A New Cruiser Discovers Secluded Anchorages on His First Summer Aboard
We faced the setting sun as my dad lowered down the anchor, engine quietly ticking over in neutral. He gave me a thumbs-up once the windlass stopped turning, so I turned the motor off and went up onto the foredeck to have a look around. We were situated in a quiet little spot off Tilghman Island, out of the wind and nearly all alone. There was another sailboat at anchor a little ways off, and they came by in their dinghy shortly after we anchored to say hello, and asked if we’d give them a call if their boat started drifting while they were ashore. They too were from Annapolis, and said they came to this anchorage fairly often. That’s the difference between us and them—they knew where to go, while we stumbled upon this place purely by chance.
My dad, sister, and I planned on leaving Friday afternoon and finding a place to drop anchor not very far down the bay. We didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but we also didn’t expect to have such favorable conditions. The wind was blowing at a steady 20 knots, and the tide was with us, and after less than an hour of fast, easy sailing we were already past our planned anchorage. We decided to keep going until either the wind died down or the sun began to set, and then find a place to anchor. The wind did eventually ease up, and by then we were well down the Bay, further than I’d ever been. We motorsailed while my dad pored over the charts, trying to find somewhere out of the wind. Then he took the helm and we brought in the sails and motored up to the eastern side of Tilghman Island.
It turned out to be a wonderfully quiet, secluded place—far better than our planned anchorage that lay further up the Bay. We spent the next day walking around the Island, but soon grew tired of the small town there, so we weighed anchor and went to go find a new place to spend the night. We stumbled upon that place too, and it turned out to be a quiet, secluded little anchorage in a cove where we spent two nights. We even saw a couple dolphins there one morning.
By Aidan Palmer
