Location: Mill Creek, Patuxent River, near Solomons, MD
Current position: N38 20.195' W076 30.218'
We left Sandy Point and headed for Solomons, MD this morning at dawn. The wind was supposed to be from the northeast and, since we were primarily traveling north northwest we had hoped to get in some sailing, albeit hard on the wind. The weatherman let us down, however. The wind was almost due north, even a bit west of north, so we were stuck motor sailing pretty much dead into it for close to 9 hours. Today we averaged 4.8 knots sailing just over 48 nautical miles in 10 hours - our longest day out on Rachel to date.
On our way in the Patuxent River, we passed a couple in a catamaran with a palm tree, a flower garden, and what looked like a few vegetables on the aft deck. We expected to see one of them come out with a hoe or a rake as we passed. Must be nice to have enough deck space for a garden!
Big honking container ship, see how small the sailboat looks next to it. This is as close as we want to get to one of these
We're now sitting in Mill Creek (there are a plethora of Mill Creeks on the Chesapeake Bay). We're in the one on the south side of the Patuxent River, just west of Solomons and the bridge.
The anchorage we're in now is nice and big, good holding and plenty of room to swing. There's one other sailboat here and it's way quieter than Solomons just down river. This afternoon when we arrived we were having second thoughts about it, though.
The whole place was infested with big, loud "go fast" boats, giving little or no consideration to anyone else regarding their wakes. They zoom into the anchorage, make a circle around the anchored boats, and zoom out.
Thankfully, they all left by about 6:00pm and we're hoping the craziness continues to hold off until next weekend when we'll be gone.
The best news (other than the fact that we're finally going to be away from the dock for more than a few days
The entire south shore of the anchorage is a county park so we're looking forward to going over there after work tomorrow to explore and get a bit of exercise. We've seen a white egret fishing along the shore and hear fish jumping around the boat all day. We'll probably stay here until Thursday after work, then go to Solomons for provisions and to look around the town, and, hopefully, head on up to Annapolis next weekend.
Mark & Julie
s/v Rachel
