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!

Well it's been three days since we arrived in Rockhall and started our "relationship" with Windspell.

We started reading to each other on the way down to Maryland on the 12  hour drive and the tradition has continued each evening after a long day of nurturing Windspell. The book is called Three Shades of Grey.

We are both running in the morning before "work". It is quite scenic with Ospreys scouting for fish, Vultures circling and roosting in a dead tree near by and the songs of many birds which would be a paradise for birders.There is a water tower overlooking our place in the boat yard where we are being watched by a nesting pair of Osprey that I'm sure have seen it all when it comes to sailors.getting ready to launch. They are likely concerned about our level of competency........

We have already met another couple with the same boat doing roughly what we are and I spend way too much time in the marina bath house in the morning after a run picking the brains of Randy who has lived aboard with his wife, Kathlene, for the past 7 years.(on their old boat) They now have a place in Florida where they just built a 100 foot dock to accommodate their recently purchased Island Packett 350, one we actually looked at last November but decided on Windspell instead.  They are heading south to their home over the next month before hurricane season.

Here is a list of our boat accomplishments so far:

• Put the sails back on
• Flushed the water systems of antifreeze 
• Started varnishing areas not accessible once in the water   
• Acquired a second propane tank
• Moved our clothes, kitchen supplies and tools on board
• Cut some too long bolts on the anchor windlass  with a grinder

• Started inventorying where things are located in various lockers on the laptop.

Tomorrow we will put all the canvass back and continue with the varnishing and top up the water tank.

There is an art show is Chestertown featuring local artists one of which we watched painting a local waterscape yesterday. If it's rainy we have the art show as a back up to"work".

Bye for now,

Donna and Walter

SV Windspell

Well ,well, well, look what we have!!

Dear friends and family,

This is our first blog ever. It's amazing what spin offs (blogging) arise when you are trying to make a major lifestyle change.Notice we underlined trying....

Getting away on a year or so sailing trip has its challenges. In this case it was in the form of a 37 ton drill rig that appeared on our side lawn for five days two weeks before departure. It spewed, as it drilled down 300 feet, a grey muck that threatened to smother anything green in its wake. We now  have great water but very sore bodies as we cleaned up this environmental disaster. On the bright side, we now have abs of steel from all the raking and shoveling which should prove useful when we man the winches on "Windspell", our new home afloat.

The car is packed,our house is decommissioned and in 12 hours from Wednesday morning April 24th, 2012, we should be pulling up beside Windspell in all her shrink-wrapped glory as she sits ashore chomping at her anchors to get into the ocean.

Stay tuned for more!!

Walter ( Skipper) and Donna (Admiral)

SV Windspell last November 2011, prior to sea trials in Rock Hall, Maryland in the Chesapeake Bay.