Annapolis to St. Michaels

This sea of masts gives you a little idea of
how many sailboats are packed into Back Creek

Back Creek in Annapolis was a frustrating place to try to anchor.  The cruising guides warn about not blocking access to the docks and not anchoring in any city mooring areas.  That leaves precious little room for an anchor - especially one like ours with only 20 feet of chain.  Most boats we saw used all chain.  One cruiser told us he had been anchored in Back Creek for 4 days and had to re-anchor 4 times.  Reluctantly, we parted with $30  for a city mooring.  Annapolis has more beautiful sailboats per square foot than any other port we have ever seen.

We took off too late in the afternoon for a hair-raising tandem ride on a very busy 4 lane  road to the Giant Supermarket.  Waiting behind a bus at a red light in a turn lane for 2 lanes of traffic was unnerving - but we survived.  We managed to fit quite a few groceries into our panniers with a dozen eggs bungeed on top of our trunk rack.  Our real challenge was getting the bike folded up and carrying it down a ladder to our dinghy that was no longer at the bottom  of the ladder.  The dinghy had been displaced by other dinghys.  Luckily one of the owners came by and not only moved his dinghy but he waited around to receive the bike as I lowered it to him.  Maryanne is training to be an acrobat.  She climbed down the ladder and almost jumped into the dinghy.

We debated where to spend the next several days of bad weather. To the Solomons or to St. Michaels - that was the question.  We decided after hearing rave reviews of St. Michaels that we would head there.  After we started we began debating.  Do we go the direct route by way of the Miles River to the harbor in St. Michaels or do we go the long way and take the back door through a canal in Tilghman Island and travel through a labyrinth of creeks off the Choptank River.  The cruising guides told us that anchoring room in St. Michaels was limited and that the holding isn't good.  Further it was explained that if you drifted across the channel on your anchor you would get a ticket from the police.  The advantage of the creek was - no tickets and good protection from bad weather.  NOAA  which has been reliably inaccurate in its forecast of winds this week has predicted possible gale warnings within the next couple days.  The creek made sense not only for the protection but it will offer us a more direct route south when we decide to finally go.  I did push the limits of the creek as far as I could.  I went to the last spot on the creek that was marked at 7 feet.  My depth finder read 4 feet.   I'm guessing that the depth finder is off by about 2 feet so that should give me about 6 inches of clearance over the bottom.  I hope that's enough.

Which side of this bridge would you like to fit
your 62 foot mast under?  I wanted to push the concrete wall
further to the left!  This is the "back door" through Tilghman Island
(Setting for Michner's Cheasapeake) 

We managed a quick walk into town to see where we might want go when the forecast rain lets up.

This is one of the many Chesapeake Bay Skipjacks that call
Tilghman Island home.