Sunday we had a good sail down to the Great Wicomico, motor sailed in the afternoon.
The Chesapeake is big. Here's a vid to give you the impression we had. Can't help thinking of what it must have been like for John Smith to venture up the Chesapeake for the first time with no charts. I believe he took one of the cutters from the big ships and a small party when he did it.

On this journey we will have to make thousands of decisions, some of no great consequence but others we'll have to get right. Fortunately the first one we got wrong was from the first category. First we talked of anchoring in Cockeral Creek, the Mill Creek, but then reverted to the first choice after an ActiveCaptain review said it was a secluded anchorage as long as the wind was blowing away from the fish processing plant which it was. Fortunately the anchorage was full of lobster pots so we bailed on that idea and passed the Tangiers ferry with about 50 waving passengers. Definitely not my idea of secluded.

Mill Creek on the other hand was gorgeous. Here's a short video of it to give you a taste.

Got up before dawn again (well she sleeps in :). Here's a short pic for those doubting the veracity of this blog.

We thought this would be the last day of sailing but we didn't expect to get 15 knots of wind. It was great surfing down the 3 foot waves reaching 8.9 knots, Phil said he saw over 10, but the highlight of the day was a school of dolphins leaping and playing alongside the boat (I guess it was after school). I swear I heard them too.

Put into Back River, not an easy entrance in the wind conditions but with the chart plotter and Phil's iPad we got  in without a problem although it turned out both of us had been thinking about what we would do if the motor died. Phil would have put the sails up, I would have dropped the anchor.

We anchored in a quiet spot with no other boats around. Well, quiet until the Navy jets took off from their air base on the other side of the bay. We hoped the sequester would mean they wouldn't be practicing night flying and so far they haven't.
Well we didn't get any more flights but we did get Taps blasted over the base PA system in th evening, and Reveille at 6:00am