Bohemia River to Still Pond Creek, MD

16.2 nm
Wind: SW 5 knots to calm
Maximum speed: 6.0 knots
Maximum speed under sail: 4.1 knots
Average speed: 3.0 knots
Latitude: 39°20.06’N
Longitude: 076°08.58’W

Anchored again tonight with Serenity. It was a beautiful, but exhausting day. Karl singled-handed all day, basically to see what it was like, while I cooked and cleaned. Lin Pardey says her duties as chief cook and bottle-washer only take her three hours a day. To that I say: Ha! And: Pshaw. There’s no way. She also scoffs at the idea of a “galley slave,” saying that the galleys are the best-equipped part of a modern cruising yacht.

This may well be true. Ours, however, is nothing of the sort. It took me about two hours to wash two days of dishes this morning, wrestling swamp water to a boil using the vise clamp as a pot grip. I can barely fit our plates in the miniscule sink, and we’re out of fresh water in our holding tank, so I can only use salt water scooped from the ocean. It’s not bad, and I’m gradually getting the hang of it, but it’s exhausting and time-consuming. Then I decided the filthy floor needed cleaning, so swept it, twice, and bleached it down by hand. This was in between doing the navigation duties this morning that I had neglected last night and making tortilla roll-ups for lunch. By the time I was done with the floor, we were pulling into our anchorage and it was time to start dinner. Now I’m writing—I’m days behind on the novel, with only four days to go I have 14,000 words to go. I’ll pound them out.

I know that Karl feels as tired as I do, but hanging out in the cockpit while the Master steers merrily away somehow doesn’t seem like as much work. Or at least more fun work. Maybe we should take turns. I’m just not sure, physically, if I could handle the big tasks like tacking single-handed. And it was such a gorgeous day for a sail. There was a quarter-mile visibility because of fog this morning, so we didn’t get off until 11:30, but Geoff came over and had coffee and rafted up. He’s over again right now, and Karl and he are hanging out in the cockpit. We’re going to try to make it to a town with a free dock and services tomorrow. We only have one more day of water, no ice, and I’m feeling in sore need of laundry and showers again, not to mention internet access.

But Karl sailed off the anchor, single-handed, when we were finally able to leave, and then tacked beautifully down the bay at about three knots, before finally succumbing to the diesel when the computer starting beeping, telling us it was out of batteries. The wind was exactly in our faces again, but sometimes that makes it more of a challenge. When we pulled into the anchorage, and I started cooking dinner, Karl killed the diesel and tried to sail onto our anchor again tonight. We were going maybe a quarter of a knot, drifting endlessly towards Serenity, Geoff’s boat. Karl started pumping the tiller, but even there he could barely get more than a half-knot. Still, it was a fun way to end the day, drifting slowly towards our stopping point.

The moon’s getting fuller again. I love watching the changing phases of the moon. We’ve watched it set the last couple of nights, a little fingernail of light, sinking below the trees. Moonset gets later and later as the full moon approaches.