Day 127, Sunday October 27th

Day 127, Sunday October 27^th – Back on the move

We are up by 6:22 to get on the boat ready for daybreak departure.  We are pleased as we are dropping lines by 7:00 and make a perfect exit from the Sitler’s dock.  But as we are leaving, (only about 10 feet away) we realize we had left two of our fenders which we had tied to the dock.  Drats!  We do a circle and pull back up to the dock carefully as there is the slide, the power cat, and a post to navigate.  Dawson jumps off once we are within 2 feet and going slow and quickly frees the offending fenders and is soon back on board.  We only lost about 15 minutes.  Oh well, most likely it won’t matter at the end of the day.  We want to anchor in daylight so sometimes 15 minutes is important.  The days are getting shorterhorter.  We have only 11 hours of daylight now as opposed to the 16 or 17 we had when we first got on the boat.  Not that we want to be travelling 16 or 17 hours, but it reduces the safety factor a bit for finding safe harbour in daylight with shorter days.

It takes us almost an hour to get down the Severn River where the city of Annapolis is.  We are glad we are as early as we are as it is Sunday morning and the coast guard is already announcing a caution at the mouth of the river due to racing events.  The racers are still in port so we have little to navigate around.  There are a few boats in front of us and a few behind.  We recognize some of the names on our AIS (automatic info system), so call them on the VHF radio.  Our buddy boat, Slow Waltz is just behind us about a mile, as well as Quiesence.  We are also hailed by Free Rein, who we have not met, but had emailed a couple days ago as they are also Salty Dawg rally colleagues and there spot tracker had come up showing us to be in the same area.

We are able to sail, although winds are light so after about an hour, we decide to hoist the Assymetrical (similar to a spinnaker).  We hoist it from the main cabin which makes life nice and easy, and we are happy we rigged it properly and without scratching our heads.  This sail has been a bit of a challenge and previously injured Dawson’s hand quite badly.  We look beautiful with our colourful sail ballooning off the port side.  Gwen captures a few pictures for us which is great.  A few other boats also decide to hoist their colourful sails as it is an unofficial race.  (Whenever more than 1 sailboat is heading in the same direction there is pressure to trim sail and make the most of the wind, hence “race” to the next port of call).  Unfortunately the race got called due to wind and the iron genny got turned on.  We did not want to risk getting to landfall at night so hit the slow speed threshold.

We made Solomon Islands by 5:00 and anchored successfully first time.  It was warm in the anchorage.  It has been quite cold and we have been bundled up for the last 3 days.  We enjoyed the sunshine for about an hour until the evening cool crept in to chill us. Another boat, Voila that we had met on the Erie Canal, but who chose to truck their boat to Annapolis came in about an hour behind us.  We are now 3 Salty Dawgs in the harbour. 

Gwen and Guillaume paddled over for dinner and sundowners.  We chatted about the next anchorage, the weather, cooking, and boat maintenance late into the night (at least 9:30) then parted to hit the sack for an early morning.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson