Cruising the Chesapeake Bay |
Last week, Lila and I had the opportunity to
ride the “FITZY”, a cruiser (or trawler) up the Chesapeake Bay from
Norfolk to Baltimore with Pete and Sandy Fitzwilliam.
Pete’s brother Dave, who is letting Pete and Sandy sail the
Great Circle route around the eastern part of the United States over the
next six months, owns the boat. Pete
and Sandy left Florida in April heading up the east coast, will go
through the Eire canal, the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi and
some other mid-west rivers back into the Gulf of Mexico and finally over
to western shores of Florida.
This is a route that many sailors would love to take and about
which books have been written. Pete
was a Captain in the U. S. Navy and we have known each other for at
least thirty-three years. He
has commanded four or five major ships and is the type of person with
whom you would want to go to sea. He
instills both confidence and understanding in boat handling, and is
willing to teach others. Sandy
is a perfect team player, certainly supporting this project and Pete in
every way. Well, we signed
on for the leg described above and did so within sixty seconds after
getting their email describing the trip.
It was a wonderful learning experience for me, in addition to
being fun and being able to share time with great friends.
Pete
would linger over the charts as we cruised always checking our position
and continually reviewing his observations with me.
Each morning, over coffee, we would prepare a navigation plan to
reach the destination for that day.
There was a GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) receiver on board
and I would insert our waypoints from the navigation plan and establish
a route to the destination. In
addition, I was responsible for line handling and tying up the boat at
pier side and making it secure each time we came into a marina.
We
really had no problems except for some idiot (me)
who poured water into the crankcase by mistake…we did not start the
engine and had the crankcase oil changed and then continued on our
journey. I guess the most
fun I had was learning and executing the navigation procedures…setting
up the plan and watching it unfold with the help of the GPS, the compass
and the ever ready charts that were used to identify and confirm buoy
positions and water depth along the route. Operating the ship was
relatively easy for we had the GPS as I mentioned and autopilot that
kept the boat on a steady heading with amazing accuracy.
The
weather on Sunday and Monday was quite windy which prevented us from
heading out to sea, but we did get away early on Tuesday morning.
We headed north into the bay making good time and decided to
spend the night at the Tides Inn in Irvington, Virginia.
After getting set at their marina, we walked into town and saw
the sights, which took us less than thirteen minutes.
We then
Now
the next day we were really getting into this routine so we planned
another trip across the bay…this one to Solomon’s Island, Maryland.
But this time we went awry because after arriving at Solomon’s
Island we toured through the town and were inadvertently drawn in for
happy hour at a local bar and delayed there for a while.
Well, when we did get back to the boat, and I do not know how, we
did not have a cocktail party aboard the boat that evening, …we just
had dinner and went right to bed because we were so bad…oops, I mean
tired.
Well,
our last day on board arrived and our journey was to take us from St
Michaels to Baltimore, Maryland through Eastern Bay, Kent Narrows and
into the Chester River. We
headed north through the Kent Island narrows, with the bridge opening as
we arrived and successfully transited the narrow channel that took us to
the mouth of the Chester River, then across the Chesapeake Bay one more
time and into the Patapsco River heading into Baltimore Harbor.
The transit up the Patapsco River to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor
is about six miles.
During that transit, a weather front started to move through the area
kicking up some high winds and a little rain.
Only here did we meet some ferocious winds and some crazy people
in a sail boat that flirted with death as they darted in front of our
boat. Sailboats under sail
always have the right of way so we had to give way.
Our 42-foot trawler facing off against a six or eight foot
sailboat is no match. We
could have come close to killing them, if it were not for our urgent
stopping of the boat to avoid a collision.
Following that harrowing ordeal, we were in our slip in downtown
Baltimore within about fifteen minutes.
We all
had an excellent time and Lila and I thank Pete and Sandy and Pete’s
brother, Dave for letting us share a piece of that experience with them.
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