky days. As soon as the sun climbed above the trees to the east, the air and Grace warmed nicely. I used the morning dew to chamois the topsides, wiping away the salt crust of beating to weather the other day. By 11am, I was sitting in the cockpit barefoot, practicing ukelele. A good Fall day, indeed. After lunch, we motored east to Oxford, got fuel and water, and anchored in Town Creek. We're here to see a play tomorrow, "Ravenscroft", staged by the Tred Avon Players.
64/43, sunny, NE15-20 w/gusts to 25
We visited the Richardson Museum in the morning before leaving Cambridge. "Mr. Jim" Richardson seems like someone we would have liked to know - I'm glad he shared his passion with others.
Out on the water, in wind that had eased to 10 with gusts to 25, a broad reach became a beam reach, then a close-haul as we sailed toward San Domingo Creek. The afternoon sun felt warm - off came socks, long underwear, fleece, and flannel. We anchored in San Domingo Creek around 5:30pm.
66/50, sunny, N10-15 w/gusts to 25
We enjoyed a downwind sail for all 16 miles from Grace Creek to Cambridge. Too easy! Tied up on the 24-hour free wall.
I've been sick since Friday and didn't feel like going sailing, but did feel up to a little exploration by motor. We went over to and up adjacent Broad Creek, to the ruins of a wooden railroad trestle - a remnant of the Baltimore & Eastern Shore Railroad. Bonus: we spied a bugeye half sunk at a dock. Sadly, she's the Katherine M Edwards, launched in just 2007. She was built by two accomplished older gentlemen, one the homeowner and a former log canoe captain and builder, as a private project. The other died a year ago. What happened to this dream?