We slipped the lines around 8:30AM and headed out into the Magothy River for the last time.  The wind was up as promised.  The sun was rising just above our old slip.

But from the expression on his face, someone forgot his Wheaties.  Mixed feelings about leaving our home on the Bay.  Ferry Point was very good to us and is very well managed.  If you ever pull in, say hey to Kim, John, and the crew.  Stop in for some great food at The Point if you can.

We made good headway out of the Magothy.  Niki sailed the boat straight through the very narrow channel entrance and out onto the greater Bay.  As we crossed the busy shipping lanes leading to Baltimore Harbor, we said goodbye to the Bay Bridge, and headed into a little game of tanker tag.

 

 

There was a little commercial traffic heading north up the Bay with us, but most of the sailboats were headed due south.  With the wind directly on their nose, they were all beating into a decent chop under auxiliary power, while we surfed serenely down the small rollers that were building north .  Do those guys know something we don't?

The Tolchester Range angles towards the eastern shore of the Bay.  Just as the channel comes within a few hundred yards of the eastern shore, the channel makes a sudden dog leg to the west.  It is a narrow passage without any company, but we had a barge passing us to port right at the dogleg.  A south bound sailboat crossed directly in front of the tug and barge without looking.  We heard several large horn blasts from the tug before the captain of the sailboat looked up, and veered away from the barges path.  Good news too, because the barge captains only other alternative to avoid collision with them would have been to but the barge over towards us.  We fell in behind the barge after she passed us safely to port.

About and hour later we were passed by another longer flat barge being pushed by a big commercial tug.  The ranks of evenly spaced gulls along the length of the boat looked like a feathered cordon of hitchhikers.

 

 

 

 

We eventually made it to the C & D Canal.  The trip up the Elk River could not have been better.  The wind was steady out of the south and we sailed up the channel on a broad reach at hull speed.  We were able to leave the sails up all the way into the narrowing channel until we made the final turn into the Canal.

 

We were treated to an airshow as we motored up the Canal to our destination for the night.  A crop duster was working a field directly north of the water.  He made repeated low passes over out position on the water, as he climbed up off the field and circled back on another approach.

 

We passed the shipyard where Delaware maintains the dredges and workboats that keep the C & D deep enough to handle all the commercial traffic.  We passed under the big auto bridge at Chesapeake City, and as we turned the corner into the anchorage, we saw our last sunset over the Chesapeake Bay.