This is Blessed Spirit entering Jackson Creek in Deltaville to the Fishing Bay Yacht Club where we stayed for several days. The inland waterways are always calmer, thank goodness.
It was a pleasure to see the club manager, Dixon Cole, who, along with every club member we met, was very welcoming. Bill Tice, whom we had met in the Bahamas, drove us around and showed us some of the sights. Below we are at Bill's marina. 
It was the weekend of the annual Marine Flea Market at Deltaville Boat Yard and we stayed for that as well. Corning had his auto pilot repaired and all in all, the days sped by very quickly and the nights which we spent playing poker with Corning and Tita for nickels and dimes. At the end we were just about even. It was not about winning or losing but learning different games and having lots of fun. Corning is a great teacher!
Sadly we said goodbye to Corning and Tita who went on their way. They had made arrangements to leave their boat and were going to pick up a car to drive home to Maine. Tita is a great gardener as well and wanted to return to get her garden and home ready for the summer. When it is warmer (mid-June), they plan to return to the Chesapeake and sail their boat back to Maine. We will miss both of them greatly but we have standing invitation to go visit them in Maine and likewise, they are always welcome in Mississauga. Again I will say that making new friends is one of the highlights of our trip. As we departed from Fishing Bay Yacht Club we passed another osprey nest. If you look closely,you can see the mama peeking out.
We enjoyed a couple of sunny days anchoring on the way to Annapolis 
where we stopped in Spa Creek this time, simply to see another aspect of Annapolis. The property values in Annapolis are through the roof. Near the downtown historic area, this is a corner 2300 sq. ft., 3 bdr/3.5 baths townhouse on a 24 ft. lot. 
It is advertised as $150,000 below May 2006 appraisal and offered at $1,097,000. We were anchored opposite this house below which was purchased for 3.5 million and the new owners are spending another 2 million to update and restore it.
It is on a fabulous piece of property with its own dock. In this picture below you can see Roman with our little 5 hsp Honda dinghy motor. This is the last time it will look like this. 
We did a lot of sightseeing and walking as we had to wait for favourable weather; waiting is a bane for all sailors. 
Above is a tribute to Alex Haley who wrote the story of his ancestors which was made into the TV series "Roots". 
Last time we were at the bottom of the hill in this photo. This time we were near the top.We spent some time with Richard and Janice from Carpe Diem IX whom we had met initially in Turner Creek, Georgia. They are from Thunder Bay, Ontario and are just completing the last few months of their year long Great Loop Trip, through Lake Michigan, down the Illinois, Mississippi , Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, the Tenn-Tom Canal to the Gulf, around the tip of Florida and up the ICW. This is the route that Bob Cerkownyk and Irene Sirant are doing on their trawler Please Yourself. When we heard from them last month, they were still on the west coast of Florida.
The forecast was miserable for the next two weeks with a few days of intermittent respite from the steady rain and cold. We left with Carpe Diem IX on one of those days to go to Chesapeake City. It started out not too badly, cleared up completely and it looked like it was going to be easy going over calm waters. Unfortunately mid-afternoon, it started to rain and the winds picked up (not in the forecast) and we were tossed about and shaken all the way across the bay. The waves were only 4 to 5 feet but the winds were much stronger than had been forecast and the wave period was about 3-4 seconds resulting in a bump bump bump sensation. It calmed down slightly when we entered the Elk River and both boats made it safely to the anchorage at Chesapeake City which is inside the C&D (Chesapeake and Delaware) Canal.
This was my first time on the C&D Canal as Roman had gone through single-handedly when I returned to Toronto last October for the UCWLC convention. The C&D Canal is very well maintained and marked, over 12 miles long and maintains a depth of 35 ft. This coupled with the fact that it is very level with no locks or tolls attracts a great deal of commercial traffic as well as fishermen early in the morning.
You can tell by the picture above how gloomy a day it was. We had to keep a constant vigal for the large barges and tankers passing us. Below is Carpe Diem passing under the many bridges as we made our way through the Canal into the Delaware River. The 56 mile trip to the Atlantic Ocean can be a treacherous one as the the tidal currents on the Delaware
are very swift and the river offers very very few anchorages. Our initial plan was to seek out one these few anchorages but the current carried us, at times over 9 knots, all the way to the Atlantic. Below Carpe Diem passes a nuclear plant on the Delaware River. 
Carpe Diem then took the inside canal through Cape May (peninsula) but our mast is too tall for the bridge and our draft too deep as the water levels are very low, so we had to go around the cape into the Atlantic. We met at the anchorage at Cape May(town) by 6:00 that night. It was a very long day but we covered a great deal of ground or should I say, water.
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