Happy Juneteenth! It is a morning marred only by the incessant buzzing of fair weather fishermen in an awful hurry.
I saw an osprey overhead and finally rowed through a ball of forage fish at the mouth of Back Creek.
Tide is dead high and it is nearly windless. I threw in my anchor off the maritime museum beach and Sophie is still floating next to the slack line.
What a glass smooth morning! It was so quiet the predominant noises were the traffic on the rt 50 bridge and some cadre doing push-ups at the naval academy.
It's a morning for ducks and black backed gulls, though I did hear an osprey chirping somewhere.
Despite the quiet I almost ran into a big trawler who was gliding out of Back Creek. Sneaky bugger.
We took out CAPER a J32 from Chesapeake Boating Club for a few hours this afternoon. Busy out there and a little choppy but the wind was perfect.
Reminded today why I try to row early. Had to give way to four sailboats leaving Spa Creek under power and then had to listen to a thundering powerboat roaring all the way from the Bay Bridge to Round Bay. I think he was doing his best to create a sonic boom. I did get to see a few cormorants and gulls and the hazy morning let me see some juvenile fish by the maritime museum. Oh also got to see Living Classrooms' MILDRED BELLE and SIGSBEE who apparently overnighted in Back Creek.
Quel belle mere! What a harbinger of summer. Not a cloud in the sky nor a breath of wind in the river. Buckets of cormorants and ospreys out fishing. Gentle swells driven by the incoming tide and the occasional early fisherman.
Rowed through gentle mesmerizing swell from greenbury point. Saw a single male cormorant flying by. There is a ginormous James Bond style evil doer power catamaran heading in towards Back Creek.
Kinda cloudy but warm with some sporty waves from the north. Kept be too busy trying to keep on course to look for wildlife.
My parents are in town so we took LADY SARAH from city dock to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime museum.
Conditions were much more blustery than what was suggested by the buoy data so I rowed up the creek. Still not too many summer mooring residents in my path. Saw a couple of ospreys carrying nesting material, maybe they're late arrivals. Also saw an egret and a heron.
Also there was a lone paddlboarder who was a bit faster than I was, not that we were racing oh no.
It's windy out there but the waves were well behaved. Again I misjudged the heading to the "A" buoy and had to do the last 20m dead upstream then make a 180. A hand full of other boats were out including a catamaran going for an early sail. The brown water snake that lives at the maritime museum was very busy scuttling back and forth from the dock to the Spartina.
Oh, I painted the seats and transom since I never liked the weathering pattern showing under the boat sauce I first applied. I'll get a second coat on this afternoon and it ought to look pretty spiffy.