In Solomans, we met up with Mark, Robin, Jan and Jim for a lovely dinner, which of course we forgot to photograph. We did however see a beautiful sunset on the way to the restaurant.
Looking at all of our options for fireworks on the Chesapeake during the 4th of July weekend, we decided our best option would be to head to St Michael’s for their Saturday evening display. Though we had planned to anchor just outside the town, on our cruise, we were able to grab a spot at one of the marinas in town due to a last minute cancellation. While in town, we headed towards the Maritime Museum where we walked around a recovered lighthouse building. It was extremely hot out, so a quick ice-cream break was required.
We stopped at a couple of wine tasting rooms on the way home, but unfortunately were extremely disappointed and ended up returning to the boat empty-handed. Back on the boat, a very brief rainstorm rolled in, and then quickly rolled out, leaving behind an amazing double rainbow.
We had a spectacular view of the fireworks from our Juliet Balcony in the evening.
On Sunday we largely spend the day relaxing and trying to stay cool and ended up eating out in town for a lovely pizza dinner.
For the Monday holiday, we decided to head to Annapolis for a couple of days. We would be able to visit the town together, and then on Tuesday while David and I went back to work, Mark and Robin would be able to do some further exploring. We went to the Naval Academy and the Capitol Building where we got to stand in the room where George Washington resigned. It turned out that the marina we were staying in was right by the Annapolis Yacht Club, which we had reciprocal with and we ate a lovely meal in their dining room.
After Annapolis, we headed for one night to Rock Hall. There wasn’t much there, but as we were walking back from dinner, we did see fireflies up close – I’d never actually seen them before!
We’d been keeping an eye on the progress of the storm Elsa and knew that it would be blowing past us on Thursday evening. We decided to find shelter in a protected anchorage on the Sassafrass River. Unfortunately we knew from last year that this spot had no internet, so we spent the day anchored just up river where we did have connection, and then moved after work and battened down ready for the storm to hit us. As it turned out, we only had a little rain and not unusual amounts of wind. Mark and Robin survived the night!
On Friday morning we headed to Chesapeake City where we met up again with Jan and Jim for one last meal and said our goodbyes.
At O-Dark-Thirty (aka 5:30am), David and I awoke and set out on our long run down the Delaware.
On our previous two times on this stretch, we had done this in two legs – the Delaware River as one and the New Jersey Coast as the other. With an excellent forecast predicted, and the much larger fuel capacity of the new Highwind, we thought that we might be able to make it all the way to Sandy Hook in one shot. The weather was perfect and the conditions were about as good as you could hope. We got a great current push through the C+D canal, and through 2/3s of the Delaware River, setting us up to leave the eastern exit to Cape May around 10:20am and make the long run up the Jersey coast.
As we were nearing Sandy Hook, we started looking at diesel prices, and Atlantic Highlands, our usual reliably-cheap diesel, turned out to be more expensive than most other marinas. We found that it was only a little bit further to make it all the way to the New York Harbor and get cheaper diesel right there, where we could anchor just off the Statue of Liberty at Ellis Island. We decided to change our destination, and after 13 hours of cruising we dropped anchor in a spot with an amazing view of the south of Manhattan, with plenty of sunlight remaining.
