Author: Gwyn Wagschal

Before leaving Annapolis we enjoyed an evening out with Tommy and Amy of Sail Away Catamarans. We went to a little Honduran restaurant ‘Sin Fernandos’. We all had delicious margaritas with our food, and I definitely had one too many. Wasn’t sick, but happy the ride back to the dingy was short.

The week before we left Paul also made a quick trip to Canada to take care of a few things. We rented a car before he left so I could drop him at the airport and pick him up. While he was gone I took advantage of the car and began the provisioning. Each day I would dinghy ashore and go shopping and running other errands like filling the propane tanks. I also took Charlie to his favorite park for a long walk each day. I had everything restocked and stowed before Paul got back. We then returned the rental car and got ourselves ready to depart the South River by refueling and topping off the water tanks.

We departed on Sunday, October 26th around 9am and had a gusty but quick trip to Solomon’s on the Patuxant River arriving at 3:30pm. It was a nice quiet anchorage for the night.

We left Solomon’s at 7am the following morning and mostly motor sailed to Deltaville for another overnight. By this time Charlie is wondering why we aren’t going ashore at any of our stops. Not to worry, next stop Hampton and a play date with Zoe from Sapphire.

Arrived in Hampton at 2pm on Tuesday, October 28th. Refueled and settled ourselves in on the dock in order to enjoy the Salty Dawg Rally events. Charlie was so excited to get off the boat. We immediately went for a walk and found Zoe. The two of them had a nice romp. Even though they hadn’t seen each other for over 5 months, they definitely did not forget each other. Happy dogs.

After New York we made an overnight trip to Cape May arriving at dawn just as the tide was turning to flow up the Delaware. So rather than waiting around a day in Cape May waiting for the next morning tide, we just kept going up the Delaware (with a nice 2 knot current push) to the C & D canal then through the canal to the Chesapeake where we anchored on the Bohemia river at dusk with about 10 other boats. We took the next day to get just north of Annapolis where we spent two nights anchored in Sillery Bay on the Magothy River. It is a nice quiet anchorage where we could relax after the long trip from New York.

We did have a deadline to get back to Annapolis for, Charlie needs to get his international health certificate renewed prior to our trip back to the BVI. This means a titer test for rabies, which takes 3-4 weeks to process. That gets followed up with a full check up at the vet and paperwork which has to be stamped by the USDA. So we returned to our anchorage on the South River and took C to the vet on Oct 2nd. His follow-up is on the 24th, which means we need to hang around and ended up enjoying many boat show events.

On Thursday, Oct 8th we attended a Salty Dawg gathering at Mears Pavillion where they served pulled pork, wine and beer. We enjoyed seeing people we met on our previous rallys as well as meeting some of the Dawgs who will be joining the rally south in November.

On Friday, Oct 9th we spent the day at the boat show. It’s always fun to view the new boats and see what new gadgets have been invented. After the show, we attended the Lagoon Owner’s event with more food and wine. They had a musician playing on a steel drum. He was great. We were happy to sit ourselves down after being on our feet all day. We didn’t stay too long as we needed to get back to the boat to check on Charlie (poor guy hadn’t bee left a whole day since we used to work and live on land). Don’t worry, he fared well.

On Saturday, Oct 10th we attended a party at Sail Away Catamarans. This event had live musicians, along with plenty of food and drink. Tommy and Amy sure know how to throw a party. We even had a private performance by the Smith brothers of a Marley tune “Every little thing gonna be alright”.

We both had a few too many glasses of wine making getting from the dinghy back onto the boat a bit of a challenge. We’ll laugh about it after the hangovers go away.

This will be brief, because really we just need to decide on which of the 150 photos we took would best capture the experience for you.

It was a lovely 80 degree Sunday as we motored (no wind) down the East River to view the architecture of New York City from the water. Boat traffic was reasonable, likely due to it being a weekend. We didn’t dock or go ashore in NYC as the people we hoped to visit with were out of town. My niece, 2013 Fashion Star runner up, Cassandra, was off to Paris for fashion week and Paul’s sister, Linda, was off to Baltimore. So we just cruised on by and took in the sights. After passing the Statue of Liberty we hoisted our sails and watched the skyline slowly disappear. We both agreed, we’ll be coming back this way again.

Please check back for photos.

We had an amazing trip from Block Island to Port Washington. We managed to have the wind and current in our favour for the first 8 hours thanks to P’s checking the weather and tide reports, then the wind slowly died and the current slowly turned against us and we turned on the motors for 7 hours.

Having never arrived to a destination in the dark, we both agreed it would be worth it for a full nights sleep. A full moon would have been nice, but it was not in the cards. So darkness would be it.

P woke me about 20 minutes before we got to the Port Washington entrance so I could enjoy the view of the New York City skyline in the distance before we turned and it went out of sight. This is the joy of a night arrival, we could see those lights.

Our night eyes were both glued on the water, avoiding buoys as we motored slowly into the harbour. Luck would have it that we found a Yellow Mooring ball, free for the first 2 nights. It had no tether so we had to pick it up from the aft of the boat and walk it forward. No wind made this almost effortless. We were settled on the ball just after 10:30pm.

On Saturday the temperature soared to 80 F. What a treat after the rain and cold we had in Block Island. We took some time to explore the shore and visit the grocery store for enough provisions to get us the rest of the way to Annapolis. Ending the day sitting on deck with a little music watching the boating world go by. Gotta love it.

We plan our departure from Port Washington to coincide with the tides and current to make our way through New York city via the East River. We are so excited to see New York from the water.

There’s something to be said for staying longer than planned in any given place. This is truly the case with Bristol, Rhode Island. We arrived in Bristol at on Sept 11th and departed on Sept 24th.

Initially we thought we’d be a few days, long enough to arrange to have our life raft recertified. However, upon arrival, we discovered the Newport boat show was just getting underway, making it impossible to have the life raft picked up until a few days after the show was over. We had a decision to make, stay and wait, or leave and come back. We decided to stay and wait and explore Bristol.

We started by walking the town after locating the downtown dinghy dock, discovering it has an abundance of churches and schools. The church bells ring in sync on the hour (one following the other). No need for a watch in this town, just listen and you’ll know what time it is.

The following day we took the bikes ashore and cycled partially through Colt Park then made our way to the Seabra Supermarket for fresh vegies. I must say this market has the freshest vegies I’ve seen in awhile, the cilantro and parsley appeared to be fresh picked that very day.

The weather was favorable for both cycling and walking. There is a bike path that runs from Bristol to Providence (about 14 miles long). We cycled half of it one day, discovering a larger grocery store about 6 miles along so we stopped on our way back to buy things like tofu. With our back packs and baskets full we returned to the boat exhausted.

The only problem with cycling, is Charlie doesn’t get his exercise while riding in the basket and wants to play when we get back to the boat when we just want to rest. So we’ve learned to look for places to stop and throw the ball for him or to take a block or so and have him run alongside the bike (not as safe for either the rider or the dog). We opt for the field to throw the ball when possible.

Here’s what I like about Bristol
1. The church bells (and on Sundays they play tunes)
2. The cycling trails (basically flat and you can go far)
3. The quiet and safe harbour
4. The two dinghy docks (in low season lots of room, but I imagine fully loaded in mid summer)
5. Angela’s coffee shop, with nice red tables outside and they offer soy lattes
6. No street lights in the downtown core and traffic stops for pedestrians
7. No one is hustling and bustling, just a nice peaceful pace
8. Shop owners are super friendly and most have water bowls and treats for dogs
9. Hair Heart and Soul Beauty Salon click here to see their site, where Mandy fit me in for a haircut and did a fabulous job
10. Beautiful old homes well restored, many with dates of when they were built and the name of the original builder (one dated back to 1680)
11. More people out walking, cycling, sailing or fishing all the time. The local people here are fit, we rarely saw anyone overweight.

We do plan to return to Bristol one day to experience the big 4th of July events which we hear are not to be missed. Until then we have wonderful memories of this twelve day stop over. (pics to follow)