THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

We had anchored in the dark in Chesapeake City Boat Basin. The anchorage was not too crowded but there were docks along the shore and a strange looking shack that was in the middle of the bay. I couldn't tell if it was a permanent structure or some kind of floating boat house, so I stayed as far away from it as I could. Apparently, it is a local guy who launches it and lives on it all summer.

We continued down the Elk River into the Chesapeake passing many small inlets, creeks and rivers along the way. The scenery was very nice but the shallow areas outside of the main channel kept us from exploring. We entered into the Chesapeake as we passed the Elk Point State Park and headed Northwest toward the Channel to the Susquehanna River and the town of Havre De Grace. The many rivers that flow into the Chesapeake create a lot of shoaling and shallow areas. The channel we entered was long and winding and took us past some areas where the birds were standing on dry land just a few hundred feet from our boat. We were assigned a mooring at the Tidewater Marina and proceeded to the assigned spot. For whatever reason, I completely overran the mooring ball. It was a little embarassing to see the mooring ball at the stern, and even more embarassing when it appeared to be hung up on either the rudder or (hopefully not) the prop. I put the boat in nuetral and kind of pushed on the ball with a boat hook and eventually the came loose. Apparently, the pennant had hung up on the rudder, but we were free and no harm done. We got the dingy set up and went off to explore the town. The towns are beginning to look very similar in every port so far. Lots of older buildings, lots of history, and a lot of empty buildings for sale. We did find the Tidewater Grill and had a nice dinner overlooking the river and the start of the Havre De Grace Thursday night races. We decided the view would be better from the boat since they were tacking for a race bouy not too far from where our mooring was. We spent the evening watching the races and called it a night. A atreet scene of Havre De Grace.

Boats tacking around our moorings.

A racer finishing under the moonlight.

In the morning, we decided to go see the promenade along the Southern edge of the town. This is an area where the British came ashore in the War of 1812 and burned the town to the ground. By 12:30, we were back on the boat and headed back out the winding channel to the Chesapeake. Our goal was to explore a few bays and wind up in Rock Hall, Maryland for the night. We motored out of the channel and then set sails for the Sassafras River, which had some very nice scenery. Crab pots are everywhere here. Especially when you get to a shoal area. We dodged them going into the river and then the wind began to die. We turned around and headed back out into the bay. Rock Hall was only 20 miles as the "crow flies" but there were several capes we had to get around and a shoal are that we had to get past before turning into the Rock Hall area that made it about 40 miles. The sun was setting before we got in. We entered the channel, taking a few shortcuts over areas that looked a little shalllow, but we didn't have any problems until we got close to the entrance to Rocj Hall Harbor. The charts on my chartplotter showed a straight in approach to the red and green entrance bouys, but apparently the channel had been dredged recently and they moved the bouys. We had a few scary moments as we dragged our keel through the mud trying to get to the entrance. Luckily, our Yanmar could plow us through the muck fairly well. After we got in, we had to find our slip. It was dark, we couldn't see any dock numbers and our instructions only included a slip number. Some of the sailors on the dock helped us get into a slip and we were good for the night. The next morning on September 1st, we decided to expore the area. Our neighbors invited us to lunch and drove us to a nice little water side restaurant. They dropped us off in the "Downtown" area of Rock Hall, which consisted of a two or three block long strip of shops and some restauraunts. It was extremely hot and humid but we continued walking another two blocks or so to the Rock Hall Museum, which was in the municipaly building with the Police, Library and Mayors office. We spent a little bit of time in the somewhat air conditioned museum and then called the trolley to have them pick us up. They said it would be 15 minutes but after a half hour of standing in the sun, heat and humidity, we had to call again. He said he would be there in a few minutes, but half an hour later, we were still sweltering outside the municipal building. We finally got them to pick us up but when we got off the trolley at another stop, but we had the same results when we wanted to get picked up. Luckily, a shop owner offered to give us a ride back to our marina. We spent some time with our neighbors, who happened to be good friends with some doctors we knew from Crown Point, including my Dr. Chuman. We then went and sampled some Cheapeake Blue Crabs at the Watermans across the bay as a violent storm blew through the area. The weather does not look good for the next few days so we may just stay put til after Labor Day. Don't forget to follow our map at the top of the page.