Labor Day 2022 Vacation - Days 2 & 3 - Herrington Harbor South

We departed from Safe Harbor Narrows Point on Monday morning, after a quick breakfast of pancakes and berries, getting out just in time to request the 10:00 AM bridge opening of the Kent Narrows Bridge.

Vicky recorded two videos of us going under the bridge... two because the one she was working on was interrupted.   In the first video below you can hear her asking if I see the boat... it tuns out that someone decided that the best place to fish was right in the channel dead in front of the drawbridge.  You can hear me asking for the air horn... then the video stops because she gets the horn and I have to give five blasts to get the guy to move out of my path.  I make it through then the 2nd video resumes.

Video 1

Video 2

The trip down the eastern bay and across the main Chesapeake Bay was relatively uneventful.  Winds were essentially zero and the water was quite flat.  As we came down the eastern bay, Vicky unfolded the daybed in the cockpit and practiced her yoga.

Yoga on the water

Water was quite calm as we turned to head across the Chesapeake Bay

As we began our hour-long crossing, Vicky went below to prepare lunch and came back with this beautiful salad... tomatoes and mozzarella along with fresh Gardyn basil, greens and a red beet egg.

It seems that every time I do this crossing I encounter some sort of large vessel.  This is the tug Zeus pulling some sort of fuel barge

Once inside Herring Bay, we turned south into the approach to Herrington Harbor South.

Shortly after we tied up to the T-Head of B dock, we encountered this large-yacht traffic jam.

As we were getting tied up, Vicky took these two photos of local wildlife in the marina.  The first is clearly a turtle, then second she claims is a crab.  This set her off on a rest-of-the-day crabbing mission!

Is this a crab?

Now, this huge crab was right were we were docking and instantly Vicky's attention went away from getting tied up to how to snag this crab.  That left me and Sofia (the dock girl) to struggle to get everything adjusted right while trying to avoid Vicky who was focused on the crab hanging onto the pylon we were trying to tie up to.  

An argument ALMOST ensued.   I think she was initially miffed that my docking kept her from getting that crab... I know I was a bit annoyed at having to constantly step around her while tying off the lines and stringing the electrical cords.

We finished tying off, I gave Sofia a nice tip and Vicky immediately started crabbing.  This took place from mid-afternoon right up until dinner, then resumed for most of the evening.  (I wonder if she ordered chicken wings - only eating a couple - so she could have some crab bait after dinner.)

Vicky did manage to capture three crabs... but we felt they might not be big enough (or male enough), so right as dusk turned into night, they were given a chance to escape from the dock (which they did very quickly).

After the crabbing was finished, we sat in the cockpit and I worked on this blog post, while vicky followed the Chinese stock market - both of us enjoying the peaceful scenes from night at the marina and a crescent moon setting in the west.

I woke up early on Tuesday and did my sunrise walk.  The marina grounds looked wonderful with all their flowers and the lights still lit as the sky began to come alive.  I made it to the beach just as the sun was rising where I found a blue heron posing for me for some sunrise shots.

I wish I could say we did more... this is a resort marina after all, but this was one of those days where the heat index (aka "real feel" temp) was 100F, and frankly, I watched movies (which means taking naps during movies) and Vicky played with trying to catch some crabs.

I did venture out to the market across the street for lunch.

After lunch, more videos were the order of the day (again while Vicky played at catching crabs).  She did manage to catch one, but in the end she let him go as well since cooking crabs for only one didn't seem worth it.  

Late afternoon, Vicky went swimming as it began to cool and I watched a storm come in.  The storm never amounted to much down here (a fair bit of wind, but not much rain), but up in Rock Hall it looked like they got a stronger dose.

Around 6:30 Vicky finally gave up on the crabs and began to prepare a Blue Apron meal (Shrimp curry, green beans and rice) which we had out in the cockpit as the sun began to go down.  I interrupted eating to go forward and grab a few shots of the colorful sky.

We ended the day with nightcaps (Dark and Stormys) in the cockpit.  

Tomorrow, we continue south to Safe Harbor Zahnisers marina.  It looks like it will be a beautiful day and we should be able to actually SAIL south!

Summary of Costs

Herrington Harbor South - $284

Ketch 22 - $116

Chesapeake Market & Deli - $19

Dockhand tips - $10

Total for this section - $429

Labor Day 2022 Vacation - Day 1 & 2 - Rock Hall & Kent Narrows

 

It was a very satisfying moment late yesterday afternoon when my last meeting of the day ended, I finished a last-minute email, set the out-of-office notifications, and then SHUT IT DOWN!  For weeks I have been carefully guarding a period of time around Labor Day when most projects would be under control and many colleagues taking time off as well.  Now it's time for vacation.

This will be very different from our June Vacation, which being associated with the boating club, seemed planned down to the second.  

This time the plan is... not to have a plan.

Anyone reading this knows that we have a boat, so that seemed to be a good place to start.  Most of our boating life consists of day sailing (w/ occasional overnights) out of Osprey Point in Rock Hall, MD.  We could spend our entire vacation doing just that and it would be just wonderful.

We do have a goal, though.  That goal is "to find out if we can spend the entire vacation on the boat and away from Rock Hall".  (Astute readers will note that after decades in corporate America, I'm good at always setting goals that are achievable... if it turns out we can't spend the entire time away from Rock Hall, well, then we found that out.)

While there is no plan, my expectation is that we will remain on the map above.  That leaves plenty to explore... the Chester River, Eastern Bay, Choptank River, and many places along the Eastern Shore.  Then maybe later making it to Solomons, Herring Bay, the Rhodes River, the Magothy River, maybe even go a little north if we want.

Provisioning is going to be loose as well.  As I write, fresh oatmeal bread is proofing in the kitchen and we'll take those loaves along with some lunch meat, meat and veggies for dinners, and some breakfast stuff - roughly enough for half the time we plan to be away.  We have cards for the other meals.

We also will never be more than one really long day (or two short days) away from Rock Hall in case we decide we want to return to Osprey Point.

So that's the non-plan.  The only anchor points are that we have dinner reservations at Osprey Point this evening and we will spend at least two days at Herrington Harbor South (we paid for those but couldn't use them when our friends were here during July 4th weekend).

HA!  The joke's on me... mere minutes after I wrote the above paragraph, Vicky pointed out that she wanted to make dumplings (which never happened, I got meatballs instead) and various other important things delayed our departure by 24 hours... therefore no dinner at Osprey Point.  So now Day 1 was Saturday.

We finally departed about 2:00 PM on Saturday, arriving a bit before 4:00.  Vicky quickly stowed all the food (2.5 coolers worth) and then wanted to scrub down Seas The Day's cockpit and deck.  

I cooked a Blue Apron meal (beef and bok choi stir-fry), then we filled the water, hung out in the cockpit for a bit and that was it.

Our first excursion of this vacation (now scheduled for Sunday) was simply to go down to Kent Narrows and have some crabs at Harris' Crab House.

I did NOT go for a sunrise walk on Sunday morning.  I must have been sleeping deeply because even Vicky was awake when my eyes finally opened to a surprisingly bright stateroom.  I could recognize that the quality of the light was unusual, and I did make it for a post sunrise walk (around 7:30).  

It was very foggy... the sun barely shown through the mist, and shapes were quite unusual in the surrounding landscape.

A beautiful wood boat was docked along the main walkway back to A dock.

I returned to find Vicky practicing Yoga on the foredeck, so I got to work on breakfast (after a 15 min pressure check... I had to change propane bottles mid-way through cooking dinner the night before).

Maxxon stopped by for breakfast, then blew us some bubbles from s/v Yekaterina.

After a slow bit of fussing around, we departed.  (We couldn't make it to the slip until later and we wanted to avoid getting there right at low tide given the problems we had approaching Kent Narrows with Xiaomi and her family two weeks ago.)

We did a quick stop at Gratitude to fill the fuel tank and pump out.  (Note I'm not including this fuel cost in the vacation cost summary... it got us to "Full" to begin our journey.)

Shardana left earlier in the morning for the same trip... a trip to Harris' Crab House for lunch.  We waited for their report on the Kent Narrows channel.

Our photo of Shardana

Shardana's photo of us.

We arrived mid-afternoon and tied up at Safe Harbor Narrows Point marina.  After an early nap, we headed across the parking lot to Harris Crab House so Vicky could pick her first crabs of this vacation (there will be many more).

The rest of the evening was just lazy.  We viewed Shardana's Youtube video on Chesapeake Destinations, then decided that our next stop would be for Herrington Harbor South (if we can) to use up our credit.

Then we went outside for our sundowners.

Summary of Costs

Provisions (Wild A$$ Guess - Blue Apron, ButchersBox, InstaCart) - ~$300.

Safe Harbor Narrows Point Marina - $135

Harris Crab House - $83

Total for this segment - $518