St Michaels

Monday September 20 – Wednesday September 24

We are ready to leave the dock Monday morning by 9:30, anxious to get back on the water again. It is a clear cool morning with a good 15 K breeze that pushes us off the dock. Stopping at a marina on the way out to top off with 70 gallons of fuel. While fueling we hear over the VHF radio that the US Coast Guard Cutter Eagle a beautiful square-rigged ship, who had come in to the inner harbor the day before, was getting ready to leave port heading out to sea. So as we are heading out we are keeping a lookout behind us hoping we will get a chance to see her. Once she gets underway she is very active on the radio. Being a training ship sounds like they are taking turns on the radio updating their position to any concerned traffic and telling boats how to pass them. She is doing 10.5 knots so she catches up to us and overtakes us, telling us to get out of the deep water channel as she passes. We were off to the side of the channel and we were the overtaken boat so had right away but we opted not to mention that and just kept snapping pictures, unfortunately her sails were not up but she is still a beautiful boat. It is a perfect sailing weather day and we are actually just sailing NO motor doing between 6.5 – 7.8 knots, even took the connector off the bimini to let the sun in to warm us up. Once we turn up into Eastern Bay we slow down some but don't have much further to go so just enjoying being on the water sailing. From Eastern Bay we turn into the Miles River and are anchored off of the town of St Michaels by 6. Get the dinghy out & ready for the next day. Tuesday we sleep in late, get ready to go into town for lunch and the dinghy motor sounds sick. Starts up & Steve thinks it is okay so we cast off and she dies, we don't drift too far so we row back to the boat. A few adjustments and it sounds better but still questionable. Off we go and make it to town enjoy a nice afternoon and make it back to the boat but the motor still does not sound right. Steve spends some time playing with it and it gets better BUT still something is wrong? Wednesday morning he puts the motor back on the boat to take apart the carburetor, cleans it out, reassembles and gets it running smoothly again. South winds so a little warmer today, back into town for lunch then a walk around finding a great nature / bike trail that just opened last year along a wetland restoration & education facility. So you can get educated along the path as you stop to read the placards. Walk back towards town stopping at St. Michaels Winery, where we stop for a sampling of some of their locally made very nice wines. Back to the boat where we watch boats coming & going and to my surprise a small cruise ship, American Spirit came in. Then a bunch of boats started to go out for the Wednesday night races out on the river. Around 9 the winds pick up a little and we have some distant lightning & thunder and a short shower.

Link to Pictures; http://picasaweb.google.com/103931849054358791487/StMichaels?feat=directlink