Labor Day 2022 Vacation - Day 10 - Rhode River

 

We departed Dun Cove on Monday late morning for the excursion across the bay to the Rhode River.  Vicky has been obsessing over how dirty the anchor looks, so I was wondering how she would do if we were anchoring at two different places without stopping near a hose.  

I shouldn't have worried... the puke bucket was combined with the hook on the anchor snubber and I was told not to move once the anchor was weighed (fortunately, there was no wind and I could comply).

It was a bit windy with some modest chop as we sailed south on Harris Creek and around Tilghman Island to the main bay.  

This looked like a pontoon boat with a crane attachment.

The southern tip of Tilghman Island
(We still had some distance due to large shoals.)

Once we rounded the southern tip, we set the sail on a broad reach up the bay.

I saw the warning on the charts for these fish traps,
but even then they seemed to suddenly come upon us.

After sailing for an hour or so, we noticed clouds forming over the western shore and decided to fire up the motor to get in place.  While motoring, we had some brats that I had brought along for an underway Labor Day cookout.  (We cooked them in the vacuum bag and then finished them in the pan.)

As we continued towards the Rhode River, we realized that the biggest (and darkest) set of clouds was right over our destination.

The clouds were getting particularly dark and low as we were turning into the West River to head to the Rhode River.

Fortunately we set the anchor and watched as the clouds passed by.  A bit later, we were treated to this child demonstrating their water skiing skills.

For being 25 miles due east of DC and 25 miles due south of Baltimore, this place seemed positively rural.  There were other boats at anchor as we arrived, but one by one, they weighed their anchors and departed.  Soon we had this whole area of the river to ourselves.

Vicky started fishing... trying different lures and baits from the fishing kit John had given her for Christmas.

She also tried some of the bun from her brat as bait.

I guess a bird noticed the bread....

That bird invited some friends....

The friends had friends....

That soon devolved to Vicky just feeding the birds... you can imagine the result.  She captured this photo with her iPhone.

The birds left as evening approached and Vicky ran out of bread (I put my food down when she wanted to dig into a new loaf).

While the bird saga was going on, another drama was developing below.  I wanted to test the AC this evening and started the generator.  But I quickly noticed the cabin wasn't cooling.  I tried resetting this a few times (we rarely run our genset).  It seemed weird that the water pump would only work for 5 seconds at a time... finally I posted to the Catalina 42/425 group on FB... that lead to a series of texts with Captain Andy from Shardana.  We finally figured out this was the startup problem others have reported.  The capacitors on the AC units are a bit small resulting in the AC drawing lots of power on startup.  They shut down before they can start properly.  By shutting off the rear AC unit, we were able to run the forward one that cools our cabin all night.

I did shut down the Generator/AC briefly so we could have a quiet evening... a light dinner (just some wine, cheese, crackers and a bit of fruit).

The morning was lazy... reading news... writing the blog... and fishing.

Later today - after the rain ends - we will weigh anchor and head farther north along the western shore to the Magothy River... not sure exactly where (aiming for an anchorage behind Dobbins Island), but we figure we'll explore the river a bit and then decide. 

Summary of Costs

Zero, nada, nothing... no costs for this section.