Baltimore to St. Michaels

—Blogpost written by Bob

Baltimore to the St. Michaels

We left our slip in Baltimore at 7:15 AM on Friday, October 18, 2019—the sun was just coming up.  Our boat neighbors helped us with dock lines. The morning was cool (about 50 degrees F) but fortunately the wind had died down considerably compared to yesterday. Traveling out the Potapsco River was heading almost directly into the rising sun. 

We went under the Francis Scott Key Bridge
on our way leaving Baltimore.

The boat easily moved at 6.7 knots with her recently cleaned bottom.  A 10-knot wind was shown on our wind instrument blowing from behind as we motored out the Potapsco—this means that the true wind was nearly 17 knots (a little higher than predicted).

As we got into the bay, the wind-caused waves were a bit larger and this slowed our boat speed somewhat.  A little later, the tide shifted to outgoing and our boat speed increased to 7 knots. We could have motor-sailed (with the engine running slower) but we didn’t.

We were under the Bay Bridge by about 10:20 AM,
making good time heading down the bay.

We turned to port when we reached the
Bloody Point Light (shown above).

When we reached Bloody Point Light we turned to port and traveled up Eastern Bay (against the outgoing tide) and into the Miles River to St. Michaels.  We anchored just outside of St. Michaels at 2:30 PM.  Even though we left on Friday (which is considered bad luck for sailors), it was a completely uneventful day (or so we thought at the time).  We traveled 46.7 nautical miles today in 6.25 hours, averaging over 7 knots.

First Stay Over Day in St. Michaels

The temperature dropped to 46 degrees last night.  Without shore power, the temperature inside the boat got down into the high 50’s/low 60’s. We had an extra blanket and a big warm cat (Lola) to keep us warm during the night. In the morning, we promptly started the propane fireplace to warm up the cabin. The sun started to warm up our enclosed cockpit at 8:30 AM on October 19, 2019.

A view of St. Michaels harbor from our anchorage. 

Because of the low angle of the sun coming up, it took a while for our solar panels to start producing power—in fact, they didn’t start until about 8:30 AM but I’m confident that they will do their job throughout the day and we’ll have fully restored batteries by the evening.  (By 10:30 AM they were producing nearly 6 amps.)

Last night, our masthead anchor light didn’t work—it was the first casualty of our trip. (It wasn’t used at all over the summer.)  We employed our little solar-powered Luci light in the cockpit to act as a substitute anchor light.  So, first thing on today’s agenda was pulling the electrical panel off and checking power to the anchor light.  I was hoping for an "easy" fix--it was.  There was no voltage supplied to the terminal that the anchor light was connected.  It was easy running a red wire from the positive side of the master switch to the terminal and that solved the problem.  How or why it was not connected to 12-volt power is still a mystery though.

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Our purpose in coming to St. Michaels was to participate in a Mid-Atlantic C&C Rendezvous which is merely a gathering of local boats made by C&C.  (C&C's were abundant in the 70's and 80's and even into the 90's but are no longer manufactured.  C&C was once the largest manufacturer of sailboats in North America.)  We stopped by the rendezvous at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum about 11 AM to check out what was going on.

s/v Rainy Days was anchored along the
northern shore of St. Michaels harbor.
We usually anchor along the
southern shore.

Most of the boats in the rendezvous were
docked at the maritime museum.

Talbot street is lined with shops
catering to tourists.

We stopped at the Galley, on the corner of Talbot
and Mulberry streets for a delicious lunch.

There were t-shirt shops
everywhere in St. Michaels.

An unusual sculpture created from
driftwood.  It was for
sale at $2,500.

We came back to the boat at about 2:30 PM so that Maggie could make crab Mac-n-cheese for the dinner at the rendezvous tonight.  We went back to the rendezvous and shortly thereafter walked the 7 or 8 blocks to the Lyon Distillery for a tour and tasting. 

One of the proprietors starts out the tour.

The second proprietor and master
distiller completes the tour.

"Sailor's Reserve" rum aging
in oak barrels.

Lyon Distillery makes rum, gin, vodka, and agave spice liquor (otherwise known as tequila) in their small distillery that is located right in downtown St. Michaels.  We purchased a bottle of their dark rum after the tasting.  Even though we've been on other similar tours, this was much more interesting than others for us.

We came back to the boat just in time for the Penn State-Michigan football game.  (Penn State won by a score of 28 - 21!  It was a hard fought game but they led the entire game.  They are now 7 - 0!)

Second Stay Over Day in St. Michaels

Last night was not quite as cool as the previous night.  We awoke to rain pattering on the cabin top.  We started our propane fireplace to warm up the cabin.  The rain continued all day--today was a complete and thorough rainout.

Maggie bails out the dinghy before we go
into the Crab Claw to have lunch.

We met up with the remaining people from the C&C Rendezvous at the Crab Claw Restaurant.

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Tomorrow morning we will be off to Solomons!  I will be publishing a new blogpost every 3 or 4 days as we continue down the ICW.  Stay tuned for more of this season's adventures...


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