It’s been a busy few days…

It was a great overnight at our first anchorage on the Loop at Rhode Creek.

The next morning I woke up to no Libbie in bed. I found her on the back deck, with rod in hand casting lures. No surprise there.

Libbie has been testing the fishing waters to no avail. But to repeat the old joke, that’s why they call it fishing, not catching.

Before we left the river, we bought some fuel at the marina there. The price is as cheap as we will see this summer, so with the stock market “tanking” we decided to invest in fuel.

That’s the biggest fuel bill we have ever paid by about 10 fold. But, we knew this was something we would do.

In reality, a sail uses a ton of petroleum products to make, and what we paid for was 35% of a mainsail on our old sailboat. So we can justify it that way.

Plus we can’t get to Michigan without it!

We cruised on a very flat, cool day up the Chesapeake to Annapolis,

Between the boating scene, the US Naval Academy, and all the tourists shopping along Main Street it was very much a bustling place.

We grabbed a mooring in front of the main part of town.

Annapolis has a water taxi that shuttles people all over the harbor, from one dock to another or even to your boat. We accomplished a few errands and went to dinner this way. It was way better than Uber or Lift.

We arrived just before the Wednesday Night Beer Can Sailboat Races.

There was a lot of testosterone in the air as more than 100 boats tried to leave the harbor at once, and then tried to back in at the same time. Shouts of “STARBOARD” rang through the air.

This all in less than 10 knots of wind. I wondered how they all would do in San Francisco Bay with the 30 knot breezes we have back there. I have my doubts.

Even in the mooring field, racers were trying to sneak through without hitting moored boats like ours. In addition, there were spectator boats weaving around with beer drinking crews. Several were discretely taking pics of Selkie as they passed by.

In the middle of all this, a power boat started sinking, so the harbor patrol was scrambling with flashing lights in the middle of all the sailors trying to race.

With drama like that, who needs to watch TV?

Being moored next to the Naval Academy has its advantages. You get to hear Taps play at sunset along with a cannon fired when colors are lowered for the evening.

Then there is a bugle playing reveille to wake you up along with the Star Spangled Banner piping through the Academy in the morning.

Our second day in Annapolis, we built a lifting harness for our dinghy, a Trinka. Trinkas are 10 foot hand built sailing dinghies. Libbie was dying to get it into the water, for both fishing and for sailing.

We successfully engineered the solution, using our crane to move The Trinka from the Boat Deck behind the Flying Bridge to the water below without damaging anything or hurting anyone. And then putting it back on the Boat Deck.

The Trinka rows beautifully. We are looking forward to sailing her.

It seems like we’ve been doing this for a while now, but Thursday was our 1 week anniversary of living on Selkie. Time flies as they say.