So the next challenge awaits starting tomorrow when we will be thrust into a floating classroom environment for the following eight days as we become crew aboard Celestial, a 44 foot version of our 35 foot Winspell. There will be five students and one captain who will teach us how to sail on the open ocean and at night for extended periods of time. Donna and I have been studying navigation to knots for the past two days in preparation.

We have spent last week exploring the northern Chesapeake Bay which is almost fresh water and we had some good swims without jellyfish. We saw the Tall Ships depart Baltimore as well as several naval vessels including Canadians. It was good to see a Canadian flag other than our own.

It will be a while till our next blog as we circumnavigate the Delmarva Penninsula aboard Celestial. If you want more information, goggle The Maryland School of Seamanship-Delmarva cruise.

Until next time!

Donna and Walter

HMCS Iroquois leaving Baltimore harbour. Walt did dental exams on this relic in the early 80's

Equadorian Tall Ship

Crusty old Bay waterman, early morning, maybe that explains his crustiness-or maybe it was the lack of crabs...

Early morning coffee-Ahhh

10 knots of wind and 5.5 knots of boat speed-not bad

Check out the sail trim!!

18th century tea container with lock and decorated with paper scrap  swirls - an art form called "quilling".

The Harmon tobacco plantation main house where the "quilling" was on display.

From our anchorage at Worton Creek

 

The long span since our last blog is because we went home for a week, put the docks in and had a wonderful weekend with our kids in our home on lake Muskoka. Jenn's boyfriend, Eric, also joined us and we went cycling, took in a blues concert in  Gravenhurst, and Jenn bought a road bike.  

Andrew drove back down with us on June 5th and we have been cruising ever since with occasional days at Spring Cove Marina to stock up and enjoy the pool during the hot afternoons, and we attended a meet and greet of members of the marina. Andrew and a new found buddy went on a bit of a tear of the town of Rock Hall and sampled some of the local brews and bands. Andrew has adapted well to ship board life and it has been a pleasure having him around. He starts as dessert/pastry chef in a new up-starting Italian restaurant in the Byward Market in Ottawa when he gets back.

We have now pushed Windspell to new limits (and ourselves) sailing in 25 knot winds and 3-4 foot seas with shortened sail-plan (double-reefed main, staysail and furled genoa ) and she is very stable and sea kindly as well as being extremely sturdy.  We feel very safe in her hands. Also, we had visited new anchorages with Andrew thus increasing our repertoire.  We visited the Magothy Rover anchorage across the Bay from Rock Hall for one night.  We returned to Rhode river, and did not run aground on High Island this time!  We went for a quick swim, but the presence of jellyfish and rays "dampened" our spirits for this activity.  We had a wonderful sail on the day the Tall Ships were coming north to Baltimore.  We sailed south to intercept them while on our way to Wye Island.  Since they were heading north with the wind on their nose, they didn't have their sails up.  We saw several Tall Ships, including Indonesia's 191' Dewaruci; and Mexico's Cuahtimoc-a 270' Barque.  

From the East Wye River anchorage we sailed over to St. Michael's where we anchored in front of the stately Inn at Perry Cabin, then dinghied ashore to explore the town and Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  The Americans love their old boats which have been lovingly restored.  The beautifully restored houses are over 300 years old!  It's a lovely quaint town.  

We are back at the marina in preparation for Andrew's departure tomorrow.  Fortunately, there is an air show on for the War of  1812 Sailabrations 200 and we get to see the Blue Angels (equivalent Snowbirds for Canadians) as they set up to fly over Baltimore harbour.  Since we brought our bikes down this time, we have also been able to enjoy bike rides along the country roads passing through cornfields.  

till next time,

Donna & Walter

Heading towards Rhodes river south of the Bay bridge

War of  1812 Tall ship celebration, Mexican Navy Tall ship

The crew on their laptops in the main salon

Ship's cook

Indonesian Tall ship

Locally built schooner on a broad reach

Ashore at Wye Island nature reserve

Windspell anchored at St. Michaels  in front of the Inn at Perry Cabin

Traditional Skipjack oyster dredger and Chesapeake lighthouse with adjustable leveling legs, St. Michaels, Chespaeake  Bay Maritime Museum

Maryland waterman baiting his crab lines with  razor clams

Early morning out on the bay, crabbing

On Wednesday, May 23 we ventured on our second cruise of the Bay.  Our goal (based on the wind direction forecast) was to head across to the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, south of Annapolis to the Rhodes River to anchor overnight, and then sail back across to the East Wye River on the eastern shore  for several nights.  Walter had solved the mystery of why our dinghy motor was cutting off...old, foul gas; so we were looking forward to exploring with our dinghy.
We passed famous Thomas Point Lighthouse.  Because of the shifting sands of the Bay with the tides, the lighthouse can be levelled by adjusting the screws on the legs of the lighthouse!  We arrived at Rhodes River anchorage and were picking our way in following our paper chart and GPS chartplotter, but things just weren't matching up....There were supposed to be 3 islands, but we could only see two.  We slowed to a crawl to try and solve the discrepancy.  We are pretty novice relying on the GPS chartplotter so we were depending on our skills at reading the paper chart and matching it with what we were seeing.  Walt kept saying, "The GPS is saying we are heading onto an island!" and yet we couldn't see it.  Suddenly, we felt a nudge as the boat came to a stop.  We were aground.  Fortunately, the bottom is mud and with a quick reverse we backed off.  We had hit "High Island" as you can see from our GPS chartplotter!  There really is no land showing above water at any tide level.  We learned later that High Island has been eroded away with the tides.  We felt much better later when we met an experienced sailor who recounted how he'd been in there 5 times and run aground 6 times!
We relied on the GPS chartplotter to retrace our path out of the anchorage the next morning and set sail for East Wye River.  We had a lovely sail with 15 knot winds and sunshine.  We motored up the East Wye River and dropped the hook by Granary Creek.  The next morning we dinghied ashore to hike the trails of Wye Island.  It is a nature sanctuary.  There are trails through old growth forest with huge trees 250-300 years old, including a 275-year-old holly tree.  It was a very quiet, peaceful anchorage with blue herons and ospreys soaring around.  In the morning, crab boats slowly plied the waters checking their crab pots.
On Saturday we headed back to our marina slip.  We had a long sail of 27 nautical miles that took close to 12 hours with all of the tacking back and forth that we did.  However, being the Memorial Day Weekend with glorious winds and weather, the Bay was dotted with brightly coloured sails, so there was a lot to see.
Spring Cove Marina has been delightful.  Madelyn Reni, the owner, keeps the grounds and facilities immaculate.  There is a refreshing pool, picnic tables, and a friendly ambiance among the sailors.

Thomas Point Lighthouse

The nudge

Guess which one is the old growth

Powering up

Agitated Osprey 

270 year old Holly tree

The pool with marina in the background

Each morning as Walter & I continue to head out on our runs we spot numerous cottontail rabbits.  The surrounding cornfields are growing at least 3 inches a day!  We are looking forward to heading back to our home in Bracebridge for a few days to see family and friends.  When we return to Windspell, we will have our son, Andy, joining us for a few days.

Hi all!  We just came back from our first overnight (actually two nights) sailing trip away from the marina and still the vultures are going hungry. Well not quite.....During our first anchoring attempt Donna unfortunately confused the up and down foot control on the anchor windlass ( the captain did not provide detailed enough instructions with enough practise) and she got her thumb pinched. She is almost back to full capacity now. It's hard to keep her down. We had the anchorage on the Corsica river to ourselves except for some ospreys and a big fat water snake and we can not figure out how it managed to elude the ospreys. We have now sailed in 20 knot winds tacking upwind in 2-3 foot seas with reefed sails and all has gone smoothly and Windspell is very stable and sea kindly. We have also been out in our inflatable dinghy exploring the river around the marina.

Just before our first trip away from the marina, our good friend Dexter had two days of sailing with us on the bay and he very quickly realised that our GPS records all the tracks we have sailed unless we erase them. He noticed that we took him over a very well beaten path across the bay and back We of course indicated that the wind direction had been the same for all those previous days of sailing and that was why we had worn a groove in the display on the electronic screen!  

We are finding the marina is very pleasant largely because of the friendly and helpful boaters we have met. Lots of them have sail boats of the same make as ours which is one of the reasons we chose this marina and we are getting lots of advice and we use their boats as examples of how to set up ours.

 We miss the regular exercise routine we are used to at home but are making an effort to run in the mornings and stretch afterwards. There is a pool which will open soon so that should help. We plan to bring our bikes down in June and the roads are excellent with wide shoulders and picturesque country scenery.

We are learning about weather forecasting, radar interpretation, how our GPS works and also keeping up on our basic navigation skills. We have a few days of calm weather ahead and we will take the opportunity .to go out on the bay and swing our compass and create a deviation table for all points of sail.We will also check the calibration of our speed indicator and sum log (on the water odometer).

In short, there is plenty to keep us occupied but we are also looking forward to going home for a few days at the beginning of June to see our kids and friends and be in Muskoka in our own house again.

Bye for now!

Donna and Walt

Dexter takes the helm, Donna enjoys her e-reader

Looking at the well worn GPS track

On the bay

Practising our knots on a visit to historic St. Michaels

The christening

Traditional Chesapeake schooner

With our Windspell T-shirts

                                           Finally, the sails are up!

                                             The Admiral takes the helm.

                                             Mainsail, genoa and staysail

Two days ago was a big day for the crew of Windspell with many new firsts. The main thing was that the local vultures did not get a meal of us-yet.

We waited for calmer weather and left our marina slip early in the morning (that way we also had no spectators) and Walt got his first chance to drive our 9 ton home through a maze of docks, piles and costly boats. We popped out of the marina unscathed and headed for open water and a chance to practise turns,backing up, spinning on a dime etc before entering our home slip at Spring Cove marina. By 0930 we were safely suspended between six dock piles. We celebrated with coffee and Danish  and sat down by our laptop and viewed our very first webinar - the subject was the use of radar.

After lunch we braved another docking experience and headed out for our first sail by ourselves on Windspell. The conditions were perfect and our new friend, Garmin, the GPS made the navigating in unfamiliar waters like driving in a car similarly equipped. Knowing where we were at all times allowed us to relax a bit and focus on the actually sailing.

Windspell behaved herself very well, so much so that we went for another sail the next morning in a bit more wind. We practised reefing the sails (making them smaller) and sailed with various sail combinations.

Our good friend, Dexter, who was on business in Baltimore came to visit yesterday afternoon and he is our first guest. Ironically, he was also our first guest when we went cruising 27 years ago! We will be celebrating
our new  lifestyle on Windspell and our long friendship with the Champagne that Dexter kindly brought. He will be with us for a few days of sailing and R&R between his business meetings in Baltimore.

Donna was delighted to hear from both our kids for mother's day and we had an evening meal of BBQ fillet mignon.

It is raining today so it's a good day to do laundry and various other boat chores and of course composing this blog.


Donna and Walt

On Monday, May 7th during our breakfast we were interrupted by a rap on the hull.  "Are you ready?" asked a voice from below.  The travel lift had arrived to carry Windspell from her perch in the dockyard to the chilly waters of Chesapeake Bay!

Windspell being lifted in slings. A final touch of anti-fouling paint is being added to areas where support stands had held her upright on land

Travel lift carrying Windspell to Chesapeake Bay for launching

Ugh..that water is cold!

Windspell afloat dockside

We spent our first night afloat.  It was rather restless getting used to the rocking motion and new sounds of waves lapping against the hull and rigging singing  (Donna calls it "slapping").  We are no longer manoeuvring up and down a ladder, but have to judge our leaps aboard with the changing tide.  

As we await parts for the mechanic to begin the 1000-hour engine maintenance, we are practising with all of the electronics on-board, particularly the GPS chartplotter.  

Today we broke away from chores to go for a bike ride around the quaint town of Rock Hall using  clunker bikes provided by the marina.  The flowers, such as rhododendrons, azaleas, irises, peonies, and roses are in full bloom and their fragrances wafted through the air as we cycled by.  

Today is our son's birthday.  Andy turned 22 today!  Happy birthday, Andy!  It has been one week since we arrived in Rock Hall.  We have transformed Windspell from a shrink-wrapped chrysalis into a sea-going sailing vessel.  We have completed 4 coats of varnish to the teak toe rails, painted the bottom of the boat with another coat of anti-fouling paint, then cleaned and waxed the hull.  The sails have  been installed,  and the canvas awnings over the cockpit are reinstalled and sprayed with a water-repellent coating.  It only took us 3 attempts to properly configure the main sail.  We provided lots of entertainment to the ospreys.  We drove over to the marina, Spring Cove,  and arranged for our boat slip where we will be staying after we launch. Our first docking at our slip appears somewhat daunting because we haven't performed this type of docking before.  There are 4 posts that we have to lasso as we come in and stop the boat (hopefully) before we plow into the dock.  But first, we have to learn to drive this 9 ton boat!  We have permission from the marina dockmaster to practise in an area where there are no adjacent boats!!!  We're losing a bit of sleep over this as the time gets closer.  There is a dead tree nearby our boat where a number of vultures roost.  They are waiting in anticipation  for our docking attempt!