Solomons

Friday June 29
38 19.946N
76 27.434W

Big Day

Yellow X marks the spot

41 miles today - that's a big day, but we wanted to get to Solomons to have Saturday to prepare the boat for visitors. Turns out its a good thing we did not anchor out and came to a dock in a protected area. - there is a giant row of thunder storms heading our way - I am watching it on the radar. It has already knocked the power out in 60,000 residences in the DC area.

Our trip today was rather straight forward - out into the bay and north for 30 miles or so without a navigation change. Now we are in the Chesapeake we are learning to share the sea with big ships as the main channel is over 80' deep, and there are some big ports up north - Baltimore for example. In the last few miles we navigated into the XXX River and then into the creeks that make the inner harbor of the Solomons. We were well protected and secured to a new and solid looking floating dock.

We watched the storm arrive on our radar. There was a line of "purple and red" thunderstorms that was 100 miles long and 50 miles deep, travelling east at 60 MPH. We had stripped the vulnerable parts of the boat and tied down the rest well before it arrived, and a good thing too. When it hit us the wind was from the starboard forward quarter, and it was so strong it made the boat sort of kneel over, forcing it into the dock. I prowled around out side, adding bumpers and catching items as needed. The bar-b-que cover blew off, but I speared it with a boat hook and recovered it. One of the bike bags broke lose, but we could that as it was sliding over the deck. The harbor was a "maelstrom" with boats dragging (we did not see but were told) and furled sails being stripped of fore stays - makes a lot of noise! It was over for us in about 45 minutes. But the damage on land was quite severe - several days later there are still over a million people without power. The dock power only flickered a few times.


Launching the dinghy

Hooking up the hoist

This is quite a procedure so I thought it would be fun to document. It takes us about 30 minutes to launch and to recover, so we tend not to do it unless we are staying in one place more than overnight.

Cover off, hoist connected

Up and out

I get the easy bit