Maryland My Maryland

We left Portsmouth Virginia bright and early yesterday morning for what would be our longest day on the water to date. The 160 mile run is all open water the entire distance on the Chesapeake Bay and when the winds blow it can create less than pleasant conditions. Just the same, knowing that things weren't going to get much better the next few days, we opted to venture out and take our chances. Well, that may have been a bad choice as the ride was very rough, very wet and very difficult. It's never fun to get beat up on a boat with water crashing over the bow and bouncing up and down like a cork in a tub. But we were in the thick of it decided to just continue on and get it over with.

If the weather and seas didn't present enough of a challenge, we were once again the subject of a military interception, this time by the US Navy that were conducting practice bombing runs just west of the Patuxent Naval Air Station. There is a designated "restricted area" right in the middle of the Bay on the nautical charts that I have always avoided but this time was properly "instructed" to navigate to the far west shore and remain there until cleared. Given the sea conditions we were dealing with made this detour all that more unpleasant. But when you see Navy aircraft make low flying live bombing runs, it kind of gets your attention. Needless to say, the Admiral's pucker factor was a 10+.

By the time we finally arrived in Annapolis, the boat was covered, and I do mean covered, in salty sea spray. We were both very tired but relived to be off the water and "home" in Maryland.

As I suspected, the weather has become a factor in our continued travel north and it appears we will be "stuck" in Annapolis at least through the weekend. As much as we would like to get on with our trip, neither of us want to go through another nasty day on the high seas. Since a major portion of the next few days will be offshore in the Atlantic Ocean our timing to run the New Jersey coast will be closely monitored. Of course forecasts are often wrong so we have to take each day as it comes.

In the meantime, we are safely and comfortably docked in Annapolis where we have an opportunity to visit with friends, enjoy some Maryland cooking and get some needed service work completed .

Oh yeah, and relax too!