Beaufort, NC to Solomon’s, MD

We left Beaufort, NC on Sunday morning and motored an hour to the Cape Lookout anchorage. We had  two motivations for going to Cape Lookout. 1-Since we thought we might be leaving after dark we preferred to leave from Cape Lookout as opposed to Beaufort harbor at night, and 2-record a track for future reference. We had heard that Cape Lookout was beautiful with clear water. Since we spend the winter in the Bahamas where the water is all shades of clear, beautiful blue, our standards may be too high. The Cape Lookout anchorage was pretty but the water was the same slightly cloudy greenish water we see on the Chesapeake. By 6 pm the wind had dropped and shifted from the northeast to the east so we left the anchorage. I was expected to hit a  residual large northeast swell once we rounded Cape Lookout but it wasn’t bad at all. It helped that there was a large period between the waves and light winds meant there was little to no wind chop on top of the swell. The light winds also meant we had to motor. We entered the Chesapeake just before sunrise on Tuesday (yesterday) morning. Our original plan was to continue on home. I didn’t relish the idea of arriving home in the middle of the night after two nights at sea so I lobbied to stop at Solomons for the night and sail home today. As we were approaching Solomons yesterday we went through a brief, but intense squall with a burst of 39-knot wind before a deluge of rain. We dropped the anchor just before sunset. As we entered the Chesapeake I noticed that our depth reading kept cutting out. I mentioned it to George after the rain stopped. It is always good to know the depth when anchoring, although we were following a track from last fall and could manage without the reading. George tried replacing the transducer that measures depth and checking the connections. We turned the navigation system off and on, but still no depth reading. I did my usual research on the My Hanse forum and read the posts on the subject aloud. Most of them sounded like “depth blahdy blah” to me but, fortunately, George understood what I was reading and fixed the problem by resetting the receiving unit in the cockpit.

 Our trip total was 300 miles in 50 hours. Of those 50 hours we motored 47. I apologize for not posting the reason for our change of plans yesterday, I was just too tired. We are okay and have not been arrested by the DNR for illegal sailing on the bay! By the way, the governor has clarified that it is okay for boaters to travel to their home ports. 

Cape Lookout anchorage with Cape Lookout light in background 

Sunrise on the Chesapeake Bay



Big storm approaching at Solomons