Wagothy River, Chestertown, Wye River and back to Annapolis. Sept 20-29

We left Baltimore on Tuesday the 20th bound for an anchorage on the Magothy River given the forecasted cooler weather (finally!!).  It was only a 27 mile trip so we did not get started till a little after noon.  We anchored around the back of Gibson Island at an anchorage known as the Horse Farm. There were many rocks along the shore as a “fence” for the horses.  Sorry picture was quite far across the anchorage so we did not include it.  It was a beautiful anchorage with only 5 boats there.  The bats were out working the insect population and we were not really an issue.  A very nice night on the hook here. 

 

 

 

 

 Waiting on the grilled food.

 

On Wednesday we departed for Chestertown about 25 miles up the Chester River.  The total trip was just shy of 40 miles.  The river is very rural with farms, a few homes and a couple small marinas.  A really nice ride.  Chestertown dates back to 1706 when it served as a port of entry for colonial movement into Maryland.  The County's court records date back to the 1640's and Chestertown is home to the second largest collection of 18th and 19th century structures in the state. 

We anchored across the river from the city marina in Chestertown.

Lots of activity on the river with people practicing sculling, sailing small boats (with an apparent personal challenge of one of them to see how close he could get to our boat) and crabbing right next to us.  Here is the local boat Sultana taking out a group.

 

Only a few crabbers in the mornings creating some small wakes.  There was construction on the local drawbridge every night which created some construction related noise but we were far enough away that it was mostly white noise for us.  It is cooling down nights which makes anchoring out so nice…windows and hatches open and only some light bow slap from the ripples at night.  We had one night with one the most beautiful colorful sunsets we have seen yet on this trip!

 

Aboard the dinghy and then Tug LeeLoo for the sunset thanks to the dinghy taxi service.

A short video of the sunset that better shows the colors.

https://youtu.be/fNZEYg5a740

We decided to stay three days here as it is such a nice historic town, groceries a mile and a third away, friendly people and a nice anchorage with cool evening temperatures.  The walk to the grocery store was really nice as we wound our way through the Washington College campus, a really nice school it appears.  Julie thinks people were looking at us as parents delivering groceries to a student as we walked through campus with four bags of groceries! 

We did have to rely on Nancy and Carey (Tug LeeLoo) for dinghy service as our outboard almost completely quit running now.  Hoping the dinghy will stay running all the way back from the grocery run.

Note Tom paddling the dinghy back to the boat…

Thanks so much for the taxi service Nancy and Carey!!  We will have to get in the que somewhere to get it repaired as it is a necessity when anchoring out.

Friday afternoon a couple from Anacortes WA, Jim and Peg aboard HAVN dinghyed over to say hello.  They too live aboard and sold their dirt home, bought a boat in Fort Lauderdale and are cruising some new territory.

On Friday night the town had a River Fest celebration with a band, food, beverages and other activities. 

 

We dinghyed over (thanks Carey and Nancy!!) to watch the “Illumination” of a large peacock which was constructed by Washington College science and art students.  The band played some nice tunes including “Moondance” and “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” and did a great job on them both before the lighting.  Yes, the crowd was largely our age….

The peacock before being opened and illuminated fully

Here is the peacock all lit up after we returned from our dinner at The Kitchen, an old hotel restaurant which had some really good lamb shank. Pretty neat! 

By the way, the Kitchen restaurant was voted Best of the Eastern Shore for gluten free options.

While at anchor we were noticing a “clunk” every few minutes as things quieted down and we were trying to go to sleep.  First night we never figured it out and thought it may have been noise from the bridge construction.  The next night I thought about the wash down pump which I had left on since the last anchorage. Turned off the pump and no more noise.  The valve to limit pressure on the faucet must have been cycling.  Note to self for future….

There were other activities scheduled for Saturday as well but we all decided to move on to an anchorage on the Wye River.  We pulled anchor in 15-20 knot gusts as a cold front was passing on Saturday.  We have learned that using our “marriage savers” for anchor retrieval is good too.  Julie operates the boat and I use the wash down hose and give her directions for moving the boat, operating the windlass, etc  That way I can concentrate on getting all the Chesapeake mud off the chain before it enters the rode locker without having to rely on hand signals.  We keep learning and improving our techniques! We had to be very careful of the crab pots along our boat as we maneuvered to retrieve the anchor but all went well. 

The waves on the trip were mostly behind us so not an issue although there were small craft warnings posted.   We had to traverse Kent Narrows, an area noted on Active Captain as narrow, shallow, shoaled and with a strong tidal current.  It was all of those and we got to add to that equation, waves and wind on our beam.  But not an issue, 5 feet or more all the way in, although the electronic charts were not accurate as temporary buoys marked the channel around the shoaling. 

A short video of the Narrows.

https://youtu.be/rsOPoFLC5bM

Called the Kent Narrows Bridge tender as we were right on time for the noon opening.  Communicated with the sail boat which was up current to confirm he would pass through the narrow bridge first. Love it when a sailboat actually has their radio on!  There were so many on the ICW that never responded to our calls to arrange a "slow pass".

Passed through Shaw Bay, where we dinghyed to the raft off a couple weeks ago, and went upstream a mile or so on the Wye River to a beautiful anchorage. We saw osprey, blue heron, turkey vultures, geese and ducks in our anchorage. Crabbers were working the mouth of the bay in which we anchored and it was fun to watch them work. We had a great steak dinner aboard with Nancy and Carey.  A few nice homes were across the river, the Milky Way was visible at night, geese flew out at first light on an early morning flight…what a great spot. 

 

Note the osprey in the upper portion of this photo.

A little bird watching.

This cooler weather is just perfect for anchoring out.  We had a wonderful stretch of five days on the hook.  Nice, just what we had hoped for to explore the Chesapeake.  Another little flame up as we await dinner at anchor rafted with Tug LeeLoo.

 

Here we are at work with the marriage savers aiding our communication. Julie at the controls, Tom "de-mudding" the anchor chain.

 

A shot of Carey and Nancy leaving.

But boat repairs call…an inoperable dinghy outboard and anchoring out just don’t mix.  We left on Sunday morning for Annapolis at Bert Jabin’s Yacht Yard and the repairs for the holding tank and outboard scheduled for Monday morning. The marina is not a transient marina although the facilities are quite nice.  There is a lot of activity here as every conceivable boat repair can be made by one of the trades represented here. 

Sunday traffic along the way.  First lots of sailboats, then a large power boat which is 124’ and moving at 23.5 MPH according to AIS (sorry I forgot to write down the name).  Yes, the wake was like 6 feet….

We caught up to Kenny and Kathy aboard No Zip Code here.  We traveled with them on the rivers off and on from Ottawa, IL and hadn’t seen them since Orange Beach last November.  They have decided on a change of lifestyle after cruising for over 10 years and their boat will be included with other boats offered for sale at Trawler Fest at Kent Island the end of this week. They had a car so they drove us to The Boatyard Restaurant where Carey and Nancy met us for dinner one evening.  We had some nice visits with Kenny and Kathy and Carey and Nancy during our stay here.  We bid them best wishes and said goodbye on Tuesday when they took their boat to the show.

We worked through the repairs and the holding tank odor is hopefully gone (rebuilt macerator system) and the outboard repair is underway (rebuilding carburetors).  The tech drained bad gas (darn ethanol phase separation) and then tried to quickly clean and tune carbs to no avail.  So rebuild kits were ordered overnight and the carb pieces are in an ultrasonic cleaner, but unfortunately, this is holding us up and Tug LeeLoo went on ahead.  We will try to catch up with them in a few days.

Here is Tom the project manager….

We are getting quite a bit of rain the last couple days but we have been able to walk to the Giant Supermarket (about a mile away), West Marine and other stores to pick up a few things. While at Giant, Julie thought a person looked very familiar. After getting an aisle or so away, she remembered. So we walked over and talked to Marie from the boat Felix who we went to Flo’s Conch Bar in the Berry Islands and we last saw in Spanish Wells in the Bahamas.  She and Bruce have been in Annapolis a while now and it was great to catch up with Marie!  What a small world!  They will be heading south this Fall as well, so we may cross paths again.

We’re not sure how the technician is going to put carburetors back on the dinghy in the pouring rain today…we’ll post again once we move south on the Chesapeake which may be Saturday looking at the wind and waves report.  The rain coming down….

We walked to the library 1.5 miles between rain showers to post this.  No Wi-Fi at the marina and our data plan was quickly used up!  Thanks for following our blog.