Here she is: the Salty Dog, our home for the next few weeks. The "Dogger" was here for hurricane Isabel just a month earlier and rode out the storm without incident.
We got a chance to tour the historic town of Annapolis, the "Athens of America" chartered in 1708 and named after Princess Anne, heir to the throne at the time. Earlier the city was called Anne Arundel's Towne after the wife of Lord Baltimore. Annapolis is about 20 miles south of Baltimore.
Cruising Note: We went to Fawcett Boat Supplies in Annapolis in order to find a copy of Skipper Bob's Anchorages of the ICW, and Skipper Bob's Marinas of the ICW, two very important publications with lots of local knowledge about the ICW. Do not travel the ICW without the latest Skipper Bob!
This is the Maryland State House in Annapolis, MD.
I never knew that the US capital was located in Annapolis!
Annapolis had been hit hard by hurricane Isabel, but everything seemed to be up and running fine by the time we visited a month later.
Larry Polster of Krogen Yacht Sales (left) gave us a ride from the rental car return office back to the boat. (Thanks again Larry.) It was time to begin the trip, so here we are moments before leaving...
Our first day of cruising took us to Solomons, MD. We tied up at Washburn's Boatyard next to a freshly painted Nordhavn 62, a sort of cousin to my old Nordhavn 46. Here is a self portrait of me with the Nordhavn 62.
The sailboat in the upper left corner is also named "Salty Dog". Its owner Scott (lower right) was telling Erich that he should just sell his Krogen on eBay. Scott sells everything on eBay. Erich thinks the onlooking swan attacked him here last year.
We got away at sunrise most days, and here we are leaving Solomons to enter the Chesapeake Bay.
Cruising Note: The Chesapeake has very little tidal variation compared to here in the northwest. We enjoy 8-12 foot tides. The Chesapeake often has only a one foot tidal variation with at most has about 3 feet of variation.
Out in the Chesapeake are a series of neat lighthouses out in the middle of the Bay. The fishermen congregate near these, as the fish presumably are near them as well.
This day of travel from Solomons to Deltaville had great weather and quite a few other boaters enjoyed this Saturday as well.
Cruising Note: The Chesapeake is absolutely huge, being 168 miles long and 23 miles wide, but it is quite shallow. We enjoy 50-100 feet of water only 20 feet from the islands in the San Juans, and 500-600 feet in many places of Puget Sound. By comparison, the Chesapeake is 10-20 feet deep in most places. There is a deep water channel to Baltimore dredged to 50 feet deep, but this is mainly for the large container ships and Naval craft. In some places we could not see land and we were in... 12 feet of water. This was hard for me to get used to. The biggest problem with such shallow water is that when a storm blows up, 1-2 foot seas are terrible, while 3 foot seas are really out of the question.
Last updated: 2003.11.21.