Thursday, October 11, 2018

Little Choptank River: landlocked



        Rain at dawn soon ended and 14 knot wind from the south has diminished to only a few knots.
        Two commercial boats have been moving about.  One dropped a trap a hundred yards from GANNET this morning and lifted it a while ago.  I couldn’t see what if anything was in it.  
        Yesterday as I was sailing in one commercial boat cut close across GANNET’s bow and then the two men in it yelled at me that they were towing something.  A net or a dredge.  I had to change course and yelled back that they should have passed behind me, which they easily could have done.          I expect that some of the watermen, as they are known on the Chesapeake, resent ‘pleasure boaters.’  On GANNET they just see an old man sailing, but we know that I could do what they do, but they couldn’t do what I do, and I resent the discourtesy.  
        There is what I think to be a duck blind off a point of land to the north.
        I am landlocked.  Surrounded by a complete overlapping 360º of land.  I know the way out and it makes for a good harbor, though there is a several mile fetch to the SSW, but I will be glad to be back in the main part of the Bay, and even happier to be back in the Atlantic Ocean.
        The strongest wind, perhaps up to 40+ knots, and rain is due here between midnight and dawn.  Tomorrow’s wind is forecast still to be too strong for me to get out of this river, but if the forecast is wrong, I will.  If not, then Saturday morning.
        A quiet day so far at anchor.  I’ve been reading and listening to a classical music station in Washington, D.C.
        The photos are iPhone panoramas taken a few minutes ago when I was standing in the companionway, drinking a beer and listening to music.
        The horizon is fairly straight.  The lifelines not.