Craig is having a great day, there is a good 15-20 knot breeze coming from the desired direction, we have the main sail up fully and the smaller mid sail and we are cruising along at 6-8 knots there have been a few sharp gusts that have heeled us over a bit but nothing out of control, the sun is shining but the breeze is cool, I’d say its about 8c.  
But the best part is there are about 10 other yachts sailing with us, obviously all spread out but within our sights.  This is a big deal because it is the first time we have felt that we have caught up with other yachts that are heading South. We are heading down the Chesapeake Bay.

So exciting to see other yachts on the horizon

We have just spent 2 nights in Annapolis, I have never seen so many boats in the one place we had been told of a lovely quiet basin to anchor in up the Back Creek so once we had navigated our way almost to the main city we veered left towards Back Creek
OMG these are really deep creeks that go on, and on and on, there are boats at docks everywhere,  the creeks wind around and have little tributaries that go on for miles.  

We had stopped and sussed out dropping the anchor quite close to the entrance when we had a phone call from Paul whom we had met in Halifax (I went op shopping with him and Catherine)  to say his friend was on a Catamaran  in that same location and to give him a call, we did and he told us to keep heading up the creek, we ended up going much further in than we would ever have imagined possible, these creeks are deep with so many marinas and docks and boats it was a real eye opener how busy this place is.  We were just not confident enough to anchor in such a confined space, there is a bad weather forecast coming and we want to go ashore so we headed out of the creek towards the main town and picked up a mooring ball, plus Matt and Julia whom we had met in Warton are also here on a mooring ball and we wanted to catch up. 

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We caught up with Matt and Julia as the were dingy back to sea jay, after using the harbour showers, they had left Wiarton around the same time as us, but they had spent much more time in the North Chanel with family then they removed their mast, tied it to their boat and motored down the Eire Canal, down to the Hudson River and into New York.
We could have done the same trip but thought oh why would we pay $1000 to have our mast removed when we can sail for free, well its taken us months and cost us a fortune in harbour of refuge fees and we were hit by a hurricane but I would not change it now that we have done it..

We had a good old catch up over a few beers and arranged to have dinner the next night. 

Our plans were to go ashore and visit West Marine where the part for our windlass was waiting for us and we had been told about a marine shop called Bacon Marine that deals in second hand marine parts,  we ended up walking the 3km to west marine, i love walking along the streets in the different towns, you get to see the different areas and all the different types of houses,  its Halloween tomorrow so lots of pumpkins on stoops.


Once we had our part and bought a big new fishing rod !! we caught the bus to Bacon Marine on the other side of town.  The skies were getting dark and the wind had picked up so we didn't spend long there, its a haven for second had parts, so much stuff, Craig was overwhelmed by it all and didn't actually buy anything.  We caught the bus back to the harbour and into the dingy just in time before the winds really picked up - we are now sitting in a  - Tornado Watch - posted on the weather site - what next !!!

There is a cold front coming through that is capable of creating  tornados when it meets the warm air off the land !! Although I think tornados are more likely to develop and cross land.

The mooring ball is not in a good spot but I think we always look out at the other boats and think they are not getting the same swing and roll as us, but its all just the same.  
Matt and Julia were waiting to see how bad the weather was before they said yes to dinner.

They felt it was doable in the dingy and joined us for a delicious vegetable risotto, cooked by Craig. Accompanied by a beautiful red wine a special edition from Julia’s Dad ,the first wine we had for ages it was rather nice.  I was a bit apprehensive for M & J getting in the dingy to go home but they messaged us to say they had made it safely back to Sea Jay.  Oh yes its Halloween we would have gone ashore to see what was going on but the weather was too bad, but we did have 3 witches sup past early in the evening before it got dark and too windy.  when were on the bus we saw the local primary school kids doing a lap of the school they were all dressed up in their halloween outfits so very cute.

We rocked and swung during the night it was really uncomfortable the winds probably peaked at 25knots, up the next morning the weather had cleared and there was good winds predicted so without even saying goodbye to Matt and Julia we headed out to sail further down Chesapeake Bay.  Again we had more yachts sailing along with us it was back to being chilly with the overnight lows dropping to 0c later in the week one of the main reasons we high tailed it out of Annapolis.