Eight Days in the Wilds of the Chesapeake

OK, only 5 nights were spent outside of cell and wifi range, so perhaps only those days count, but we had a good time anyway. After all, we wanted to reach civilization for the 4th of July.

The itenierary, which changed from the original plant but was good all the same. All tail winds, a rare occurance in itself.

• Tangier, VA (3 nights)
• Smith Island, MD (1 night)
• Solomons Island, MD (2 nights)
• Un-named Cove near Tilghman Island, MD (1 night)

I'm too tired to tell the story, so I'll just post some pictures, captions, and description where I feel so moved. Not literature. The office misses me and Practical Sailor Mag has me on deadline for several articles and I am thus distracted.

  This is what happens when you leave

 the head window open on a rough 

day; a minor flood of no consequence.

 
Day 1
Light winds, a lot of motoring... and then we hit a fall of 20-knots winds just north of Tangier, which made for some spirited weather work in big waves.  More importantly, we were nicely secured at Park's Marina before a major front charged through. There is really no practical anchoring in the area, and for a $1/foot with a nice bath house and rural quiet at the dock, who would want to? Parks is not the typical big city marina experience.

 Just in time

 

All settled in

Days 2-4, Tangier Island
I've got the activities all mixed up in my head and don't care which came first. Mostly we relaxed and un-hooked. You can get wifi at one lunch place, there are no cell phones, and what's the rush anyway? We swam, caught crabs, ate, explored, kayaked, read... and just hung out too.

 The fishing proved unproductive, but it seems Jessica can always round-up a bucket of crabs with a net and 30 minutes of effort. Crabs that have only been out of the water for 15 minutes are a whole other kind of fresh. 

 The "Uppards" are the norther island of the pair and are no longer inhabited due to erosion and general land subsidence. Nice kayak country.

 Over Tom's Hook

 

 East of Tom's Hook

 This is the main road, so small that a power outage blocks all traffic for the day. It's OK, though; there are smaller roads.

 A major industry is the shedding of pealer crabs into soft shells. The tanks have to be sorted every few hours, lest the soft shells turn into paperbacks any thus be released (pealers are generally too small to make legal hard shell crabs).

 A skiff on the beach in the Uppards. It holds water but just isn't worth enough to drag back the water, I guess. Soft in the bottom, perhaps.

Day 4, Smith Island
A roaring sail with a 20-knot tail wind, but all too short as the islands are within sight of each other. We kayaked, but didn't take cameras. We had the best crab cakes on the planet for lunch; Ruke's store is a hole in the wall, but they don't use filler and do everything right. The Smith Island 7-layer cakes are also obligatory.

Smith island is so quiet I would not recommend spending 2 nights unless it is simply a kayaking base camp.

Days 5-6
Another rollicking downwind sail, averaging over 8 knots for the passage, dock to dock. Chute up most of the time.

Solomons Island. Walked around town, ate, swam in the pool and watched the fireworks. Nice enough.

The Calvert Maritime Museum is well worth a visit, much different from its cousin in St. Michaels. More focused on life in the area (people and marine) than work boats, it is largly indoors, which is a blessing in mid-July. The screw pile light house is a twin to that at St. Michaels, but yet furnished very differently; the St' Michaels house was a spartan man cave for a pair of  watch keepers, whereas the Drum Point Light was virtually on-shore and was occupied by a family with children. The difference in furnishings (more bedrooms, less need to hoard supplies against the risk of issolation by storms) reflects the presence of a woman and is much more friendly.

  A fossil megaladon shark at the Calvert (Solomons Island) Maritime Museum. We wouldn't have mugged for the camera, but it REALLY looks like a comic book shark. My daughter found a fossil megaladon tooth 2 days later in Herring Bay. Big. She really has the eagle eye for fossil teeth and arrow heads.

  

We put miles on the kayaks, tested the Mantus chain hook a few times, ate, drank, watched movies, and stared at the heavens. Nice.

Day 7
Still down wind, but in a fading breeze, all spinnaker running.

The night was spent in an un-named cove off Harris Creek. A little shore line exploration and wading with my daughter. A nice picnic supper on the trampoline, facing into a cooling breeze, as temperatures fell and humidity fell. Our own private zen spot, not in guides, not visited by cruisers. We go there often.

Day 8
A brief stop at Dogwood Harbor on Tighlman Island to look at a pair of skipjacks. There is no anchorage so we tied to the town dock for 30 minutes, before the crabbers returned to off-load their catch in the early afternoon.

A nice slow reach across the Bay in a rising breeze to Herring Bay, where Jessica found the largest shark's tooth we have found to date (sand tiger, over 1-inch).  We anchored near shore for a time, packing up in the breeze rather than in the confines of the harbor.

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A nice family outing.