May 16, 2016

First thing this morning I saw this heron eating a fish.

We left Herrington Harbour North at 10:20, and made our way out of Herring Bay.     We were hailed by Cat Daddy shortly after 11:00 he was behind us and had spent the night at Herrington Harbour South. Andy and Rafe chatted- we will cross paths again.  There was a small craft advisory out for most of the Chesapeake with 2 foot waves and winds gusting to 20 kts.  It didn’t seem that bad out on the bay and it wasn’t raining.  We reached the Thomas Point shoal light at 12:04,

there were several large ships anchored out between the light and Bay Bridge.

We crossed under Bay Bridge around 13:00 and headed  north-east towards Swan Creek.  We entered  the channel into Rock Hall Harbour and tied up to the dock at 14:30, having gone about 30 nautical miles for the day.

Near the boat was this oysterman monument.

We went exploring and found Waterman’s Crab house and stopped for a beer and Maryland crab soup, afterwards we got directions to  down town and walked the 1.5 miles to get there, but none of the stores, including the ice cream store were open,  I did find this free library box and took a book, as you can never have too much reading material on the boat.

On our trek back to the boat I saw this statue in front of someone’s house.

In the evening we went back to Waterman’s Crab house and shared  the steamed crab pot which consisted of   4 large  crab, 12 mussels, 12 clams,   1 lb of shrimp, 2 potatoes and a cob of corn.  It took us well over 1½ hours to dissect the crabs and eat it all.  It was a little messy!  We met a couple from York  PA (Dave and Cindy) at the next table and told them all about our Loop adventure to date.  Following dinner, they came over to the boat to visit some more.

  We went to bed and the boat was rocking against the dock, during the night the wind changed and the tide started coming in and the rocking/banging increased.  This made sleep impossible so  between 2:30 and 4:00, we  tried moving the fenders and securing the boat with additional lines to decrease the banging. (Elaine: not quite as bad as Pahokee in February, but almost). Once we hit high tide at 4:30, it seemed to be a little better.  This was a free dock and it likely would have been ok if there hadn’t been wind–   It was a Sleepless night in Rock Hall!

May 17, 2016

We left the dock at 8:10 and headed back out to Chesapeake Bay, winds were light, but it was overcast.

We had likely only gone about 30 minutes when the predictable happened—it started to rain.

We proceeded north, saw a couple of barges doing some dredging and met one barge  with gravel and the rain continued.

We entered the Sassafras River and anchored near Knight Island at 1:15

having gone a total of 34 NM for the day.  We’re still about 20 miles away from the C&D (Chesapeake & Delaware) Canal  which will take us into Delaware Bay and closer to  the Atlantic Ocean.  .  It’s now 8 p.m. and I finally see the sun, as it is going down. It going to be  an early night, to catch up on the lack of sleep.