Pigs Take Wing: Cauldrons on the Chesapeake

Day six found us waking early on a sunny day, and we decided to cross the bay over to St. Michael's, a must-see for boaters, we'd been told.

Mrs. C steering on a sunny morning

Whipped cream skies

Eventually though, the wind laid down on us and we dropped the mainsail and rolled up the jib (the headsail). As we were getting closer to the entrance to San Domingo Creek, we saw some signs of new wind ahead, so we thought we'd roll out a bit of the jib to add some speed.

Just before we unfurled a bit of the jib...

As quickly as we had her unfurled, we found ourselves struggling to get her furled again. That lovely new wind lane clocked around to our nose and increased speed to almost 30 knots in the space of less than a minute. It took both of us hauling on the furling line to get her wrapped back up. Whew!

After the madness; it calmed down a little but you can see it was still 24 knots!

We motored the rest of the way up San Domingo Creek and dropped the hook in the middle of a secluded area off the back side of St. Michael's.

Safely at anchor, with only one neighbor behind us.

Once we got settled, we put on some warm and dry clothes and got into the dinghy to take the dog to shore and check out the area.

On shore after tying up to the dinghy dock.

A pathway into town.

We found a local grocery store at ten minutes before closing and managed to purchase more rum (an essential!) just before they locked their doors. We walked through the rest of town and found ourselves near the maritime museum (more on that in my next post), and a restaurant called The Crab Claw. Realizing it was our one-week anniversary, we decided to celebrate with our first ever meal of steamed blue crabs.