Wednesday May 19, 2021.
Temp: 83/48, Humidity: 37/73%, Top Wind: w7 mph, Precip-none, Miles Traveled: 74! 😳
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This was going to be a long travel day, so we set the obnoxious waker-upper for 6:00. But hey – sunrise is 5:52, so it’s really not THAT early, right? 😴🥱. We rolled out of bed, made our coffee, unplugged power… and OH! I need to swab the windows, and then do it again. And again. There was some persistent dew! We haven’t had that problem for awhile. We pulled away from the dock at about 6:30 and meandered our way out the five mile channel. I didn’t get a good picture of the marina as we pulled away, since it was directly east and the sun was blazing in my eyeballs to say GOOOOOOD MORNING!!! 😎☀️. But I did capture this nice home with some amazing reflection on the water.
The water was beautiful, and no breeze whatsoever. This is the channel as we followed the markers back out to the big water.
Then as we came to the big water, there was a breeze. Darn! It was blowing straight at us from the west, so that created some waves, since it was blowing unobstructed clear across the Chesapeake – which is about 25 miles across here. We looked at our route and decided to stick with our plan of going north up the smaller channel to have some more protection from the wind. Then we’d also avoid the big shipping channels, and the mouth of the Potomac River, which can be the roughest water on the Bay. We went up Tangier Sound. The forecast was for winds to die down to about 3mph by 11:00, plus being behind the islands made the water much nicer.
There wasn’t a lot to see out there today. A few big ships, a few crab boats, a lot of crab pot buoys, a few other motor yacht types like us. It was a nice sunshiney day. We started out with sweatshirts and Kenny’s window open. But it was too chilly, so window closed. Then eventually sweatshirts off, and windows open. It got to where the breeze was nice, and the dark blue canvas top was radiating some serious heat. The only cool thing really was this light tower, like a mini light house just sitting in the Bay.
We finally made it to the Patuxent River. No – I’m not sure how to pronounce that. I think it’s “ pu-TUX-nt ” We tootled up Back Creek past a mob of marinas. Seriously! This little cubby of the world has at least ten marinas, and we have reservations at one that is way in here.
There’s a mob of marinas, and then there are boats that just drop an anchor along the way. At least they aren’t really in the channel, which is surprising since it’s pretty narrow in here.
We called in on the radio and got instructions on where to go – right to a T-dock at the entrance, so that was easy! Captain just swung us around, and we coasted oh so sweetly right to the dock. And look! These are tall fixed docks, so maybe we’ll get out bikes down! That’s Island Girl out at the end of this dock.
This is Spring Cove marina. We stayed here in 2018 during a three day rain deluge. We decided to come back, because the high temperatures are supposed to be in the low 80’s for a couple of days, and ….
TA-DA! They have a huge pool! However, I was told that it is not heated. So I might have to wear a polar bear suit.
This is just a really nice piece of land that the marina sits on. They have a nice park like setting, and pretty gardens.
Picnic tables, a car that we can borrow for an hour, bikes (without electric motors), BBQ grills, a tiki bar, and there are lots of locals that hang out here tending to their boats and are very friendly.
I couldn’t resist another flower portrait.
Kenny washed down Island Girl with his Salt Away stuff, and I fixed dinner on board in the air fryer. It was a long day, so neither of us had enough energy to do anything else this evening. We traveled 74 miles in just over 8 hours, with no go-fast time today. Thankfully it was a nice day, so not overly exhausting or stressful. Just long. And we did pop into Maryland along the way. We’ll do some stuff tomorrow around Solomons. Maybe get the bikes down. Maybe launch Stuart and do some bug-arounds. Oh – that’s one of my dad’s phrases for running errands or doing some cruising around kind of action. 🙂🙃🙂
This is day 60! We are roughly 25% into the trip at this point, because we figure roughly 240 days for the entire adventure.
So here are some stats to date:
Island Girl has traveled 1534 miles
177 moving engine hours
Average 2.01 mpg
We’ve enjoyed 10 nights free
60 total days, but we’ve only traveled on 34 days.
It hasn’t been a very stressful lifestyle. 😉