November 18, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
AAaaahhhh. Early morning. What do you think that means? For us it is very early, 4AM, and it is cool. Not frigid, but cool enough that we need jackets. We haul out our foul weather gear, because it is impervious to wind. That makes all the difference, of course. If the wind can’t get to you, then you can ignore the cold.
Larry takes the helm and I go forward with a big spotlight so I can make the day markers visible when there is no associated light. And if the marker is lighted, the day mark shows the number, which is critical to success. Just any red marker won’t do if you actually need marker number 22.
When we decided to make our run south, we knew that we needed to get far south in a hurry. It was already the middle of November. Any nice days this time of year are complete gifts, and we knew we needed to make the most of what looked like a few days of good weather. We want to anchor whenever possible, and knowing that it is easier to anchor in daylight, the best way to lengthen our productive time is to start early. It is much easier to leave a spot in the dark if you arrived in the daylight, and it is much easier to follow your inward track back out in the dark than to create a new track and anchor successfully in a strange place in the dark.
Three days in a row we were up at 4AM and out by 5AM. It was a real adjustment. We always used to say that no matter what we did, we could not get going before 11AM, but these days we are setting new records. As a result, we were able to run 78 miles on Sunday and arrive in the Patuxent in plenty of time to anchor before the sun set.
Our departure from Baltimore at 5AM was quite interesting. Even though we had passed in and out along that channel many times by daylight, it all looked quite different in the dark. We were really glad that we were in familiar territory. Our departure from the Patuxent at 5AM was a challenge, however. It was an occasion for gratitude for e-charting and saved tracks. I could illuminate the markers as we passed them by using a flashlight, but some of them still seemed to be in strange places.
The best experience of all was the Wicomico River. We cruised into this river shortly after lunch on Monday. We decided to stop there, because there really wasn’t an acceptable place to anchor between the Wicomico and Norfolk without going a long way off our real course. Being there reminded us of being in South Dakota, where our anchorages were truly remote.
We went upriver in the Wicomico to a bend where there was good protection from the north, the predicted wind direction. We had a little challenge anchoring, because the force of the river current was in conflict with the force of the wind. However, our second try dug in nicely. The wind died down to almost nothing by evening and remained calm all night.
Along the bank of the river we could see three or four houses, but that is all. When the sun went down, there were lights in one of the houses and a few lights on one of the boat docks. However, for the most part, the dark of night was truly dark. Beyond hills to the east we could see a glow that no doubt came from some small community, but it was nothing compared to the light in the sky anywhere in the area near Baltimore and Annapolis. Standing on deck in the Wicomico River, we could hear frogs and birds making their night calls, sounds we would never have heard farther north. We looked up and saw a brilliant night sky. I could actually pick out the Pleiades, a faint little constellation I love.
When we got up at 4AM in the Wicomico, there were absolutely no lights anywhere near. I shined my light on the markers and Larry steered to the saved track from the day before. We successfully stayed off the shoals between us and the mouth of the river. It was so dark and so clear that I saw 4 meteors between our anchorage and the main bay. We were joined by a parade of huge fishing boats as we exited the river, but they went their way and we went ours.
Now we are on the ICW, where our days are controlled by bridge openings. I guess we won’t need to get up at 4AM here. I can enjoy the extra sleep, but there actually is something very special about the sky in the deep darkness of real night. I am glad we made our early morning getaways on this passage.
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