In One Bay, Out the Other

ANNAPOLIS

Narrow brick roads. Old colorful homes. Helly Hansen gear everywhere. Buzzing harbor. Too many masts to count. Dinghy docks at the end of every road. Water taxis. A world built around boating, and we were in love.

Annapolis is dubbed the sailing capital of the US; how appropriate that for our first visit, we arrived via sailboat! With Tyler joining us for our weekend in town, we tucked Elpis away in Spa Creek and explored what would soon become one of our favorite cities. We were enchanted by hundreds of years of nautical history oozing from the cobblestones, and the presence of sailing ingrained in all aspects of the city. It felt like home.

Having gone to school there, Tyler became our tour guide. He opened our eyes to soft shell crabs: Emily’s eyes were open very wide when seeing the full form of a crab on bread and we were a little uncertain about the fact that he actually ate it. We checked out the academy, and also stumbled across the most amazing used bookstore- complete with an overflowing “nautical” section. I had the most amazing breakfast of my life: crab cakes benny, and I’ve been dreaming of it ever since. With most of the country in a heat advisory, we spent as much time as possible hiding in air conditioned stores; the windless streets felt like a recipe for heat stroke. Also with Tyler’s help, we were able to take apart the carburetor on the dinghy engine. Water had seeped into our gas can and we successfully drained it back out. Thanks Tyler! To top it all off, our friend Trevor was able to visit from Arlington, and the great achievement of our Saturday night was buying the last pizza from the late night store and running away before all the angry people still in line could steal it from us. All in all, a pretty great weekend.

HAPPY JULY 3RD

The heat advisory persisted as we carried onwards. Our route was to head to the top of the Chesapeake Bay, take a man-made canal to the top of the Delaware Bay (the C&D Canal), head down the Delaware Bay, then after a stop sail overnight to NYC. Our foreseeable future contained a lot of long travel days, and no break from the oppressive heat.

Just a few miles before entering the canal, we finally broke. The hottest part of the day was yet to come, and sweat was pouring off my body like a waterfall. It was horrible. We were crawling along downwind at the same speed as the weak puffs of air, and there was only one option for escape. We were next to Elk Neck State Park, and we made a hard left for an anchorage next to a beach. It was time to swim.

If anyone has seen the Chesapeake Bay, you know the water quality is questionable at best. I stood on the bow pulpit with a halyard in my hand, staring at the brown murky water. I think I was looking for stingrays or jellyfish or some kind of evidence of a sea creature that was about to ruin my day. With a wild yell- maybe to scare away sea monsters- I leapt and swung out and at long last plunged into sweet relief. In the water, I couldn’t really see my legs because it was so murky, and the water was eerily warm. But it didn’t matter. It was better than the 107 degrees on deck (highly accurate data provided by Snapchat), and Emily and I paddled around for as long as we dared. Nothing nibbled our toes, and feeling spontaneous we headed for shore. We brought our hammocks and books, and spent the rest of the afternoon quietly swaying in the shade. We still ended up miserably hot and sweaty later as we finished our travels for the day, but it was totally worth it.

THE DELAWARE BAY

The Delaware Bay is a way less fun version of the Chesapeake Bay. It is much shorter, and is notorious for sandbars and strong tidal currents. Combine that with a stiff breeze from the wrong direction, and you’ve got way too much excitement for one day. We stopped at the Delaware City Marina to recharge and to get local knowledge about traversing the bay (our first marina since Charleston!). The owner gives a detailed briefing about the route and conditions, but no one gave us a heads up about the “doom and gloom” aspect of the talk. According to our informant, if the wind shifted just the wrong way the next day, standing waves would develop and drop us onto a sandbar and we would sink. Great. To prepare for our venture, we walked into town, checked out a super cool blacksmith shop, and drank two pitchers of margaritas. If we were going down, we would at least have had a lot of fun doing it.

Up at 4:30 the next morning to catch the tide, we began motoring into a headwind that lasted all day, took naps, tried to entertain ourselves by seeing stuff on shore that we couldn’t really see, and pulled into our anchorage three hours earlier than expected. I guess the only way Delaware Bay was going to kill us was with boredom. And we ran out of toilet paper- that was the worst. If anyone finds a t-shirt that says “I survived the Delaware Bay,” let me know.

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Shout out to the Delaware City Marina for sending us a postcard for staying with them, to Tyler for showing us his favorite sailing town ever, and to Trevor for making the trip out to visit. Thank you!