Beyond Baltimore

We left Baltimore on another very grey day and even as we filled with fuel the heavens opened. Our 25 miles/sail across the bay was mainly in torrential rain, impossible visibility, short chopping water and very gusty winds but at least we could sail :). We were grateful to get the beautiful sheltered anchorage of Still Pond.

Mark in the rain

Up and off the next day, had wanted to visit Havre De Grace but with the weather forecast this was not going to be possible as the anchorage there would offer no sheltered but managed another 15 miles and anchored of some military land in the Susquehanna river.  Most of the afternoon and evening they were testing some sort of guns/bombs, each bang making us jump. This was our first night we had experienced a big storm whilst at anchor, thankfully we had lots of room to swing around and our anchor was fine but a bit of a sleepless night.


All the rain had passed and we set off in beautiful sunshine, the countryside here was very pretty in this part of the Bay and probably even nicer due to it being a sunny day.

Beautiful morning on Susquenanna River

Our aim for the day was to reach the Chesapeake and Delaware canal, quite obviously this joins the 2 bays.  There is a small basin a few miles along the canal where Chesapeake City is located, actually much more a small village than a city.  With a couple of quaint street, with a few touristy shops and restaurants, it is that small that there was not even a grocery store.  There is a small marina attached to the Chesapeake Inn which is small hotel and restaurant/bar and where the entertainment is over the summer.  After only 3 days of not being ashore we were enjoying being on land and decided to sample the local cocktails and pizza J . 

Cocktail number 1

Cocktail number 2

Oh they also have a great ice cream parlour, not had an icecream since April, so treated ourselves.  This was also another prime example of how the Americans have been really kind, we were asking the young guy who worked in the parlour where we could get milk, he confirmed there was nowhere local but his sister was coming into the shop later and she would pick some up for us, how very nice of him.

Great icecream palour

The view from the boat in the yacht basin at Chesapeake City

When we reached Delaware Bay the water opened up and we struggled against the north going current as we tried to head south down the bay.  Like Chesapeake Bay it is very shallow outside the main channel but we were able to creep along in the shallower water to avoid some of the current but with no wind the Bay was flat and all we had to worry about was avoiding hundreds of fishing buoys.

35 miles and we reached Cohansey River. There is a 12ft dredged channel into this river, or that is what the pilot books/charts tell you! As we edged across the current we passed over a sill at the entrance with about 30cm to spare, our initially thought was we were happy to not have gone aground which was quickly followed by how would we get out in the morning! After a restless night with turning tides and strong winds bumping us around, we were up at 6.30 hoping that we would have enough tide to get out.

Unfortunately not! Yes we were aground on the mud with no way off, we dropped anchor and decided we would need to wait for the tide to rise.  A passing fishing boat came to investigate and told us the water was deep, not believing we could be aground.  Of he went picking up crab pots but 10 minutes later he was back and offering to pull us off, he tied off a rope on Magnums bow and pulled us into deep water where we again dropped anchor, admired the view, ate breakfast and watched the painfully slow tide rise. 2 hours later and we tried again, we did it, hurrah, again with only 30cm below the keel but that was all we needed.

Pretty place to be stuck on the mud!!

I would like to say the day got better but with wind on the nose and current against us we motored south.  After several hours of thinking the engine wounded a bit odd, Mark inspected the engine and the impeller was in pieces, so we had to switch off the engine and drift around whilst he replaced.  By this time with a new weather forecast, tides dropping in our route of through the Cape May canal we had to change our plans and head straight out to big sea!