Trip Summary and Highlights

To properly end this story, we felt the need to provide a few statistics and highlights from our journey.  In the end, we learned a few things.

Statistics:

• ·      Departed home:  18 March 2013
• ·      Returned home:  3 July 2013
• ·      Nautical miles traveled: 1938  (statute miles:  2202)
• ·      Total days: 108
• ·      Days in Chesapeake Bay:  54
• ·      Days of weather delay:  23
• ·      Days of mechanical delay:  4
• ·      Total no. of stops:  46
• ·      Stops in Chesapeake Bay:  20, of which 5 were repeat visits
• ·      Weight loss:  Peter = 8 lbs., Lyn = 4 lbs.

Highlights of the trip:

• ·      Annapolis: sailboats racing to the finish line through the mooring field, historic downtown area, Naval Academy museum – model sailing ships
• ·      Chestertown: great crab cakes at the Lemon Tree restaurant, birthplace of Sultana – a full-scale replica of a 1698 British warship, historic district row houses.
• ·      Solomons: Calvert Marine Museum – part aquarium, part shipbuilding museum
• ·      Yorktown: the historic triangle of Yorktown, Williamsburg and Jamestown
• ·      Cape Charles: the watermen unloading their bushels of crabs direct from the boat to the seafood distributors’ trucks, old fashioned modes exemplified by hardware store social gathering area.
• ·      Tangier Island: everybody knows everybody, golf cart transportation, you can walk the whole island in 30 minutes.
• ·      Hampton: I-MAX theatre inside the Virginia Air and Space Center where we saw the latest Star Trek movie in 3-D.
• ·      St. Michaels: Historic town with great maritime museum and a nice anchorage in San Domingo Creek.
• ·      Seeing old friends Bill and Cheryl Mote, and sister Ann with niece Jenny.
• ·      Black bears swimming across bodies of water!
• ·      Wrightsville Beach – a great place to stop at anchor for a while.

What we learned from the trip:

• ·      The best way to lose weight is to take an extended cruise.  It is painless.
• ·      Kite is a very capable and seaworthy boat.  She is comfortable downwind in 25+ knot winds.
• ·      Chesapeake Bay harbors and towns welcome crusiers from Memorial Day to Labor Day.  We were a few weeks early and missed some attractions that were not yet open.
• ·      All the people we met were very nice.  Lots of free advice that we could really use, helpful attitudes of both other boaters and the staff at the marinas we patronized.  Reinforces my belief that most people are decent and want to be nice.
• ·      After 108 days confined to the small spaces of a boat with one other person, many couples might start to get on one another’s nerves.  In our case, it was quite the opposite – we grew closer together.  The shared experiences, shared decisions, meeting the challenges as a team - all built stronger bonds between us.