September 7, 2012 - Annapolis, Maryland

Spa Creek where we anchored

While pulling into the Annapolis Harbour, we noticed a few navel ships and while in town, we saw quite a few navy personnel all dressed in their summer white uniforms. In the harbour we also noticed many large yachts. This is a popular boating area. We anchored in an area called Spa Creek. Very picturesque with all the beautiful homes and other anchored boats.


The next day we went into town to have a look around. We found a huge liquor store for Roly, and many boutiques for Carole. As we were wandering around, we noticed storm clouds coming our way. Our intentions were to have dinner in town, so Carole kept shopping and Roly jumped into the dinghy to hurry back to the boat to close the windows. As Roly got to the boat, the skies opened up and all hell broke loose. He began closing some windows, then noticed the boat dragging both its anchors in the gale force winds that suddenly appeared. Before he knew it, the boat was sitting on a sandbar with both engines running. He was running like a mad man while trying to untangle both anchors and bringing them up, as well as zipping up canvas windows while the wind and rain were working hard against him. He was able to back off the sandbar with all the available power from the engines. Finally after being free with the anchors up, he was repositioning the boat, then noticed the dinghy floating away, (Carole's laughing while she's typing this:) Retrieving the dinghy was the easiest part of the adventure. Carole was happy to shop but got quite worried when an hour and a half had passed and he was nowhere in sight. Finally after he was gone for 2 hours, she noticed him pulling into the restaurant dock with the Rol & C's. We finally had dinner and a few stiff drinks to calm our nerves. Carole would like to say that this is not her fault, lol. Roly was happy to leave alone to close the windows so he could get away from shopping, haha. She did feel really bad though. Needless to say, we decided not to split up if anything like this should happen again.

Our new anchor

After dragging twice, we decided to order a new Rocna anchor from West Marine to the tune of $800. At that price, it better work! We had to wait a few days for the anchor to come in, so decided to try our luck at crabbing after watching a couple guys on shore catch a bunch. Not bad for our first try, we caught a dozen blue crab that made for a great meal.

Caught our first blue crab
 

What a feast!