Above is the rough map Bruce and I started with for planning our spring cruise. We roughed out the trip when I was visiting San Diego in early December, talking over a couple of cold schooners of beer about where we would like to go. In this case it is the middle part of Chesapeake Bay. We had sailed through the area in 2009, much of that trip was out on the open bay. I started exploring the shoreline last fall on a solo trip. After a little discussion Bruce and I decided to revisit the area, exploring the bays and rivers along the way.
Once we have the initial map in hand it is a matter of working out the details. We need to find a ramp to launch the boat and a parking lot where we can leave the jeep and trailer for a week. In this case it will be Onancock, Va. I'll be over on the eastern shore next week and will drop by Onancock wharf to confirm this with the dockmaster. I think we'll end the trip at Cambridge. But I say "think" because I haven't nailed down a marina. In addition to a marina, we need a ramp and an Enterprise rent a car office - we'll rent a car to drive back to Onancock to retrieve the jeep and trailer. Cambridge, St. Michaels, Easton and Kent Narrows all fit the bill with ramps and rent-a-cars. What we still need to work out are marinas. They are crowded and expensive on that part of the bay.
Between the start and the finish are a series of roughly 25 mile days of sailing between possible anchorages. We've done as little as 13 miles (though it took us about 30 miles of sailing to cover that that 13 miles) and as much as 48 miles in a day, but 25 miles seems to be a pretty comfortable distance for us to cover on a relaxed day of sailing (hey, we're out there to have fun).
Then there are the other details - food (Bruce handles most of that), navigation (my job) and gear (shared responsibility, but we've done it enough we both know what we need to have on hand).
Thinking about the planning process got me thinking about past sails. I have never gone back to the planning maps to compare the plan with the actual sail, so I decided to take a look. Above is the Tag Team sail with Paul and Dawn last June, the planning map at left and the actual gps track at right.
There are some minor differences between the two. Instead of going down the ICW to the Bay River Bruce and I cut over on Jones Bay and took a tiny creek to the Bay River, something we had talked about as an option before the trip. And we made a side trip to Vandemere, again a possibility we had talked about beforehand. We did not sail outside from Cape Lookout to Beaufort as marked on the planning map, it was too windy and rough that morning and we sailed the back way to Beaufort. And the last night out we anchored in Beard Creek instead of behind Great Island. But otherwise the gps track is, to me, surprisingly close to the plan.
Above are the maps from my solo fall sail on Chesapeake Bay, the map showing possible anchorages at left and the gps track from the trip at right. I probably did less planning on this trip than most others. Since I was alone I knew I had to end up where I started, my plan was to sail north from Rumbley to Oxford, then work my way down south to Tangier Island, then return to Rumbley. The nice thing about this stretch of the bay (and for the areas of the Inner Banks of North Carolina that we sail) is that there are anchorages almost everywhere. Finding shelter from a storm or for the night is not a problem.
My rough sketch for the trip proved fairly accurate, the biggest change was opting to go to Tylerton on Smith Island instead of Tangier Island. It was apparent during the last couple days of the trip that Smith Island was a better fit as far as mileage, plus I had never been to Tylerton (I have been to Tangier Island several times). But otherwise the plan was pretty close to the final trip.
As for the spring trip with Bruce sketched out in the map at the top of this post, it is still evolving. We will probably bypass Holland Island. We might anchor the first night at Watts Island instead of Tangier Island. We'll sail near Wenona on Deal Island, but it will be late in the afternoon and we probably won't go into the harbor. Tylerton, Whitehaven, Dogwood Harbor and Oxford are on the "must visit" list. How will the trip turn out? We've got a couple of more months to tweak the plan and even then we won't know for sure until we sail it.
steve
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