Saturday, June 7, 2008 - 6:30 am

Today is the day we begin our trip up the Chesapeake Bay to Delaware City Marina. The temperature is expected to reach 100 degrees today, tomorrow and Monday, the three days we have before we haul out Blue Heron. The temperature this morning is moderate, 70 degrees perhaps, and it is foggy. We were hoping to get an early start out on the water, but decide to wait for the fog to lift -- especially since we are unfamiliar with the area. We took a walk up the road to the 7-11 store for some coffee and sundries. When we returned to the boat, the fog was beginning to lift. At 10:00 am we threw off the dock lines and backed out of the slip! As we approached the bay, we could see that the fog was much thicker there. Other boats were sort of "hanging out" waiting for better visibility. It really was too dangerous for us to head out -- especially without radar -- so we chose to stay where we were and wait. We motored in place for 3-1/2 hours!! The fog just did not want to burn off. The good side of all of this was that the fog kept the heat back. Finally, at 1:30 pm we decided to go for it. Visibility was getting better and we knew it couldn't be much longer before it was clear.

We hoped to get to Tolchester Marina today which is located just north of Rock Hall, Maryland. The marina is 20 miles north of the Bay Bridge where we began our journey and 30 miles south of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal. Gale experienced some frustration with the instruments and making a proper heading: the handheld compass and the compass on the binoculars matched, but the compass on the boat, the digital compass and the GPS compass all read differently. We were told that the digital compass and the boat compass will need to be calibrated with a GPS. This is something we will do next spring.

The afternoon temperature did reach 100 degrees but we were comfortable on the boat with a breeze and the cover of the hard bimini. There was no sailing done today since what little wind we could find was coming from directly behind us. At 5:02 pm, we tried to call the Tolchester Marina, but there was no answer. We were afraid that we might not be able to find a slip there so started checking with some of the other marinas. There was a marina in Rock Hall that had some slips available, but when we looked at the map, we determined that we were already past their harbor and decided to continue to Tolchester. We were pretty sure that we would be able to get at least an anchorage at Fairlee Creek which was even further north if there was nothing in Tolchester, although it would probably be 8:00 pm before we would get that far. At 7:00 pm, and after motoring about 25 miles, we pulled into the Tolchester Marina and they were able to accommodate us for the night. There was a small bar on the Bay a few yards from our slip where we got a sandwich, a beer and a spectacular view of the lightning show. Our slip neighbors, Ian and Carol, helped us to prepare for the storm. A big gust of wind blew through, but no rain and no further storms for the night. We learned in the morning that Rock Hall was hit pretty hard! Again, good fortune smiled on us.