Rhode Island Again – Most of the Day

Ann at Hoolie's Island

The marine forecast for the Chesapeake Bay was for a small craft advisory until 11:00 with winds 15 to 20 and gusts to 30 out of the south, the direction (of course!) that we were headed. However, it wasn’t so bad in the anchorage with winds around 10 kts. On the way south from Chesapeake City, NOAA has also forecast a small craft advisory weather which never materialized. We thought that perhaps NOAA was being overly cautious. With that we set out around 11:00 but the closer we got to the bay, the more the wind piped up. As we rounded the corner into the bay, the waves started hitting us and we were on a roller coaster ride, taking water over the bow every third wave or so. Turning on NOAA, we heard that the small craft advisory had been extended until 5:00 with gusts predicted now to be 35kt! Since our motto was to have fun, we just turned back into the Rhode River rather than take five hours of that. You can see our U-turn on the Fleetwing 24 hour location plot at the link at left.

Virginia Duck Blind - Seen Better Days

Coming back into the anchorage you would never guess at the weather in the bay, nice and calm with gentle breezes. We took the afternoon exploring the anchorage which is huge, over 100 boats could easily fit here. There were several duck blinds and they were apparently such a fixture that they were even on the charts – labeled “duck blind” The run into the island for Hoolie relief was in stark contrast to the morning when Hoolie had about a foot of sand to do his business on due to a wind driven tide out of the south.

Now the wind has died completely and the mosquitoes are out and the boat is perfectly still. We did have a nice sunset. If the weather forecast holds, then were out of here Wednesday!