To Solomons and back again…

To Solomons and back…

For sailors, winds are always fickle. That is especially true here on the Chesapeake in July and August, as we found out this past weekend. With hopeful forecasts, we set out on Friday from Annapolis bound for Solomons anticipating a long sail in advance of the racing crews sailing down overnight. Well, we found light winds on the nose with no point of sail that would allow us to shut down the engine……… on the other hand, the overnight forecast also turn out to be wrong and the racers had 12-18kts of useful winds J

Saturday was a quiet day with only a dinner and evening party on the agenda. Valinor became the ‘party’ boat with 10-12 folks packed into our smallish cockpit for a fun evening after an excellent meal at the Marina restaurant.

On Sunday, others chose to make their way up river for crab cakes at Stoney’s, leaving the return trip to Monday. We chose to split the trip home and motor/sailed to Dun Cove off Harris Creek and anchored for the night. To add some excitement we were visited early evening by a nasty squall with heavy rains, gusty winds and lightening all around. Fortunately the lightening past us by, winds died down and the rain quit by the time we called it a night.

Interesting ‘greenish’ quality of light at Dun Cove

Monday morning, after a good breakfast, we headed for home with hope of finding friendly winds.  Instead we found the skinny water on the east side of Knapps Narrows. After a few tries, we broke free of the soft mud, got back in channel and made it to the main stem of the Bay. NW winds made it hard to make progress northward. We motor/sailed across the Bay toward Chesapeake City, then tacked toward home. Variable winds made sailing OK to pretty good. We shut doen the motor and enjoyed the quiet until we got north of Bloody Point at which time winds died to less than 2kts and we motored again the rest of the way home. After a stop at the fuel dock we made home slip, cleaned and secured the boat.

All in all, not as much sailing as we’d like, but good company and a fun cruise!

Link to SPOT track –

http://www.findmespot.com/spotadventures/index.php/view_adventure?tripid=310595