I called my brother-in-law Friday to confirm he was going. His reply was "yes, but have you checked the marine forecast"? No, I hadn't. The TV/radio had predicted a sunny warm day. But they did leave out the part about small craft warnings. I told him to meet me at the boat anyway and we'll make a final decision then.
Saturday morning it was at little breezy where I live. When I got to the marina it was gusting to 25. We decided to go anyway and left at 10:00.
The south-east run across the Bay and into the Chester river was rough, with the wind from the north-west, but the Albin did it's job and shrugged off the waves with no problem. The auto pilot is probably the best toy I ever installed. It tracked straight and true. Much better than I would have. As we made the turn into Kent Narrows things had calmed down and the ride was perfect.
I am not a frequent visitor of Kent Narrows so I kept a close eye on the GPS as we entered. No problems at all. Plenty of depth and because of the forecast almost no traffic. This place has plenty of restaurants, bars, and marinas. Very nice place to stop and have lunch but since we already had a destination in mind we kept going. As we were leaving the Narrows we passed "Bluey". A TE 28 (blue hull of course) with a few folks onboard gave us a wave as we passed. I noticed that Bluey just joined AOG.
We left the Narrows for the run down Prospect Bay then into Eastern Bay. We passed several sailboats taking advantage of the wind but this was nothing like our earlier bay crossing. With Bennet Point to port I made a wide U-turn into the Wye river and proceeded north. The Wye is a beautiful winding river with great scenery. Our destination was the home of Dick Radlinski, former TE 28 owner (Wye Dream), and now the owner of a very nice American Tug. (Wye Tug) Dick's pier is about 7 miles up river, across from Pintail Point.
http://www.theriverplantation.com
Dick wasn't home when we first got there so Mark and I had lunch and let the dog off the boat to stretch his legs. Dick came home shortly thereafter and we had a beer, checked out his home and his boat. A couple of hours went by and it was time to leave.
The trip home was not without incident as we got hung up on a sand bar near green "1" at the mouth of the Wye. No damage. It took several minutes to get free and we made our way back up Eastern Bay, to Prospect Bay, through Kent Narrows and out to the Chesapeake. By that time it was a little after 5:00. The bay was 1' or less with moderate wind. We got back to our marina about 6:30. We ran 14-15 across the bay in the morning and 18-19 coming home.
My log book entry for the day is W.O.I. (without incident) Except for the sandbar.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post. To view images, please register for a free account.
