Live Fire Exercise - Yikes!

This morning, as we motored north on the bay, we heard a Navy patrol boat attempting to contact a sailboat on the VHF radio. The person from Navy Prince asked for the northbound sailboat crossing the Potomac. We happened to be in that area, but so were a few other boats. One sailboat that was behind us answered the call and was told to move a little farther west to get out of the Navy’s live fire range. There is a target boat on the east side of the bay and we assumed that the Navy was going to be shooting at it sometime soon. We had heard a Navy boat asking boats to move out of range yesterday so we had been expecting it. We thought we were already enough to the west, but apparently we weren’t. One of the Navy patrol boats again hailed the northbound sailboat and started moving toward us.  George answered on the radio and we were indeed asked to move farther west. We did as we were asked and watched for the exercise to begin. A helicopter flew over a few times but that was all. Once we were anchored at Solomons we heard jets circling overhead several times as we were eating our early dinner in the cockpit. Maybe that was the exercise. In any case, we were happy not to be part of the Navy’s target practice. 

This should be our last night out before returning home. We plan to leave early in the morning in order to beat strong winds that are due in the late afternoon. It has been a very nice winter but it will be nice to be home again. 

Navy Patrol 777 motoring by. The target ship is the fainter spot behind it.