Water, Water Everywhere . . . .

We are settled in for the weekend in Annapolis, MD, Lon's old haunt from his Naval Academy days. We are going to take advantage of the proximity to Washington, D.C. to visit two of our nephews who live in that area, as well as revisit sites from when we lived there over 30 years ago.

One of my stresses on this trip is thinking about the cruising that involves the larger bodies of water. I'm not a fan of big waves and rough waters, and I have been concerned about our experience on the Albemarle Sound being repeated on the Chesapeake Bay. The potential is always there, but I'm happy to say that we had three very nice, calm cruising days between Hampton, VA and Annapolis: Tuesday's (May 27) cruise was Hampton to Deltaville, VA; Wednesday (May 28) was Deltaville to Solomons, MD; and today (May 30) was Solomons - Annapolis. The weather was not good on Thursday, so we stayed in port in Solomons.

I can understand why those who have sailboats like the Chesapeake Bay--no bridges to worry about, deep water, and lots of area for boating. However, we've not found the Bay to be nearly as interesting as the "skinnier" passages and canals on the ICW. We're just too far from shore to see much of anything but all of the water around us.

Water, water everywhere

The only things to break the visual monotony were the occasional ship, a few lighthouses, and watching planes fly into Patuxent River Naval Air Station.

Fishing "mother ship" and net-casting smaller boats

Smith Point Lighthouse

Passing freighter

I've actually found myself pulling out a book during the cruises these last few days, something I've not done to this point. Still, as I've said before, "uneventful" on a boat is ultimately a very good thing.

Deltaville, VA and Solomons, MD are popular boating centers on the Chesapeake. We didn't do much when we got to Deltaville--just relaxed on the boat for the evening. We biked into the town of Solomons, a center since the mid-1800s for fishing and boating. There were definitely lots of boats and an economy centered around tourism. Our marina occupied the former site of the first Naval Amphibious Training Base in the US, where between 1942 and 1945 over 68,000 servicemen were trained for landings in both the European and Pacific theaters. The bath houses at the marina were rather "rustic" and probably dated from that period.