Monday, June 15, 2020

Fishing Bay VA to Galesville MD

—Blogpost written by Bob


Fishing Bay to Great Wicomico River



We’ve been away from our home port since October 18–nearly eight months!  With the ongoing pandemic and our propeller shaft breakage, this has been our roughest return trip ever, making us question whether we want to leave again in the upcoming fall.  We’re both thinking about renting a nice little cottage near the beach for the winter and putting the boat on the hard for repairs.  

My concerns about the transmission leakage, the “shifting delay”, and the need for a rebuild play into this scenario since we could have the transmission rebuilt over the winter.


The pinkish color on the engine
diaper is from leakage of
transmission fluid.
Strong northerly winds kept us in our Fishing Bay VA anchorage until 10:30 AM, when they started to subside a small bit.  (Small craft warnings, which normally wouldn’t impact us, were in effect until 10 AM.)

Today was another rough slog against 14 knots (gusting to 16 knots) of northerly wind and the associated steep waves.  Most of the day our boat speed was under 5 knots!  We decided to stop near Reedville VA instead of going on to Solomons MD because we didn’t think we could make it during daylight hours.  


As we came into our anchorage we passed six or so small power boats that were anchored off a sandbar and the people were swimming—it was a reminder to us that today was Saturday and normally a time for recreation—not everyone was so serious about just getting home (like us).


We anchored in this little unnamed
cove along the Great
Wicomico River.


We anchored in 17 feet of water along the Great Wicomico River in a small unnamed cove just west of Sandy Point at 3:30 PM.  Our day’s progress was very disappointing, to say the least but there is no point in beating ourselves up over it--it was what it was.


The peninsula just to our east
from our anchorage.


Today’s trip was a measly 25 nautical miles covered in 5 hours for an average boat speed of just 5 knots and even that was due to our much higher speed coming into the more protected Great Wicimoco River at the end of the day.


Great Wicomico River VA to Galesville MD



We raised anchor at 6:15 AM (shortly after sunrise) but didn’t get underway until 6:30 AM—it took 15 minutes to coax the transmission into forward gear!

When we finally got forward gear to engage, we motored out the Great Wicomico River, eastward into the rising sun. The wind was very strong and right on our nose as we came to the mouth of the river—at the start it seemed pretty much like yesterday except the wind was coming from the east. As we turned north toward Smith Point, we partially pulled out the jib and motor sailed—this made our ride considerably smoother and faster. We were doing 7 knots pretty consistently!

As we were passing the mouth of the Potomac River, we decided to simply continue on to Galesville instead of stopping in Solomons—this way we could go directly to our boatyard, Hartge’s Yacht Yard, for repairs. (I hoped they could accommodate us but we couldn’t call them ahead of time because it was a weekend.)

We passed Cedar Point where we would normally turn in to Solomons at 12:20 PM. We were making great time!

In the early afternoon the wind shifted around to the north (the direction we were going) and died down a little—this made the afternoon a pure motoring trip with a less-than-ideal sea state. We were moving at 6 knots for the most of the remainder of the afternoon. As we got into the West River and out of the northerly wind, our boat speed increased to it’s normal 6.5+ knots.

As we motored up Tenthouse Creek, we prepared dock lines on both sides of the boat, not knowing what we’d find in terms of a docking space. As soon as we identified an open space, I allowed the boat to drift into the the docking space and pulled the shift lever into neutral and then applied reverse thrust to stop the boat and move it to port against the floating dock. It worked perfectly because I wouldn’t have had an opportunity for a redo since I couldn’t count on using forward gear again.

We finally docked at Hartge’s Yacht Yard on Tenthouse Creek (just off the West River) at 6:45 PM.  It was a long (12-hour+ and 77 nautical miles) tiring day but we made it!


s/v Rainy Days tied to the outermost
floating pier at Hartge's Yacht
Yard on Sunday evening,
June 14.


Stay tuned for rest of the story on our transmission repairs...


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