"Cruising" Has Many Definitions...
It’s funny how you can put 10 sailors into a room and get 10 different ideas about what “cruising” means to them. To some, it means you must keep moving---get up and go by 6:30 a.m. to cover the most ground. To others, it may mean finding the perfect anchorage and staying there for a few days, or finding scenic marinas and waterfront restaurants.
My captain and I are anchorage people. We like discovering new ones and exploring their perimeter by paddleboard. We often joke that we’re the last to leave any anchorage, as we like our leisurely breakfasts, paddles, and time to quietly read.
So, two nights ago when we found ourselves rafted up in Mill Creek in Solomons with chatty and fired up friends who were headed south toward Florida, they couldn’t see why we would stay put for another night and not follow them to Deltaville. We followed our guts and waved goodbye to them as they departed at 6:30 a.m. (and I went back to bed).
It worked out for us. For one, it was a rainy day. We’d drunk entirely too much wine with those nuts from Florida and were happy to have a day off to shake it off, read, nap. We explored Mill Creek by paddleboard and had intended to head farther up the Patuxent River to explore Cuckhold Creek.
I called my friend, Capt. Aram Nersesian, who lives right across the way from where we’d anchored the night before. He can see everything from his house and noted that we’d forgotten to put our anchor light on the night before …ooops. He asked why we’d bother to go to Cuckhold Creek, when it was pretty much the same thing as the creek we were already in. He made a good point—which we acknowledged as soon as we got into Cuckhold. We also couldn’t find a sheltered place to anchor, so moved over to the neighboring Mill Creek (the one north of the bridge, south of Cuckhold), which sits next to a wildlife management area and is lovely. It was a great discovery. We will go back there.
The word by text from our Florida friends was that they made it to Deltaville in about 9 hours and sailed the whole way. Today, we were torn between heading north to the Choptank or south to the Rappahannock. Looking at the wind direction, northeast for most of the day, we turned right out the Pax River and are headed south in 8 knots of breeze in a comfortable broad reach. One tug, one ship, and one sailboat in sight. The sky is grey, but the temperature is mild, and the wide open Bay is calm and welcoming. We’re looking forward to our next anchorage discovery. Stay tuned!
~M.W.
You can find the first article in this series here, and the next one here.
