Mill Creek at Anchor

Fish Traps - In the Way!

It had been raining hard when we first arrived at Solomons Island so we passed up on our chance to refuel. That was a mistake. There are only two places for fuel and one was occupied by a catamaran that was just sitting on the dock, for over an hour. They sure weren’t selling much fuel there, we had no idea what was going on so we headed for the alternate fuel station, came in, docked and was shooed off since a tug was coming in to refuel. We repositioned to the end of the dock but then there was nobody to sell fuel. Nobody answered the radio or telephone. Several of us went off to find somebody and after about ½ hnour, a woman (dressed in all black, etc.) showed up. I was informed that the fuel hose wouldn’t reach to the end of the dock where I was at, I had to move closer. So we warped the boat around the corner of the dock and finally refueled. We lost an hour with all this nonsense. Next time, refuel on the way in.

The wind had finally blew itself out so we had little to help us on our way today, more motoring. We average around 7.3 kts when motoring so we arrived at Mill Creek around 3:00 pm. On the way in we saw fish traps which we had to steer around. They showed up well on radar, looked strange with the horizontal lines right in your path ahead. We didn’t try to go between them, who knows, perhaps old ones were just under the water. We went outside the whole area labeled blocked out on the charts.

The anchorage is just beautiful. Completely protected, about 12 ft deep but with one great shortcoming – no Hoolie relief! We finally found a handkerchief size patch of sand and it was enough, thank goodness. The winds are supposed to pipe up tomorrow and perhaps we can sail for a change even though there’s a small craft advisory out for Sunday morning. Nice sunset, clear night – starry!