Solomon’s Island to Mill Creek, Virginia
Sun Setting on Mill Creek
We spent four nights at Solomon’s Island where we were visited by our friend Martha, a sailing buddy Shelly met many years ago and has sailed with all over the world. She stayed the night but we didn’t get out to sail. There wasn’t much wind anyway. The weather was very nice, with autumn temperatures in the 70s with lots of sunshine.
On November 4 we continued our run down the east coast. We had a long way to go today, about 50 miles to the next possible anchorage. Fortunately we had a lot of wind blowing in the right direction, from the north, kind of like when we sailed out of Annapolis. At times we were getting up to 7.5 knots with reefed sails, extremely fast for out boat. Lots of waves too, I would guess at least five feet at times. Here is a video of Shelly at the helm when she notices a 24 knot gust with 4 foot waves in the background. It was cool but not really cold, the only time I felt chilled was when I got soaked by spray blowing over the cockpit. Here a video of Shelly on the foredeck getting some things straightened out. Looks relatively calm but notice the horizon angle. That isn’t the world moving, that’s the boat rocking in the waves.
It took us about seven-and-a-half hours to get here, a tiresome day in those conditions. Shelly was expecting it to take at least nine hours, but because we had so much wind we got here a lot faster. On the way we crossed twelve mile wide mouth of the Potomac and are now in Virginia! Goodbye to Maryland for a year (if not longer). Tonight we are anchored at Mill Creek in Virginia just south of the Potomac (this is the third “Mill Creek” we’ve been to).
The next couple of days are fairly long but not as long as today was, looking forward to getting much further south where it is warm!
Posted in Sailing by Mark with 2 comments.
It’s nice and warm here in Florida; we’re waiting for you with a cold beer ready.
Coors Lite I hope!