June 27, 2014: And now a quote from our broker: *yawn*
Day 12 – Deltaville, VA to Annapolis, MD, 90.5 miles, 6.5 (looong) hours
This one is going to be short but sweet. As no doubt you already know, we left Deltaville late – around 11:00am – in order to find a better weather window for our 95 mile push north to Annapolis. Everything was looking good as we left the protected harbor of Deltaville and turned north. Unfortunately mother nature had other plans. For those who’ve never been on the Chesapeake, it’s big. Really big. As in, when you’re cruising in it, you can’t see shore to shore. It’s more like a sea than a bay. Anyway, the waves were nose on, about three feet, and according to my observations, had about a four second dominant period. And that was the average. Toss in some nice sharp four footers that were closely spaced and rolling over on themselves and ol’ Sequel took a good pounding (as did we), with spray and sometimes entire sheets of water cascading up over the entire helm deck. At one point Amy became airborne while sitting on the head (yes – she’s going to kill me for saying that).
During the run I texted our broker Peter, complete with a short video of the conditions, and asked him if I was driving the boat too hard. His response was awesome – and is the title of this post. He said, “Drive her like you stole her”. Enough said.
Our plan was to make Annapolis by day’s end, but at the reduced speed we were forced to do it was looking pretty dismal (and not like the swamp). According to our ‘plotter we weren’t slated to get in until after 11:00 at night! Ugh. Fortunately the seas laid down after 2:30, as we were hoping, and we were able to let Sequel run at a nice 19 knots for the second half of the trip, letting us make landfall at a much more reasonable 5:50pm. We ran through the mooring field and picked up a mooring amongst the dazzling array of boats. J boats sailed past us on the way out to a race, megayachts toured around the harbor, crazy rowing things rowed past, and everything you can imagine that can float and costs money ran past our “back yard” as we sipped martinis prior to an excellent grilled meal.
We’re going to have our second “down day” tomorrow, and play in Annapolis. Now I am ready for bed!
Oh, and Jeff our excellent dog walker and house sitter, sent us some encouragement from home…
See more of John’s blog here.
