After making our grand entrance at York River Yacht Haven, the rest of the week was, thankfully, a quiet one. Memorial Day was supposed to be stormy so we didn’t have grand plans, but we took an Uber over to Yorktown and wandered the streets a bit. We took the Riverwalk to the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown and enjoyed spending a couple hours exploring, and the rain was good enough to hold off until we were back at the boat.
Chris had to travel for work during the week, and I took the opportunity to catch up with our friend Cyndi who lives in the area. We had a wonderful dinner at Thaijindesu in Newport News (it’s been AGES since I last had Thai), and it was so good to see her.
Chris asked me to plan our weekend cruising, so I chose Fleets Bay on Saturday and Oxford on Sunday. I wanted to keep Saturday easy but make sure we got some miles under our keel so that Sunday would be manageable, and Fleets Bay is a beautiful spot. Once you get past Solomons, there aren’t a lot of great options for anchorages until you get up to the area around the Choptank River, and Oxford has been on our list since we started cruising. The run up to the Choptank is a long day but doable, and it’s close to Annapolis, which is a must in our Chesapeake cruising itinerary.
When Chris got back I had us mostly ready to go, and we took our time finishing prep and having lunch – low tide was at 11:30, so I wanted to make sure we gave the tide a chance to come up a bit, and fortunately our departure was far less dramatic than our entrance. With nearly no wind in the forecast, we motored to Fleets Bay and arrived with enough time to enjoy dinner at sunset. Finding a good spot to anchor was tough with all the crab pots, but we managed to get ourselves out of the channel, which was all that mattered.
Sunday morning we were up early and joined a parade of northbound boats. I got some great practice hand steering in moderate waves downwind, which is something I very rarely do. Windara handles so well, and it’s a great skill to develop. Our sail to Oxford was a mixed bag – beautiful morning sailing gave way to light wind mid-day. We broke out the spinnaker but didn’t get to sail with it for very long. Last time we used it, we discovered that the lines for the sock were all twisted and funky, so we spent a good half hour trying to get that straightened out. By the time we managed to get it deployed, the wind was nearly dead (still, we did 2-3 knots in 3-4 knots apparent wind). I’m at least glad to know that’s all sorted now, and it’s always fun to get a little spinnaker time. Once the wind quit, the flies came by the hundreds, and we spent the afternoon defending the cockpit with a fly swatter. The carnage was insane – fly bits everywhere. The breeze filled back in later in the afternoon and we enjoyed beautiful sailing the rest of the way to Oxford, arriving shortly before sunset. We anchored off town in the Tred Avon River, and it’s a beautiful, peaceful spot. The only drawback is that we get a fair bit of wake as the fishing boats come and go.
Yesterday we didn’t get the dinghy launched early enough to go ashore but we did go for a nice little dingy mission before work through the main harbor. There are some beautiful boats back there, and it would be a wonderful place to anchor (but there’s not a whole lot of room).
This morning we took a walk through town and were looking forward to spending more time exploring after work. Unfortunately that was not to be – our poor, beloved Squall gave up the ghost late this morning and is beyond repair. I was so looking forward to going back for ice cream tonight (Scottish Highland Creamery is supposed to be really good) and to checking out St. Michael’s over the weekend. Instead we’ll be heading to Annapolis tonight in hopes of finding a new dinghy.
