Annapolis to Baltimore

May 2 thru May 3

—Blogpost written by Bob

We rode into Annapolis in our dinghy and took hot showers at the harbor master’s office and then got a light breakfast at City Dock Cafe (great coffee and bagels!) before leaving. We cast off our mooring line and stopped at Annapolis City Marina to top off our primary fuel tank with diesel. As we motored out of Annapolis Harbor we were motoring into a fog bank with 100 foot visibility at the most.  

A fog bank awaits us at the mouth of the Severn
River.  (This photograph was taken from
our mooring before departure.)

One nearby sailboat which we could see on our AIS (and later in reality) stopped and anchored rather than continuing on in the dense fog. We continued on but traveled at about half speed (3 knots) following waypoints I had established previously and watching for other boats, with and without AIS.  As we approached the Bay Bridge the fog began to clear for a short time. Later, the fog closed in again. By the time we reached the Potapsco River, the fog had cleared again but it was still very hazy. (This condition certainly justified my recent upgrade to my AIS system that I will be undergoing within a week or so.)

As we were coming into our marina in Baltimore, I noticed that our bilge pump was cycling more than normal. I decided to examine the source of this (new) problem later.

We arrived at our slip in Baltimore at approximately 3 PM—the trip took us 5 hours. We got our boat settled in and went up to the marina office to get a new parking permit and lots of packages that were waiting for us. At 4 PM a thunderstorm barreled through the marina.

We were exhausted from the constant attention required by traveling through the dense fog most of the day.  We felt relieved to have completed our northbound trip and to be in our summer slip.  (I never got around to examining the bilge pump cycling issue--it will have to wait until we clear out the quarter berth next week.)

Friday, May 3

The first major thing on our agenda for the day was getting our car out of storage. This was slightly complicated by the fact that I had a new license plate to fasten (I still had the temporary plate on our car from when we purchased it before leaving in the Fall) and a new EZ Pass transponder.  We got everything car-related done and drove to Annapolis to get things we need for preparations for the new canvas templating and stopped by Italian Market for lunch (pizza).

In the afternoon I tackled getting the proper forward slope on our hard dodger.  I had to remove about 7/8-inch from the forward 1-inch diameter struts to get about 3/4-inch forward slope on the hard dodger.  This little project took most of the afternoon--it was completed by 4:30 PM.  (This little project will allow our cockpit to be dryer during rain storms!)

Stay tuned for our summer in Baltimore...


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