Chesapeake City, C&D Canal

Monday morning was overcast but the rain the night before had cleaned off the boat, the winds were calm and the the river settled. We all slept in after the long day yesterday, so by the time we had breakfast, pulled up the anchor and took off, it was almost 10:30.

Of course, the pesky current was still against us, so the trip down the canal was slow -- we probably averaged about 3.5 knots. Our destination today is Chesapeake City, a small town on both banks of the canal that is intimately tied to its history. The canal was initially built in the 1800's to shorten the transit time from Baltimore to New York and Philadelphia -- it initially had locks, but over the years, the locks were eliminated and the canal widened and deepened to accommodate the large container and car transport ships of today.  Chesapeake city was the home of the canal operators and managers for much of its lifetime although in today's electronic communications and controls world, all that is left of them is a Canal Museum (which we visited -- more on that later).

The trip through the canal was surprisingly uneventful as we encountered little ship traffic -- we easily navigated past the one tug and barge tow that we did see -- we undoubtedly would have been able to pass a larger container ship, had there been one, although in the relatively narrow canal, it would definitely have been a "David and Goliath" moment for us as our tiny sailing vessel would have had to pass very close to a mammoth ship, undoubtedly making us feeling insignificant and very vulnerable.

The C&D canal has a number of bridges crossing it

"Hanging" on the C&D

The weather was partly sunny, airless and very, very muggy -- this was our first encounter with the "hot and muggy" weather the Chesapeake is famous for during July and August. We arrived at Cheesecake City about 1:30 and landed My Weigh on the free city dock -- we got some timely help from another cruising couple (Tom and Jill) who had an Island Packet also on the dock. They were heading East and North to NYC -- their plan was to "turn around" at the Statue of Liberty and return to their Williamsburg home -- cruising couples are often our age but they were much younger -- we all wondered "how they could do it" but never did find out :-)

My Weigh consumed the last available space on the dock -- soon after we tied up, another boat (Lanikai) arrived and asked whether they could "raft with" (tie up to) My Weigh -- they (Harry & Melinda) were also on there way East, to Ocean City, to referee a Sailing Regatta. Long time cruisers, and considerably older than us, they mentioned that they had cruised more than 100K miles over the years -- that is a mind blowing statistic.

After rafting Lanakai up, we decided to take a walk to visit the town and get an ice cream. The old part of Chesapeake City is on the southern bank of the canal right next to the town dock and consists of a couple of blocks of ramshackle restored victorianish homes, some of which were now boutiques, shops and restaurants. After dipping into a store or two and realizing that the local ice cream shop was closed, we walked about 3/4 of a mile to a roadside ice cream stand in the raging heat and humidity -- needles to say, the ice cream was the reward for taking that trek.

On our return trip, we visited the Canal Museum; we got there fairly late in the afternoon and ended up closing the place -- actually, Graham and I were the last ones out, Sue having left to return to the boat 10 minutes earlier. Surprisingly, when Graham and I went to leave the Museum grounds, we found ourselves "locked in" behind the 8' fence, topped with barbed wire, that surrounds the place. After trying a couple of different options for getting "around" the fence, we realized that our only option was to "go over" it -- we found a corner by the gate that was offset enough from the main fence to allow us to safely climb up and over to break out :-)

On the way back to My Weigh, I remembered that the boat had air conditioning and that all we had to do was to "hook up" to shore power to escape from the miserable heat and mugginess. In the almost 3 years that Sue and I have owned the boat and cruised the Northeast, we had never had a need to use the AC.

Naturally, when we hooked up the power and turned on the AC, it didn't work -- after all, isn't that what a boat is "supposed to" do? We soon realized that the system need some priming (at least that was the theory that Graham and I came up with). After about 45 minutes of disconnecting and reconnecting most of the system's components, we got it primed and it worked wonderfully -- it cooled the boat to provide heavenly sleeping conditions.

Jack & Graham pondering their next A/C move

We celebrated this accomplishment by all taking showers (in the now cool boat) and going out to the Bayard Inn, a locally well-known "higher end" restaurant that Sue and I had visited many years ago on Thanksgiving. The dinner was fabulous and made even more so by Sue's generous offer to pay for it as a thank you for fixing the AC. We got back to the boat and turned in just before the skies opened up in a downpour came that we all earnestly hoped would break the heat of this very, very muggy day.

Graham and I met this fellow on our way back to the boat after breaking out of the museum