Triangle Loop – Week 24 (Upper Chesapeake Bay)

Oct 5th to Oct 11th, 2025

Day 161 – Sunday, October 5th, 2025 – To: Baltimore, MD
Anchorage Marina

We planned an 8:30 departure to catch the high tide and avoid the nail-biting that we had on the way into Bohemia Bay. At 7:30, we heard that the C&D Canal was closed due to heavy fog! As we started getting the boat ready, we could see a fog bank rolling down Bohemia Bay, so we picked up the pace and got out before it caught up with us. With the high tide and some excellent instructions from the dockmaster, we made it out of the bay with no issues and never saw less than 4 feet under us. As we exited the bay, there was a tug with a tank barge anchored waiting for the canal to reopen. The tug’s name was “Palm Coast,” our hometown!

We were wondering if we would encounter fog after turning the corner coming out of Bohemia Bay into the Chesapeake, but as we looked south, it was clear. The water was smooth, and there was no wind for the first 10 miles of our 50-mile run. We passed two more tow boats heading toward the C&D Canal. Both were moving very slowly, waiting to hear when the canal would reopen. At 11:00, they announced that the canal had reopened, and then the canal controllers arranged the tows to come through. There were three on the south side and two on the north side, plus a larger yacht, all of which wanted to go through. It must be like herding cats.

We passed the Turkey Point Lighthouse and headed down the main channel toward Baltimore. I noticed a few pleasure boats coming in from a channel on our right, and wondered where they were coming from. When I looked at our chart, I saw that it was a “shortcut” to the Baltimore entrance channel. It had more than enough water for us, and was marked, so we made a quick course change and took that channel instead, as it cut off almost 5 miles from the trip.

The rest of the way to the entrance to Baltimore Harbor was uneventful, except for the weekend boaters who don’t know how to pass or operate their boats. They come by you very close, plowing water because the boat isn’t configured correctly, and causing large wakes that rock the boat. I think that anyone in a boat over 40 feet should have to get on-the-water training and a boating license. We had one boat that was following us, obviously unsure of where they were going. They then passed us, knocking stuff off of shelves, only to get lost again and run into very shallow water. They stopped, made a U-turn, and then noticed where we were, rejoined the channel, and waked us again. That’s why we prefer not to travel on the weekend!

As we entered Baltimore Harbor, we went through the site of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. The approach ramps to the bridge are still standing, and one bridge pier remains in place. They are working to remove the remains of the pier that was struck by the ship, and are starting to dismantle the approach ramps. Very Sad, it was a beautiful bridge.

Just beyond the bridge site, we saw that they had still placed the Francis Scott Key Buoy. This is a Red, White, and Blue buoy that marks the spot where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner from the deck of a British ship while Fort McHenry was being fired on.

At Fort McHenry, the channel splits, and we took the right channel toward the inner-harbor area. Our first stop was at the Boatel Marina to get fuel; they are one of only two fuel stops in Baltimore Harbor, and the least expensive by almost 30 cents a gallon. The fuel dock is tucked away from the main part of the Inner Harbor next to several large Navy Sea Lift cargo ships, and is right next to a helicopter refueling stop. We pulled up to the dock, and while we were filling up, we got to watch a helicopter coming in for fuel. Both the boat fuel stop and the helicopter fuel stop are bustling!

Once we filled up, we went the short distance to The Anchorage Marina. On the way, we noticed a distinct sewerage smell in the air, mixed with a sickly sweet odor. We wondered if there was a nearby treatment plant experiencing issues. We found our slip, and the dockmaster and staff assisted us in tying up and connecting to power. We discovered that the sewerage smell originated from an algal bloom called the Pistachio Tide. It had killed a large number of fish in the harbor, and the sweet smell was emanating from the Domino Sugar plant, located just across the harbor from us. The wind was blowing from that direction, across the water, and mixing the two smells. We won’t be opening the windows here!

This is our fifth visit to Baltimore by boat, and we’ve pretty much seen most of it, so this stop is a maintenance stop before we make our run south and back home. First on our list was taking an Uber to the local Walgreens to pick up our 3-month supply of prescriptions. When we returned, we noticed a catamaran that we knew, Inquest.

We knocked on the door, and Jax and Russ were home! They now live on their boat here in Baltimore, pretty much full-time, having purchased their slip here. We had a quick catch-up and arranged to go to dinner tomorrow night.

I have a short list of boat tasks to take care of while we are here, and I spent the rest of the afternoon investigating a minor electrical issue. For dinner, we walked to a Pub that we liked on our last visit, Mahaffey’s Pub, about a block from the marina.

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Day 162 – Monday, October 6th, 2025 – In: Baltimore, MD

Today was Laundry and Oil Change day! After breakfast, Brenda gathered our laundry, including the bed linens, and headed up to the boater’s center to do four loads of laundry.

I got my oil change gear together and headed down into the engine room. This change cycle was more involved. Every 150 hours, I change the oil in the engines and generator. Every 300 hours (so every other oil change), I change the transmission oil and filters. This was a 300-hour cycle.

The process takes me about 5-6 hours in total. I used to try to rush it and multitask, removing filters while pumping the oil out of the engines, but I’ve learned over time that all that does is create more work, as I tend always to make some sort of mess. Overflowing old oil jugs, knocking something over and spilling it, dropping an oil cap into a gap in the engine, so now I take my time, and do one thing at a time.

Brenda finished the laundry around 2:00, and I completed the oil change around 3:00. After cleaning up my stuff and getting rid of the garbage (dumping the old oil will have to wait, as there is no disposal point here), and taking a shower, it was almost time to go to dinner with our friends on Inquest.

For dinner, we walked to a part of Baltimore near the marina called Canton. This area has a historically shipbuilding and industrial past, but is now one of the more trendy neighborhoods with many restaurants, bakeries, gyms, and gastropubs. There are frequent festivals and a vibrant nightlife.

We visited El Bufalo Tequila Bar & Kitchen, a Tex-Mex restaurant with a spacious outdoor dining area. We had a great catch-up with Jax and Russ, and the food was delicious. I especially liked the lamb tacos; they were delicious!

When we got back to the boat, the moon was rising over the condos behind the marina.

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Day 163 – Tuesday, October 7th, 2025 – In: Baltimore, MD

Tuesday, I had a slow start. My back was bugging me a bit from crawling around behind the engines. Once I loosened up, I walked up to the office to retrieve an Amazon package containing some connectors, then spent the next couple of hours debugging the backup camera on the boat. It had stopped working at some point, and I thought that it was the camera itself, so I had ordered a replacement. When I plugged the new camera in, it still didn’t work. That meant it was either not receiving power or the video cable was faulty. I checked the power, and that was fine, so I toned out the video cable. The central wire on the coax had no connectivity. I replaced the connectors and retested it. It had full connectivity, but when I plugged in the camera, it still didn’t work. I also tried the old camera, and it didn’t work either. Very odd.

I was afraid that there might be an intermittent break in the video cable. When I installed the cable, it was an all-day project getting it fished from one end of the boat to the other, so I was not looking forward to replacing it. I decided to do one more test of all of the wiring. Again, the video cable with the new connectors tested out just fine. When I tested the power, I got 13.2 volts, NEGATIVE! I had missed the “-” sign the first time I checked it. Before we left on the trip, I cleaned up some of the wiring under the helm, and I must have swapped the power leads! I switched the wires and tested again. Both cameras worked! What a brain fart! Actually, I think that the video connector at the back of the boat was bad AND the polarity was reversed. It works now, and I can return the new camera that I bought.

After picking up, Brenda and I walked up to the Canton area that Jax and Russ had introduced us to. Last night, they pointed out a couple of bakeries that are pretty popular among the locals. We wandered up and down both sides of O’Donnell Square Park, which is the center of the restaurant and shopping area. We visited a few of the bakeries. The first was an Italian bakery, with mostly cookies and biscotti; we made a note to come back for dessert. At the second bakery, there was a line out the door. It was after noon, and they were pretty much sold out.

We walked across the park and stopped at Claddagh Pub for a snack, sharing a Cuban Irish sandwich. Then, we checked out the menus at the other restaurants along the street to pick a place for dinner.

When we got back to the waterfront, we stopped at The Lighthouse, a huge beer and wine store. They have over 200 feet of coolers featuring hundreds of craft beers from all over the country. I picked up a few unique ones to restock my supply.

At 5:30, we walked back up to Canton and went to the Speakeasy Saloon & Dining House. The menu was a mix of Greek, Italian, and Pub food. Brenda ordered Meatballs with Penne and tomato sauce. The portion was huge! The meatballs were lamb, not beef, and the tomato sauce had large chunks of tomato in it! Very tasty. I went for the Chicken Gyro; there must have been half a chicken in it. There was so much filling, chicken, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and tzatziki sauce, that I couldn’t pick up the pita bread it was wrapped in to eat it! I ended up using a fork and a knife.

After dinner, we walked across the park to Vaccaro’s Italian Pastry Shop, the Italian bakery, to pick up some dessert to take back to the boat. We decided to get a 1/2-pound box of assorted cookies. By the time we finished “two of those, and two of those, OH! and two of those…”, our 1/2-pound box weighed a pound!

Day 164 – Wednesday, October 8th, 2025 – In: Baltimore, MD

Our original plan was to leave Baltimore today. When we checked the weather yesterday, it was forecast to rain for most of the morning, with gusty winds reaching 20 mph and small craft advisories on the bay. We’ve had our share of rough days out on the Chesapeake Bay, so we decided to stay in Baltimore an extra day to let the weather blow past.

We spent the morning on the boat working on the blog. Then I ticked off another boat project by fixing a gauge that wasn’t reading correctly. While I had the lower instrument panel off, I cleaned up some old unused wiring, which, as usual, involved a run to West Marine for parts.

A fixture near the marina is Professor Trash Wheel, a solar-powered trash collector that collects trash coming out of a stormwater channel before it can get into the bay. Baltimore also has a couple of trash skimming boats that work along the edges of the bay, skimming trash and debris from the water. Sort of like a water street sweeper!

In the afternoon, we took a walk to the Fells Point area of Baltimore on the other side of the marinas. There was a tall ship in the quay from Argentina. Very beautiful!

On our past visits, this area was full of shops and restaurants. We were very disappointed to see that more than half of the storefronts were empty, and many that had held interesting shops were now either smoke shops, cannabis dispensaries, or palm readers. With the reduction in commercial businesses, there seemed to be a corresponding increase in trash and transients sleeping in doorways. We had planned to have dinner in Fells Point, but we didn’t see anything appetizing in the area.

We walked back toward the marina and decided to go back to Mahaffey’s Pub in the Canton area, which seems to be replacing Fells Point as the place for unique restaurants in South Baltimore.

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Day 165 – Thursday, October 9th, 2025 – To: Deale, MD
Herrington Harbor North

Weather Apps Can’t Be Trusted!

We were heading 47 miles down the Chesapeake to Herrington Harbor in Deale, MD, to visit with some friends. We delayed our departure by a day to wait for better weather. When we checked in the morning, the weather apps showed that the winds would be around 12mph from the north and would reduce to 6 mph by 10:00 am. They predicted waves to be between 1 and 2 feet, and would be primarily on our stern. I also checked the marine forecast, and they pretty much said the same thing. At 9:30, we pulled out of Baltimore and headed toward the Chesapeake.

The wind and waves were as predicted as we headed out of Baltimore Harbor. When we reached the remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, we met a HUGE container ship coming in. Three tug boats were wrangling it, so we pulled just outside of the channel, and squeaked past. The closer that we got to the end of the harbor, the more the waves picked up. By the time we turned toward the Delaware Bay Bridge, we were experiencing 3-4 foot waves, and they felt more like a washing machine than something coming from behind us. It was a very rough ride. We looked for a marina to bail out to, but there was nothing. Turning around wasn’t an option because we would be going into the wind, current, and waves, making it even worse. I found a marina that listed slips large enough to hold us and called them. The dockmaster said, “It’s too rough for you to come in right now. Call back in 20 minutes.” Great!

Even with the rough water, we were making pretty good progress toward the Delaware Bridge. After the bridge, we could turn a bit to the west and get behind a point of land to block the wind. We set our hopes on that and kept bouncing along. Just as we were passing under the bridge, three Customs & Border Protection Gunboats went by heading north. They were having a much rougher ride going into the waves than we were. It was good to know that we weren’t the only ones out today! That said, we could see several sailboats in the distance; I guess it was a good sailing day.

As we hoped, once we rounded the point, the wind decreased from 20-25 mph to 12-16 mph, and the waves dropped to 1-2 feet. It was still a bit rocky, but much more comfortable for the rest of the ride to Herrington Harbor.

When we were about two miles out, we phoned the marina to make sure they had someone to help us in. We were still getting 10-15 mph winds with higher gusts, and didn’t want to have to hang out while someone came to catch our lines. They said, “We aren’t expecting you for another week!” When I made the reservation online, I picked the wrong Thursday! They said that they could take us for one night, but not the two we had booked. At that point, we’d have tied up to anything, so we took it! Again, the boat did fantastically, and the crew survived.

Once we got in and decompressed, Brenda let our friends Mary and Jim on Pegasus know that we’d arrived relatively safely. They keep their boat here at Herrington Harbor. At 4:30, we walked to their boat, had docktails, and caught up with them. We first met them toward the end of our first loop in Stuart, Florida. We’d been introduced by our friends on Golden Daze. It was the day before Florida closed due to COVID.

They visited us when we were Harbor Hosting in Murrells Inlet, a year or so later, and we helped them get an old mattress off their newly purchased boat. We stopped here in Deale to visit with them during our Washington, DC, trip in 2022, and they visited us in Palm Coast this spring.

After chatting for a while, we went to dinner at Skipper’s Pier. The restaurant is 500 feet from our boat across the channel, but you have to drive 2.5 miles around the bay to get to it by car. We had a great dinner and chat with them.

When we got back to the boat, it was dead calm. No wind. As we walked down the dock, I commented to Brenda that we would have a nice, quiet night’s sleep.

I went to bed around 9:00, and at 11:00, I woke up to waves slapping on the side of the boat. The wind had picked up from the east, which is pretty much the only direction without protection in the marina. We were getting 14 mph winds with 20 mph gusts, and 1-foot waves coming in the breakwater against the side of the boat. It was a bit rocky, and the slapping was quite loud against the hull. I got up and checked the lines. The wind was pushing us into the dock, so we had to add fenders to keep the boat from rubbing on the pilings. Because the wind and waves were pushing the boat against the dock, we had to push on the pilings and use the thrusters to create enough space to put them in.

After we got the boat secured, we put in our earplugs and went back to bed for a restless night’s sleep.

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Day 166 – Friday, October 10th, 2025 – In: Deale, MD

The wind and waves kept up all night. At quarter to 5:00, I woke up and decided to get up as I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep. Brenda woke up around 6:30. We were both pretty tired because of a lack of sleep. At 9:00, Mary picked up Brenda and they did a shopping run to Walmart and Giant Supermarkets. I stayed on the boat and worked on the blog and some accounting.

When they got back from shopping, we put our supplies away and then went to lunch at South County Cafe with Jim and Mary. They had taken us here on our last visit, and it was excellent! Great sandwiches!

After lunch, we said our goodbyes. Jim & Mary were heading back to their dirt home, and we spent the rest of the day relaxing on the boat. We are watching the storm that is making its way up the East Coast. We have a 40-mile run to Solomons Island tomorrow. It looks like we will have a pretty good run as long as we leave early. Solomons is a very protected harbor, so it will be a good place to ride out the predicted 60 mph winds!

Around 4:00, the wind shifted and slowed, so the bounding and wave slapping finally stopped. We had leftovers on the boat for dinner, and we both called it an early night.

Day 167 – Saturday, October 11th, 2025 – To: Solomons, MD
Solomons Island Yacht Club

Today, the weather wasn’t great, but a storm is coming up the East Coast with winds predicted to be over 60 mph, so we want to be somewhere protected. Our next scheduled stop is Solomons Island, MD. We stopped here on our way up to have our batteries replaced and get haircuts. This time, our batteries are fine, but Brenda needs a maintenance visit.

The weather is supposed to get worse later in the day, so we left at 8:00. We had the wind from behind us, and the waves on Chesapeake Bay were 1-2 feet. It was a bit squirrelly again, but nothing like our trip out of Baltimore! We ran at 18 mph for most of the trip, which kept the boat on plane and meant that we kept ahead of most of the waves, making the ride tolerable.

We saw a few sailboats and three large ships, all headed north. Once we turned into the Patuxent River, the waves calmed down, and we had a smooth final 3 miles into Solomons Island. This time, we are staying at the Solomons Island Yacht Club, a new stop for us. The Yacht Club has opened up docking to AGLCA members! It’s a beautiful facility, with a clubhouse and easy access to restaurants (and hairdressers) in Solomons.

Because we got an early start this morning and ran fast, we arrived just after 10:30. Normally, check-in time is 1:00, but Regan, the dock master, understood that we were trying to beat the weather and didn’t mind our early arrival. We docked easily and were settled by 11:00, just as the rain started.

The rain only lasted for about an hour, during which we worked on the blog. At 12:30, we walked just down the road to the Tiki Bar & Grill for a snack. After our snack, we walked along the main drag to the bridge, checking out the Oyster Shucker Festival that was going on. Most of the restaurants and shops had booths set up along the sidewalk with samples and specials to entice passersby to go in. They also had a Halloween decorating contest going on. There were some very clever displays!

At 5:00, we walked to the Lighthouse Restaurant for dinner. We can see the restaurant from the boat, and the boat from the restaurant. Nice and convenient!

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Recap of the week

We traveled 138 miles this week, bringing our total to 3,145 miles so far. We have begun our trip down Chesapeake Bay with stops in Baltimore, Deale, and Solomons Island. We caught up with old friends and visited some familiar ports. The weather this week has been a bit of an issue. We had one rough day, but since we’re not in a hurry, we are trying to pick good weather days.

Next week, we will spend a few more days here in Solomons, waiting for the weather (and Brenda’s hair-doo) to improve. Then, we will continue our journey south through the Chesapeake, bopping back and forth between the east and west sides of the bay.