Start time and hours 0745 3354.91
End time and hours 1245 3359.83
After a relaxing
day on the hook in the Bohemia River it was time to make our way south down the
Chesapeake Bay. Our destination of
choice was Rock Hall MD https://www.rockhallmd.com/, a scant 35 nautical miles away. The forecast was iffy, winds 15-20 and seas
2ft. We decided that the boat and the
crew could handle it because it was such a short trip.
As you can see
from the video it was a bouncy ride. The
wind was off of our starboard side for the first few hours. We had to roll up the windows in the
flybridge because we were heeling over so much.
This helped, but not a lot. The
rolling was so much that we had to “tack” the boat to quarter the seas. I thought
that we bought a power boat so that we could go in a straight line, but here we
were tacking like a sailboat.
After about two hours of this we turned
slightly to port and the wind and waves were mostly from behind. This took care of most of the rolling but our
boat does not do well in a following sea.
Because of our semi-displacement hull (wide flat bottom stern) the
following waves pick up the stern and turn the boat whichever way they feel. It takes a lot of concentration to steer the
boat on any type of course when the waves turn the boat 30+ degrees on a whim.
While not a
dangerous ride it was a little bit uncomfortable, but not too bad. We reached Rock Hall in good time as we had
good tides all the way down the bay. We
entered the harbor and tied up on an end dock at the Rock Hall Landing
Marina. http://rockhalllanding.com/ The docking was tough as the wind was still
strong and the bow was being blown off of the dock. We managed to eventually get the bow over and
tied up nice and tight for the day.
Rock Hall is a
small town on the eastern shore of Maryland.
It is active in the summer, but this is off season and it is pretty
quiet. There is a nice grocery store
less than a mile away and we were able to provision for a few days. Most of the shops on the short downtown strip
were closed and the streets deserted.
We had a very
comfortable night on the boat and awoke the next morning to check the weather
reports. The reports were not great,
small craft advisory until noon because the winds had not calmed down yet. We decided to spend another day and night in
the marina. When I went to pay for
another night at the office I was told that the third night would be free if we
decided to stay, tempting.
I woke up around
6am and noticed that the temperature on the boat was 51 degrees. I turned the heat on (yes, we have heat on
the boat. We are not savages) and went
back to bed. A few hours later when we
got up it was fairly warm. It was the
first time we had turned the heat on during our trip down south, maybe we have
to move faster.
We got the bikes
off of the boat for the first time on our cruise and checked out the town. It is a small town. We rode around most of the town in three
hours and saw beaches, marinas, and the rest of downtown. Now I know why the third night is free. There is nothing to do after two days
here.
We rode to the
hardware store to get some supplies for boat projects. We had to re-hang the cross-stitch picture
that was in the V-berth and needed some wire.
The handle to the bathroom door broke so that needed replacing. We found both items at the local hardware
store and took care of these projects easily.
There was a West
Marine in town so of course we had to stop in and look. We ended up buying a Lower Chesapeake Bay chart
book for the boat.
Apparently, crabs
are pretty big in Maryland. We bought
some local lump crabmeat at the grocery store and had crab cakes for
dinner. The crab here is pretty good and
made for exceptional crab cakes.
After dinner we
settled in for the night and got ready for our cruise down to Oxford MD in the
morning.
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