Ocean Silence

We sailed to Langford Creek over Labor Day weekend. There was no wind on Saturday, so we motored to a small cove, up a creek off the Chester River (north of the Bay Bridge). Along the way we ran across one of our marina friends (who we won't name here) who were planning to meet us. Oddly, they were anchored, just off the mouth of the Chester, in the Bay. They had run out of fuel, so we tied up along side and tried to figure out how we were going to move 5 gallons of diesel from ourboat to their boat. This would be easy if we had a proper siphon pump, but of course we didn't. So, we had to open an access panel in the top of our fuel tank, down in the bilge and draw the fuel from there. With the boat bouncing around it was a miracle that we didn't spill half our fuel insidethe boat! We had some leakage, but it was manageble with paper towels. After the fuel transfer, we were on our way, once again.

All was pleasant and quiet until Sunday. We had met up with three other boats, so we were all tied up together with fenders between the boats in a wooded cove. I was napping down below, when a large wake started the boat rocking. I went up on deck to see what was happening, when an even bigger series of waves struck us from the side. A wake 4-5 feet in height tore through our raft and all the boats started rocking wildly. Sadly, we did have some damage. Our teak rub rail came down on the edge of one of the other boats, and was split and torn away. The boat adjacent to us didn't have any damage to their side, but the tri-color at the masthead was broken, and their Loran antenna came down. The idiot power boats that caused all this were well away and it was hard to see the boats' names. Several of us launched dinghies to talk to the other boats in the anchorage to see if they caught a name. We found one person who had seen the name of one of the two boats responsible, so we are hoping to track them down.

Yesterday made up for Sunday. We had an east wind at 15-20 knots, which allowed us to sail home more quickly than we had motored the distance on Saturday. Everyone felt great about the sailing, and time will put the bad experience of the boat wakes behind us...