2025 Chesapeake Bay Cruise

After spending the first day getting familiar with the boat, preparing the navigation plan and provisioning, Mike, Shari and Kristen were ready to get underway early the next morning.  Captain Frank stayed quiet but alert as Shari, who had just spent four days with him in a 103 class, directed her crew in departing the marina and moving to a nearby open area.  The crew then performed a compass deviation data run, using the sun as our reference point.  We then got underway for Swan Creek Marina’s mooring field.

On our way down Langford Creek, we did an odometer calibration run between the green “7" day-beacon and the “LC” lighted junction mark,  After capturing the data in the logbook, we continued our trip down the Chester River.  It was not long after this that the boat sprang a leak!  Or did it?  No, it was the first of Captain Frank’s emergency drills.

This drill was initiated when Shari noticed, while taking her hourly logs, that the bilge pump was running excessively long.  Since the bilge had been pumped clear in only a few seconds in earlier log readings, the fact that this hour was taking over two minutes caused her to start looking for problems.  She quickly discovered that the raw water cooling system for the engine had “sprung a leak” and was pumping water into the boat.

After “fixing” the problem, Shari did a three-bearing fix and restarted her navigation plan.  In the debrief of the drill, all students agreed that this showed the value of taking the hourly logs.  Problems don’t always announce themselves with an alarm, and constant vigilance is key to the “offshore” mentality.

We arrived at Swan Creek Marina at a little before four in the afternoon.  We scoped out the mooring ball that Captain Frank had arranged for the class, but discovered that it was already occupied by another boat.  Luckily, there was another ball nearby that was free with a similar number, and we took that ball for the night.  We stayed alert in case someone else showed up to claim our ball, but had no nighttime visitors.  We decided that the problem might have been a typo in the reservation response (ball 8 vs ball 18).  Captain Frank prepared dinner while the crew finished out their navigation planning for day two and day three.  Dusk was falling as the crew wrapped up their efforts and settled down for the night.  

Underway around 6:45 the next morning, we motored out into the Bay and found that the forecast for the day was spot on.  Winds were out of the south at less than five knots, leaving us running the engine to get where we needed to go - Bloody Point Bar!  Our Skipper for the day, Mike, guided us expertly down the bay, passing under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge at the eastern small boat channel.  We found it interesting that there were no large ships anchored south of the bridge, but found this was, apparently, a benefit to the one ship we did see.  It passed through the anchorage area heading south, leaving us all alone as we transited just outside the deep water channel.  After five hours of travel, we made the turn at Bloody Point Bar Light and headed into Eastern Bay.  It was there that the fire broke out.

No, it was just another drill.  Mike pulled his crew together and found the source of the fire, communicating “by radio” with the Coast Guard and TowBoat to get help headed to us.  After successfully putting the fire out, we “called back” and turned back our rescuers.  As Captain Frank says, it’s better to get help headed to you and call them off than it is to wait until it is too late.

After getting a three-bearing fix, Mike restarted his navigation plan and off we went.  Interestingly, we found that, as we drifted while working on the drill, we actually were heading in exactly the direction we needed to go.  We didn’t have to adjust our course at all and were only required to recalculate our Estimated Time of Arrival at the next waypoint.

After working our way into the Wye River, using a technique of contour following (a far more interesting navigational challenge than simply following a set of buoys), we entered the Miles River and settled into St. Michaels Marina, settling in stern-to to slip 35.  After showers and a hearty dinner at Foxy’s, we returned to the boat and settled into air-conditioned comfort for the night.

In the morning, we were underway at about 9:30, headed out into cloudy skies.  There was a prediction for rain and possibly thunderstorms, but as we traveled, we continued to have that light southerly breeze, but nothing else.  We were able to determine exactly what the wind speed was, since we were traveling in the same direction as the wind and, on the boat, there was almost no air movement at all.  

We passed through the Kent Narrows bridge at 1230, after standing off so that a southbound power boat could go through.  Our Skipper, Kristen, handled all the radio communications easily, and we were soon heading out the other side.  When we passed the red “6” buoy in the Chester River, we stopped for a moment to contemplate what we had accomplished over the three days - a complete circumnavigation of Kent Island.  

Shortly after getting started on the last leg of this trip, Captain Frank experienced a medical emergency and passed out!  At least, that was what was reported to Kristen.  She called for assistance, declaring a “mayday” with the Coast Guard, following up with a phone call to 911.  Of course, this was simply another of the Captain’s drills, and no one was actually alerted.  Frank did, however, allow Kristen to put cooling bottles of fluid under his arms, just in case it was heat exhaustion - quite refreshing in the warm, humid air!  After resolving the problem, Kristen soon had a fix of her location, so we were underway again.

Based on the forecast for a warm, rainy evening, Captain Frank decided that we would go up in Langford Creek and set our anchors for the evening, using the Bahamanian mooring technique of two anchors off the bow.  Then, just as we started hearing thunder in the distance, we retrieved the anchors and started into Lankford Bay Marina to return to our home slip for the evening.  Since the crew had already proven they could sleep without air conditioning, we decided that we would take advantage of the availability of electricity, especially since the rain would keep the boat buttoned up all night.  We enjoyed our dinner of salad, pasta and Jello fruit cups in the cockpit as the rain fell around us and buttoned up for the night as the boat cooled down.

In the morning, we went back out and performed power crew overboard maneuvers, with first all three crewmembers being involved, then two (simulating that one of them had fallen off), and finally, single-handed recoveries - an important skill for cruising couples.

Then, it was back to the pumpout dock, the fuel dock, and finally our own slip.  As we pulled the gear off the boat and wrapped up the class, all three students agreed that, while they had had fun, the amount of things they had learned had been far more important to them.