Rick and Rebecca Take Manhattan

The sun is out and the sky is blue. The torrential rain last night made everything damp and soggy, so it is a relief to have dry air once again. We are planning a trip up through Manhattan, but it wouldn’t be much fun in a fog or rainstorm, so the fair weather is doubly welcome. Rick has been studying the Eldridge Tide and Pilot Book and making various calculations. Apparently, Hell Gate, the confluence of various currents at the north end of Manhattan Island, is particularly difficult to get through, so you need to time your entry just right in order to take advantage of the tide-induced current. Last night he thought we would need to leave Sandy Hook at about 10:00, but now he wants to leave as quickly as possible. I’m a little sorry to leave Sandy Hook so quickly - it’s a lovely little spot, and we couldn’t really appreciate it last night when we pulled in because of the rain.

Getting closer and closer to Manhattan, Rick is concerned that the tide does not seem to be with us as expected. Today is Saturday right? The calendar starts to become irrelevant when you’ve been out on the water for a while, but when you need to know the tide schedule you do kind of need to know what day it is.  Rick continues to fuss with his calculations, while I do what I do best these days while the boat is moving – I fall asleep.

When I wake up, we are close enough to see the New York skyline, along with the Statue of Liberty.

 

We have two “captain’s chairs” on the boat – these are foldable foam chairs that will adjust to any angle, like beach lounge chairs, except these have no legs and they won’t scratch the boat. Rick has had one of these chairs for a long time, and I knew if I came along on a long journey we would need two, so I made him buy me another one. These are the most important pieces of equipment on board. The designer of this boat didn’t really take into account the need for comfortable places to sit, but with one of these chairs you can sit anywhere! I’m sure Rick would name a number of things as the most important before even thinking of these chairs; like maybe, oh, the autohelm, or the engine itself, or maybe the sails. But I can tell you that from my point of view, it’s the chairs, without a doubt.

Rick is busy navigating, so I take my chair up to the bow of the boat. I really feel like Cleopatra up here, being transported up the Nile. Peel me a grape, would you? I have never lived in New York, but I’ve certainly visited often enough to have a pretty good idea of the city. I’ve never seen it from this vantage point though; seeing Manhattan from the bow of a sailboat has got to be one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced. The current is strong and along with some pretty big wakes from other boats I get sprayed with river water, but I don’t care. I’m not one for current slang usually, but the word that comes to mind here is “AWESOME”!

 

We head up the East River – you can see the Empire State building, as well as the Chrysler building, the Trump Tower (yes, big D again) and the United Nations headquarters. Rick’s aunt and uncle have an apartment in that building just north of the UN; I have long enjoyed and admired the view of the river from their apartment, but I never dreamed I would be part of this scene myself someday. It’s too bad they aren’t here to witness it; they are up in Maine for the summer, and we will get to see them along with the rest of Rick’s family once we arrive up there.

 

New York has its own Domino Sugar factory, but, as a sign, it doesn’t hold a candle to ours in Baltimore. Maybe I’m biased though…

 

They have a pretty good Pepsi sign though:

 

The river opens up into the Long Island Sound and, with the Manhattan skyline behind us, we head over to Manhasset where we will spend the night. The wind is perfect, and Rick finally gets his sailing fix; we have been motoring for most of the journey from Annapolis, and while we get from point A to point B just fine that way, it’s not really what the boat, or this trip were designed for. There are an astounding number of sailboats out today, and they make for a very pretty scene against the blue of the sky and water. We pass a cute little light house on the way.

 

The anchorage in Manhasset is bustling with boats; it is nice to be in a place where sailing vessels far outnumber the speed boats and cabin cruisers. You would never know that we are only about 20 miles from New York City; it is quite beautiful here. We even get treated to a lovely sunset. What a fantastic day!

The Poseidon Adventure

 Before we started out on this voyage, Rick had promised me that we wouldn’t be doing any overnight, blue water, off-shore sails. The farther out to sea you are, the higher the waves and the harder it is on someone with seasickness. Unfortunately, the next leg of the trip up the New Jersey shore is not particularly interesting, and Rick has often done a 24 hour sail from Cape May up to Sandy Hook when he is on his own. He thinks that I have done so well so far into our trip that it would be worth attempting an overnight, just to get us farther north and into some more interesting sailing grounds. I feel pretty good about the idea – I’ve been surprised at how well I’ve been tolerating being on the water.  We decide to take a day off to enjoy Cape May, and then go for it.

We go ashore, rent bikes and spend the afternoon at the beach. Cape May is almost irresistibly charming with its Victorian architecture and beach resort feel. We have a wonderful seafood dinner at a place called The Lobster House – a restaurant that obviously caters to tourists, but does it extremely well. The place is huge – it serves 600 people at a time, and there’s still a wait of an hour and a half.  Most of the Cape May commercial fishing fleet---a considerable number of big boats---is docked right beside the restaurant so many patrons dine on the dock only a few feet from the vessels that caught their dinner.

The next morning, we head out into the ocean. I am immediately aware that the ride is quite different from what I had become accustomed to this last week. There are of course, the usual waves, perhaps a bit bigger than in either the Chesapeake or the Delaware Bay, but there is also a sort of general swell that keeps a much slower rhythm and is much more sickening. Within an hour I am green about the gills, and wondering what in the world had possessed me to attempt this trip.

At the same time that I’m feeling queasy, Rick discovers that we are taking in water through the engine. Perfect. Really, this just makes my day. He scurries around the boat, opening this and closing that, and then calls his friend Tim who is somewhere north of us on his own voyage. I’m ever-so-happy to overhear Rick telling Tim that he somehow forgot to bring the manual for the engine along, and does he happen to know how it works? Between the two of them, it is somehow decided that taking in a little water is OK (Are you SERIOUS?) and we continue on our way. The wind is up by now, so the engine can be off for awhile anyway.

It’s a funny thing, seasickness. Its cause has something to do with your brain registering the rise/fall motion from your inner ear, and also registering a stationary scene from your eyes. Apparently the discrepancy between the two creates a problem for your brain and you get nauseated.  This is why you really can’t go below into the cabin of the boat if you tend to get seasick; you need to be outside where you can look out at the horizon. Reading is also a problem, or doing anything where you are looking at something small, like sewing or working at your computer.

I finally give in and take a Zofran pill. This is amazing stuff; an anti-nausea medication that you don’t even have to swallow – it will simply dissolve on your tongue. It starts working almost immediately too. My doctor prescribed a limited number of these, and I’m trying to save them for emergencies.  The Zofran obviously helps, but I’m still so much on the edge that I can’t really do ANYTHING except look off into the horizon.

 It turns out that, on top of seasickness, I have another big problem with sailing: boredom! I can do nothing to distract myself from how close to being sick I am.  How am I going to do this for the next 24 hours? Or the next 3 weeks for that matter? Rick takes pity on me and decides that we will have to split up this leg of the trip after all – a stop in Atlantic City and another one at Barnegat Light, and then finally, Sandy Hook. It’s still an eight hour trip to Atlantic City, and I’m holding on, but just barely.

I’ve never been to Atlantic City, and I’m very curious about the casinos there. Both of us are pretty tired when we finally arrive, so we decide to get a good night’s sleep and go in to shore in the morning to check it out. Come morning, we enjoy an incredible heart-attack breakfast at a little café, and then take a shuttle down town. The Trump Taj Mahal (yes, the Donald) has got to be one of the gaudiest of the casinos, so of course we choose that one. The interior is a vast space, lit by endless rows of slot machines, and filled with the acrid stench of stale cigarette smoke and liquor. There are other games as well, like a craps table and electronic roulette wheel, and a few others we didn’t recognize. At this early hour (10:00am), the clientele are mostly women, quite obviously past retirement age, slumped in front of slot machines which they robotically operate without the least hint of any pleasure taken from the activity .

Rick and I are both curious about the slot machines, but we have to enlist the help of a security guard to figure out how to do it. It is somewhat disappointing to me that the old traditional slot machines with the quarters or silver dollars and matching pieces of fruit no longer exist. In their place are machines with big computer screens. You don’t even use real money – you put your cash into a machine that prints out a voucher, and then you use the voucher in the machine. I suppose they want you to have as little attachment to your money as possible so you’ll gamble away more. We started with $5, and quickly lose more than half. Almost just as quickly we get completely bored. I have to say, I don’t really get it. We proudly walk away with $2.

We head out once again, only this time I’ve taken my Zofran ahead of time. I am hoping that taking the pill before I feel sick will make it more effective, but unfortunately I’m pretty much the same as before. One good thing about having to keep your eye on the horizon is that you are constantly scoping the water; I must have seen five different sets of dolphins. They will get surprisingly close to the boat.  At one point the seagulls start to flock together – they seem to be fighting over something.  We never do figure out what it is.

 There’s a storm brewing, so we get out our rain gear. Although the sky looks very ominous, the “storm” doesn’t really amount to much. I think Rick looks particularly fetching in his rubber overalls though.

Today the engine seems fine, but we have a different kind of problem – the pump for the holding tank is not functioning. To put it delicately, the holding tank stores all of the waste from the head until you are ready to pump it out. Rick waits until we are off shore, and then pumps it out into the sea. That is, he usually does it that way. The pump seems to be seized up, and if we can’t get it to work we’ll be stuck carrying a hot stinking mess all the way to Maine. Did I mention that I’m just a hair’s breadth from tossing my cookies? Thankfully, Rick figures out what is wrong by the end of the day and we pull in to Barnegat Light with an empty tank.

I am mightily discouraged by the past two days on the water. I didn’t enjoy it all that much, and I’m forced to admit that what I like the most about sailing is when we stop. A year ago, when I first decided to take this trip, Rick was so happy that I was interested in sailing with him that he started scoping the internet for larger boats he might buy. Even though we both knew he was very much in the fantasy stage, I worried that he was getting a bit ahead of himself; now I really feel like I’m disappointing him. I could hardly call myself a “first mate” these last two days. I was basically dead weight.

The anchorage at Barnegat Light is well protected, but a bit tricky to get in and out of. The tides create a strong current that can either add or subtract from your speed, so you really do need to plan your entry and exit accordingly. I awake to the sound of our engine starting up – it is 6:30am and Rick decides we need to leave right away. The tossing and turning of the boat in the inlet channel is a truly frightening experience for me – a good 45 minutes of rocking and rolling, real “ride ‘em cowboy” stuff. Cupboard doors flap open, drawers slide out of their sockets, pots and pans fly all around, coffee and coffee grounds spill all over the place; I was half sure we would roll completely over, or get tossed off of the boat. In the end, Tortue comes through it all just fine, but I wouldn’t want to do that again anytime soon.

Today I decide to stop trying to save my Zofran pills for some emergency, and just break down and take a double dose. Why didn’t I do this in the first place? Finally I have an enjoyable trip. Granted, I end up sleeping for a lot of it, but no trace of nausea  - I’m even able to read a book! I’m just going to have to call my doctor and arrange for a refill. I really think that we’ve found the solution, and now I’m looking forward to the rest of the trip.

It’s raining again, and this time we’re in for a good soaking. We head in to Sandy Hook and, after setting anchor, we have a cozy dinner inside the cabin, followed by some very cramped music making.

Tomorrow we take on Manhattan!

Where the Wild Things Are

The day has finally arrived – we’re going to shoot through the Chesapeake/Delaware Canal and make it to Cape May before dark. Rick wants to get an early start ahead of the tides, so at the red-eye hour of 6:30am, we slip out of our anchorage and into the canal. We have the canal to ourselves, and the water is glassy and wake free.

We manage to spot quite a few birds on this leg of the trip – many a great blue heron, egrets, a green heron, a bittern, laughing gulls and osprey.  Groups of turkey vultures are hanging out on the side of the canal, and cormorants are perched on wires. Eagles are plentiful, but elusive subjects for the camera. We finally get one flying away.

There is quite an assortment of bridges over the canal:

Long about 8:30 we emerge into the Delaware Bay. Rick is right to refer to this part as “a slog.”  It’s a large body of water, at first glance similar to the Chesapeake, but it’s much more shallow, and you can’t really pull in to a lot of places in a boat with a deep keel. There are parts of it that are downright ugly, like the power plant. We are passed several times by gigantic ships, which leave us bobbing around in their equally gigantic wakes.

Rick is very gifted at spotting wild life and now that we're in the bay we see a different set of animals – a couple of porpoises, a big sea turtle, a ray, and a Wilson’s Storm Petrol ( it’s a bird - I'd never heard of it either). It’s very difficult to get pictures of these wonders because by the time you’ve gotten your camera the animal has disappeared under the water or flown away.

I spend a lot of time trying to find some shade, somewhere on our tiny boat. I keep very busy rigging up sun shelter with the only bit of possible equipment available – a towel and two clothes pins. In the end, I’m not too successful, but it certainly killed some time. And there’s a LOT of time to kill.

Here’s the newly bearded Rick at the helm:

It is God-awful hot on the boat. One great way to cool off is to jump in the water and drag behind the boat. Unfortunately, we spy a number of jellyfish - melon sized, glowing a ghostly orange hue. I've never been stung by one of these beauties, but apparently it can be pretty bad. It is a testament to the heat (or what utter fools we are) that we both take the risk and jump in anyway. Wisdom eventually prevails - as an alternative, Rick pulls in buckets of bay water and dumps them over himself.

 

All of this time on our hands made room for some reflection. Rick has made this trip to Maine 5 times in the last 6 years and I have long had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, he leaves me alone with my job and our house, and on top of missing him terribly, I worry about him getting caught in a storm or getting knocked off the boat by the boom. On the other hand, I adjust quite well to being alone and keeping my own schedule – after the first week or so I start to really enjoy my freedom. I know that Rick has similar mixed feelings about taking the trip – he both loves and hates the solitude. He has been very genuinely excited about my joining him on this trip, but I have been apprehensive about robbing him of his treasured alone time, even while providing him with companionship. As long as I’ve known him, he has had a boat, and it provides an escape hatch for him.

The first few days of the trip I noticed a small bit of tension between us, and now I'm pretty sure why; I’ve invaded his man-cave! When left to his own devices, the boat becomes a haven for the grown up little boy they used to call “Ricky”. He’s free to grow a beard, wear the same grubby clothes day after day, eat Dinty Moore stew out of a can, and basically do all the disgusting things that men love to do, yet women frown upon. I’m sure I don’t have to spell it all out…  Then I come along and insist on washing the dishes, deodorizing the head,  and bringing “girly” things like hair conditioner and 10 days worth of underwear on board. It's almost as if he had a sign on the door of his tree house - "No Grils Allowed."

Rick admits to a slight feeling of, "wait a minute - what are YOU doing on MY boat?" In the past I've only been a visitor, but now I'm an interloper. He assures me that the advantages to having me accompany him on this voyage far outweigh that tiny feeling of breeched territory, and that he is sincerely happy that I am here.

 We make it to Cape May by 5:30pm - a Rick record. We find a spot to anchor, not too far from this Coast Guard Ship:

 It is still terribly hot, and we both want showers. Rick rigs up the sun shower and this time I decide I need to go sans suit. Of course, just as I’m in a completely compromised position, a big tourist "Whale Watch" boat goes by, packed with gawking tourists. I hope they got their money's worth!

We make dinner and watch the 4th of July fireworks from our boat. From our vantage point, we can see fireworks displays all the way up the coast - Cape May, Wildwood and Atlantic City. I really feel like I'm playing hooky now - I have been playing Stars and Stripes and the 1812 Overture with the BSO at Oregon Ridge for the last 20 years. This time I get to actually see the fireworks and they are spectacular! It really does feel like Independence Day.

A Night on the Town

After three blissful nights in beautiful natural settings, we arrive in Chesapeake City. I can tell already that we are in for a completely different kind of experience. This is an old civil war town with plenty of the sort of charming nineteenth century architecture that attracts tourists, but especially on the waterfront, the town has grown up and modernized along with the canal it lies beside.  The hot spot at the center of things is the Chesapeake Inn, complete with cool-scene deck restaurant and tiki bar. The techno music blasting from the bar has to be loud in order to compete with the revving engines of the boats that are constantly coming and going.

There are boats EVERYWHERE – an astonishing number of them those over-sized speed machines called cigarette boats. The owners, impossibly burly guys in muscle shirts and tatoos, can be seen lovingly cleaning and polishing the decks of these giant toys, but I'm willing to bet they'd never be caught dead cleaning the bathroom at home. The engines on these boats are impossibly loud; certainly the technology exits to muffle the sound, but in fact, I suspect that they have been designed for exactly the opposite effect. 

Of course, there is still room for other types of boats and characters. This has got to be one of the most unusual boats I have ever seen. Check out the tent on top!

Cruisers like us can take a spot at the dock to spend the night, but we decide to anchor a bit away from all of the commotion in hopes of a more peaceful night’s sleep. We’re mostly interested in a shower at this point, so we take the dinghy in with all of our shower paraphernalia. Unfortunately, they don’t allow showers unless you are spending the night at the dock. So, here we are, in all of our grodiness; margaritas are definitely in order! After a couple of burgers we go exploring. When Rick was on his return trip last August he was able to catch a concert in this lovely little park. No such luck this time.

Back on the boat, Rick rigs up the Sun Shower. This is an extremely rustic, “I just HAVE to take a shower!” piece of equipment. Filled with water, it absorbs heat from the sun, and then gravity sends the water down a spigot. Rick hangs it from the boom so that you have a modicum of privacy in the floor of the cockpit. I’m not quite ready to bare all, so I take my shower with my bathing suit on, thank you very much.

After an exhausting afternoon of reading and napping, we don some respectable (clean) clothes and take the dinghy in for dinner. We had made a reservation at the Bayard House Restaurant at which my friend Ivan Stefanovich once told Rick that he’d had the best meal of his life. The meal was indeed wonderful, especially seated as we were on the very edge of the canal, but Ivan clearly hasn’t told enough people – the place was conspicuously empty. While the Chesapeake Inn caters to a fun, TGIF Fridays type of crowd, the Bayard House tries for something more sophisticated.  Once again, subtlety, intelligence and artfulness lose out to crass, obvious, and over-the-top tastelessness.

The night time view from the boat is quite lovely. The tiki bar has wound down for the night, and the lights from the hotel along with the Chesapeake City Bridge and the lights from the anchored boats reflect in the still water, while families of Canadian geese swim quietly by. Our enjoyment of this scene is rather short lived however – close to midnight, one last power boat, filled with young boisterous men and a beer cooler, anchors right next to us! The night is now filled with raucous partying and the inevitable alcohol induced retching of one or more of the revelers. Chesapeake City certainly has its charms, but one night is just enough for me.

Lazy Days in the Chesapeake

Rick has been telling me for years what a difficult thing it is to sail a boat to Maine. So far, I’d have to conclude that he’s been lying. At least at this stage of the trip, our days have been filled with sleeping late, bird watching, swimming, napping, reading, eating and drinking. Pretty tough to take….

The most efficient route to Maine from Baltimore is to go through the Chesapeake/Delaware canal, then down the Delaware Bay to Cape May.  The only alternative would be to go down the Chesapeake, south to Norfolk, but then you would add an extra 350 miles or so because you would have to go around the Delmarva Peninsula. Apparently, you have to time your trip through the canal to take advantage of the tides. Ideally, you should use the tide to pull you through the canal, but at the very least, you don’t want the tides working against you. Then on top of that, you need to have just the right wind conditions for the second and much longer leg of the trip to Cape May, the slog down Delaware Bay.  Rick has been doing a lot of figuring, and it looks like Monday (July 4^th) is the best day to try to get to Cape May through the canal. Even then, we’ll probably have to motor because the wind will be too weak for sailing. And all this calculation three days in advance. 

So… what to do until then?

We spent our first real night away from the dock in Still Pond which is the farthest North I had ever been. I remember a few years ago making a trip in my husband’s boat (at that time he had a Bristol 29) over to Rock Hall and being violently ill the entire time. We spent the night near there and returned the next day, so it was a memorably long bout of seasickness. Making it to Still Pond (and enjoying the trip) is in my mind an enormous accomplishment.

Still Pond is a lovely little spot, true to its name, and we took full advantage. The water this far north in the Chesapeake has very little salt in it, unlike the brackish water closer to the ocean. Swimming was great there, and not too buggy. We even took the dinghy to shore and did some exploring. There was a farmer’s field hidden away behind all the trees, and we happened in on a number of scattered groups of deer who were making dinner of the crop. There must have been at least a dozen, and we watched them, unnoticed, for quite a while.

Rick rigged up a sunshade to provide his pale-skinned wife with some shade in the cockpit. He's had this thing for some time - it came with the boat when he bought it second hand - but I think he saw it as a bogus item for wimps and non-sailors. In these 90plus degree days it has been a life-saver, and now Rick has been completely won over to it.

At this point we have decided that we can take our sweet time getting to the canal. We spent the following day lazing around, and left late in the day for the Sassafras River – getting close to Elk Neck State Park. Yet another idyllic spot, except for the gnats. And I mean GNATS! The boat was covered in them after dark. Thank God for mosquito netting. The other problem with our spot here was that everybody and his brother were out on their boats, this being the big 4^th of July weekend and all. There were fast and noisy cigarette boats, little motor boats, cabin cruisers, police and fireboats, jet skis, etc.. All those boats make for quite a rocky sea, and the Tortue did a lot of rockin and rollin.

Yesterday we ventured just a little farther north to the Bohemia River. On the way, we stopped at a little public beach in Betterton, anchored the boat and took the dinghy in. Betterton is a very quaint little Victorian resort town, and we walked around a bit before heading back to the boat.

There has been no usable wind yet this far into the trip, and we have yet to use the sails at all. If you are really into sailing, I’m sure this would be a big disappointment. For someone like me, who is desperately trying to not get sick, motoring has been a very pleasurable thing. Less heeling over, less of a bumpy ride, less wind, small waves… The part of our routine I have grown to love the most is motoring to the next spot during the cocktail hour. Rick sets the autohelm and we both take drinks and snacks to the front of the boat. You get a panoramic view – if we were actually sailing the jib would be somewhat in the way.

It’s fun to admire all the cottages/mansions along the shore – “Oh I love that one!” “I would never paint my house THAT color”, etc.(as if…). We came across a small bit of land that turned out to be a trailer park; it looks like a Pueblo reservation, or a section of Sao Paolo. The people there get an amazing view across the bay, but the obviously wealthy mansion owners across from them have to look across at this. Small justice.

When we pulled into the Bohemia River there were a number of sailboats already anchored in Rick’s favorite spot. Oh well, so it’s a little crowded. There was just enough light left to have a little musical interlude, so we quickly got out the fiddles. It wasn’t very long before we couldn’t see the music, so we tried to do some improvising. Rick likes to pick out tunes on his viola – usually sappy melodies from old movies, or things like “O Danny Boy”. His current favorite is the theme song from “Foyle’s War”, so I tried to pick out an accompaniment. I am SO classically trained that doing something by ear with no music is really hard for me, but I did my best. I’m afraid we sounded like two cats in heat. At some point, Rick saw another boat coming in to anchor, and was surprised that they didn’t stay. I wasn’t…

Next stop – Chesapeake City!

Ready, Set... Doh!

Well, the best laid plans…. Our departure date was originally Monday, June 27. I knew that was optimistic, but if we’d had a more realistic date planned I was afraid we would miss that deadline too. Rick kids me for my habit of setting  my watch about ten minutes ahead so I’m always on time;  that doesn’t always work either...

There is a great deal of preparation in advance of a trip like this. There’s the obvious packing of clothes and equipment, along with provisioning with food, water and, of course, copious amounts of alcohol. There are also last minute doctor’s visits, bills to be paid, young adult offspring to be taken care of, as well as a house to be readied for the house sitter. I have watched my husband with a certain amount of amusement in past years as he has gone through this preparation phase of his solo trips; now I have a bit more appreciation of just how difficult it is. When the 28^th came and went, we set ourselves a hard and fast deadline of Wednesday, June 29 – We’re leaving no matter what!

There were various snafus on the way – having driven a whole 3 blocks from our house we had to go back and retrieve my Kindle  – but we did manage to leave and head to Annapolis.

The car was loaded to the gills for the hour long trip to the boat. We stopped at a grocery store to buy perishables and ice, and somehow found room in the car for the additional bags. Once at the dock, it took five cartfuls to transport all the stuff to the boat. With everything loaded onboard, the boat is so weighted down that the water line at the stern is completely under water!

We need to unpack and stow everything away, and in the process I discover that,  Kindle now in hand, I’ve forgotten to bring along the power cord that will keep it charged…   Doh! I leave Rick to continue unpacking, and drive back to Baltimore (during rush hour) to get my power cord. When I get back to the boat it is already getting dark, but to save face, we need to at least leave the dock and spend the night someplace close by. We linger only long enough to say good-bye to Buck, who is the caretaker at the marina and a buddy of Rick’s. Buck is quite the character, with his well tanned and usually shirtless belly as expansive as his generous sense of humor. It has become somewhat of a tradition for Rick to present Buck with a case of beer when he leaves for the summer, and this time I get to be there (including a heart-felt, full-on hug over that capacious belly).

 Finally, we are under way!

We spend the night in Broad Creek, still in the mouth of the Magothy, with a plan to leave first thing in the morning. Of course, as I said earlier, the best laid plans… Upon awakening, Rick discovers that the power cord for his camera has been left back in Baltimore. 

 Doh! ( At least this time it’s not my fault. Yay.)

We motor back to the dock and try to sneak over to the car without anyone noticing. Sure enough, Buck is right there at the end of the dock. We managed in the course of the day (now Thursday the 30^th) to run into absolutely EVERYONE we had said good-bye to the previous day. Very embarrassing.

By 1:00pm, we have left the dock and are at long last heading out into the Chesapeake. This time, we both know it’s for good – there is a definite feeling of no return in the air. Anything else we may have forgotten we will just have to do without. Passing the Baltimore Light makes it absolutely official for me.

The adventure begins!