I don’t much like this expression. My hackles go up when I hear it. There’s something Jerry Springer about it, is how I’d describe my dislike of it. But for some reason, I can’t resist using it to describe how we were treated by the Chesapeake Bay on September 22nd. Which brings me to the third lesson, in our triad of lessons learned.
Sassafras River to Worton Creek, Maryland (22-Sep-2012)
I didn’t even think I’d have time to upload this post, but I’ve completed my mountain of laundry and I’m just hanging around the Annapolis waterfront waiting for Phill to get back from his shopping expedition.
Back to lesson three. We got up early, and managed to be out of our anchorage in the Sassafras River by 7 am.
It was a beautiful morning, and we had a chance to see some young crab fishermen at work. The younger looked to be in his early teens – maybe giving Dad a break on a Saturday…
As I mentioned, it was a beautiful morning. When we’d listened to the weather report, there was a small craft advisory in effect for the area we were travelling. The winds and wave heights forecast didn’t seem bad, and besides, we didn’t think of Water Music as a small craft.
That was a mistake. Shortly after we finished a nice breakfast, we noticed the spray get messy as we came out of the lee of a large point of land. Then it quickly got bad. We got pounded. We could barely recover from a wave when we got hit with the next one. The wave period was short, or the frequency was high, (or whatever, I should definitely know better what I’m trying to say) but it spelled major discomfort for us. We got owned by the Chesapeake, and made for the nearest anchorage with our tails wedged firmly between our legs.
So lesson #3 is pay attention to small craft advisories on unfamiliar bodies of water.
It’s not all bad – we got some heavy weather experience, we had the good sense to seek safe harbour (we were only making progress at 3 knots in the worst of it), and we got to explore a beautiful creek we would otherwise have by-passed, as our destination for the day was Annapolis.
Our safe harbour was Worton Creek, on the Chesapeake’s eastern shore. It’s a very nice place. Since we hightailed it to safety (or did I say low-tailed it?) early in the day, we had the unusual pleasure of not moving for an afternoon, and nothing else really to do (we were also incommunicado – our internet do-dad couldn’t find any networks).
So we tried trot-lining for crabs! Here’s our set up:
The theory is, you hang the line over the side, wait ’til you feel a nibble, or the weight of a crab attacking the bait, then slowly raise the line to the surface, until you can scoop the crab up in a net. We didn’t even have a net – we were just hoping to see a crab. Anyhow, there was A LOT of activity on the trot line, but I was unable to raise it to the surface to see what was eating the bait. If I had a fish hook, I’m pretty sure I would have caught something (felt more like a fish than a crab, in my estimation).
We got a few more boat chores done, then called it a day. We got another lesson the next day. We don’t count it as the fourth, though, because it was due to an anomaly, and the same thing happened to the other people in the anchorage. But I’ll tell you about that next time…
‘Til then…