Solomons Harbor Marina - at a dock, Day 2

The friendly dockhouse crew!

The winds continue to howl, 15 to 20 with gusts to 25 - not conditions conducive to smooth sailing south on a body of water like the Chesapeake. In fact, we were getting up in the morning and heard this loud rumble ahead of us. It was a charter boat pulling in to pick up customers from the Holiday Inn. They had chartered long before today and so had to go out no matter what. He kind of shook his head and smiled when we talked of the conditions out on the bay, after all, he was going out. In his boat it certainly wasn't unsafe but for people not used to being in such conditions I'm sure it will  be exciting, especially where they were headed to the Potomac where a good tide against the wind will produce short, steep waves for entertainment. Later that day when they returned, I noticed a few green looking passengers, one jumped off the boat immediately and headed for land, the rest wandered around a little, not looking too perky.

You may have noticed a new option on the left of the blog labeled, "Pages". Google allows a number of fixed pages to be attached to the on-going blog. Since many people have asked me what software I use on a cruise and what resources I use, I thought a good place to put the data is right on the blog at the left. Just click on the first choice (for now), "Apple iPad2" for an overview and a listing of programs that I use with my new iPad2 that Ann bought me for my birthday. If you had asked me about the iPad2 before I had used it, I would have said it's more of a toy than a serious computer - boy was I ever wrong! Click on the link to the page to see why. I will be adding more pages in the future covering electronics on board and skills learned over the past 25 years.

The charter fishing  boat mentioned in the blog (minus passengers)

There's a Food Lion less than a mile away and I made a hike to pick up some supplies. From this marina it's not so far, from the usual Solomons marinas, it's much further - one more reason to dock at Solomons Harbor Marina (attached to the Holiday Inn). We also found that there's plenty of room to anchor out and the marina only charges $2/day for dinghy tie ups at a dedicated dinghy dock by the dockhouse. However, with temps plunging into the 40's at night, we'll stay put. Averaged over the three days of our anticipated stay, the rate is only $1.25/ft per day, less than at PYC!