Craunological II -- 2024 Cruise

Today was our last day cruising with ZJ&A and our last day on this summer's cruise. We left the Sassafras Harbor Marina at ten for the 22-mile run to Havre de Grace, where we dropped off ZJ&A for them to make the drive back to Manhattan. We then had a 50-mile run to the Atlantic Marina at Ferry Point in Arnold, MD (between Annapolis and Baltimore). This marina was recommended by Capt. Dan, the guy who has trailered Craunological II for us for our last two cruises. He met us the next morning at nine and supervised the boat being loaded onto his trailer while we took an Uber to the BWI Thurgood Marshall airport to catch a noon flight back to Naples. And so ended our third big trip with Craunological II.  Our dock at the marina was very narrow and hard to get in and out of. Fortunately, there was no current and little wind. And there was an excellent restaurant next to the marina, where we both had our last helpings of fresh Chesapeake Bay crab. Yummo in the tummo, as the Firs

We spent a lazy morning in Chestertown, enjoying breakfast at the White Swan Tavern and then the downtown shops and the Saturday street fair. Avery especially enjoyed the Cat Colloquium, which housed a dozen cats of various breeds in very spiffy quarters above one of the downtown stores. Not sure how they support themselves (there was no admission fee), but they certainly had a lot of visitors.  We got underway at noon and took four and a half hours to make the 63-mile run to the Sassafras Harbor Marina in Fredericktown, MD. For once we weren't fighting sloppy seas, but the light wind meant we had little relief from the heat. As a result, the girls rode most of the way in the cabin.  The Sassafras River was pretty heavily populated compared to the Chester, probably due to its closer proximity to Wilmington and Philadelphia, with lots of fancy big houses. And there were dozens of fish traps along the shore.  ZJ&A were relieved to learn that the marina had a swimming pool and hea

ZJ&A returned to the boat a bit before eleven and we left soon after. We got fuel and a pump-out at one of the big marinas in the big harbor and then headed across the bay and up the Chester River to Chestertown. This 37-mile run took us three hours. Chestertown is a decent size town (population 5,500) with a charming old downtown and quite a few 18th century houses. We stopped here on our Intracoastal trip two years ago and thought it would be worth revisiting. The handsome brick building below is the Custom House, built in 1746 for a guy who was a local leader of the Sons of Liberty and also one of the most active slave traders in the Chesapeake region.  We saw some interesting boats as we pulled out of Annapolis. The First Mate looked up this big yacht (the M3 ) online and found that it is available for charter at $145k per week, including crew, and can accommodate five couples.  The Captain liked the old-style sailboats that were taking people for day trips.  We had another slo

This was a very important day as it was Avery's eighth birthday, in addition to being the 248th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Accordingly, we had big plans for the day, starting with the Fourth of July parade in Rock Hall. We learned that one of the women in the marina office was giving people rides over to town to see the parade, so we signed up for one so as to avoid the one-mile walk on a hot and humid morning. We found a place to sit on the curb in the shade to watch the parade, which was a classic small town affair. It started promptly at ten and lasted almost an hour. The best part was that pretty much every car or fire truck or vehicle in the parade tossed candy to the kids. Avery ended up with well over a pound of treats. What a great start to a birthday! After the parade we ran the boat over to Annapolis, which was a short but sloppy ride. Just an hour-and-a-half and 21 miles but heading into a chop from the south and running against the ti

We did chores during the morning while waiting for Zach, June and Avery (hereinafter ZJ&A) to arrive at the marina from their drive down from Manhattan. They showed up at 12:45 and we got underway soon after. The marina was nice enough to let them park their car over the long weekend at no charge. We had a 36-mile run to the Osprey Point Marina on the north side of Rock Hall, which took us almost three hours because we were running into the wind and against the tide.  We saw this beautiful old yacht along the way. We couldn't see the name so don't know anything about her other than she is a gorgeous old girl. The Osprey Point Marina was really big, but also really nice. They had a pool, which ZJ&A visited as soon as we got settled. After pool time we all walked about half-a-mile down a country road to a very popular local restaurant called the Blue Heron. We were able to get seated right away because we had called ahead and agreed to sit inside. We ordered an appetizer

We had to make 75 miles today to get to Havre de Grace, where Zach and his family will meet join us. We had excellent weather for this run, with light and variable winds and calm seas. As a result, there was more boat traffic than we've yet seen on the Bay, although not heavy. We stopped at a marina at Knapps Narrows to fill up with diesel at a decent price ($3.46/gal). The fuel attendant knew all about the exorbitant pricing at Safe Harbor in Oxford and said he doesn't get it, because they both use the same distributor and neither can bring in a semitrailer. He didn't have a response when I pointed out that the Oxford marina probably made more money selling me 21 gallons than he did selling me 117 gallons. After fueling we ran up the Eastern Bay to have lunch at Kent Narrows. This is a place with lots of restaurants with docks. It will probably be a mad house this weekend.  We didn't see much commercial traffic. Just a couple of barges and this handsome car carrier, th

It took us less than an hour to make the 12-mile run over to the Safe Harbor Marina in Oxford. It was blowing hard enough from the north that we had a moderate chop the entire time, even though we were within about a mile of the shore. Despite the chop, there were lots of boats out -- all the commercial fishermen were out in force.  We pulled into the fuel dock at the marina to buy just 21 gallons of diesel (enough to get us to a better fuel stop tomorrow as the $5.00/gal price here is outrageous), get a pump-out , and get our dock assignment. The kid in charge found a spot for us that was well protected from the waves coming into the channel from out of the north.  We were settled in by about 11:30 and went to work on finding a place to watch the France/Belgium Euro Cup match at noon. It turns out that none of the five restaurants or bars in town were open (it being a Monday) and the Captain couldn't figure out how to get the game on the TV in the marina lounge (nor could one of t

We had previously booked a reservation at the Safe Harbor Marina in Oxford, MD for Monday, July 1, as this was one of the places from our last trip to the Chesapeake that we wanted to revisit and it would be convenient for getting to Havre de Grace, MD on Tuesday, where we had to be to meet special guests on Wednesday. We weren't sure where we would spend Sunday night, but we planned to anchor out (we bought the necessary provisions at Food Lion yesterday) so we had flexibility. When we looked at the weather forecast we decided that we needed to get close to Oxford, as it would be blowing hard out of the north on Monday. (Yesterday and today the wind was out of the south but a front was forecast to come through this evening.) That left us needing to make a long run today. Unfortunately it was a sloppy run, as we were running with the waves out of the south (roughly two footers, which were big enough to screw up the hull dynamics) and also against the outgoing tide (for which the Ga