Log #22: Farewell Bermuda, Bound for Annapolis

St. George's, Bermuda, then a Wednesday 4:00 PM departure for Annapolis, MD

We're back at sea. Next Chapter cleared out and departed of St. George's at 4:00 PM — not because we were ready to leave that wonderful place, but because the weather said it was time. Twenty-four hours later we've already logged our best run of the whole crossing: 181 nautical miles made good.

Leaving Bermuda was the easy part to feel bad about. We absolutely loved it — a beautiful country full of genuinely wonderful people, and we did our best to see it the local way, riding the bus around the island rather than chasing it in a taxi. But the window between here and the Chesapeake doesn't ask your opinion, and when it opened we took it.

The days at anchor were the usual cruiser's split of rest and repairs. On the R&R side of the ledger, most of it was spent on Bermuda's beautiful sand beaches, wading into 85-degree water. That's tropical water we've missed more than we realized — the last time we felt anything like it was over a year ago in the Bahamas, and it was every bit as good as we remembered. On the other side of the ledger, we knocked out the chores that pile up on a passage: a full wash-down to get the salt off her, an oil change on the main, and a careful inspection of all the mechanicals before committing to another offshore leg. And we took on fuel — which stung, as fuel on a remote island does, though that 30% duty-free voucher from clearing in took some of the bite out of it.

Day two we set the tools down and went to see the Fantasy Cave, one of the island's underground showpieces — a cavern of clear pools and stone formations, opened up for tours and well worth the stop. Whoever laid out the grounds understood human nature, too: there's an ice cream shop parked conveniently at the exit, and we did not put up a fight. The following day we ran into Hamilton. It was a pleasant enough visit, but I'll be honest — it had the feel of a cruise-ship port more than the Bermuda we'd fallen for out in St. George's.

Checking out was every bit as painless as checking in, and it came with a bonus: Jake, our four-year-old and captain-in-training, got to sign our exit paperwork himself. Good practice for a future skipper. One quirk worth passing along to anyone following in our wake — Bermuda has you surrender any and all weapons on arrival, which in our case meant handing over the flare gun and flares. So checkout also meant reclaiming it before we could go.

We pulled out into a southeast breeze hovering around 13 knots, kicking up a modest mix of swell and wind wave. It was right on the nose out through Town Cut, which is about what you'd expect, but as we bent north to clear the reef it slid around onto the stern — and there it has happily sat for the last 24 hours.

This leg, we get to spend a little of what we saved. With ample fuel capacity aboard and a shorter run ahead, we can afford to trade some economy for speed, so we've set the throttles at 1,350 rpm — right around 7.5 knots. The ocean has rewarded it: 181 nautical miles made good over the first 24 hours.

Follow the dot: trackmywake.com/wake/next-chapter.

— Chris & the crew of Next Chapter

Log #23: Day 2, More of the Same

Second day at sea (again), bound for Annapolis, MD

Day 2 in the wake, and the report is a happy one: more of the same. The weather held right where we left it — 13 knots out of the southeast with a comfortable following sea — and Next Chapter just kept eating up the miles.

Out here, "more of the same" is the best kind of news. A steady breeze on the stern quarter, a following sea that pushes rather than fights, and a boat that settles into her rhythm — that's a passage doing exactly what you hope for. There's not much drama to report, and after thirteen days across the Atlantic, we'll take an uneventful run to Annapolis every time.

The one place we're not being frugal is power. The weather has been great — which, translated out of the brochure, means hot and humid — but with plenty of fuel aboard for this leg we're leaning on the generator more liberally than we usually would. That lets us run both air conditioners on full while making water and doing laundry, all at the same time. Might as well be comfortable while the miles roll by.

We've also settled on a plan for the arrival. Rather than push straight up to Annapolis, we'll take our time once we reach the Chesapeake — either anchoring up or ducking into a marina, the latter being tempting for a chance to stretch our legs and top off the groceries. Fruit and veg were eye-wateringly expensive in Bermuda, so we provisioned light on the way out and could use a proper market run. Our slip reservation doesn't begin until August 1, and at this pace we'll be a few days early, so there's no sense rushing to a dock we can't yet use.

Which brings me to a request for the crew of readers who know these waters: we'd love your favorite Chesapeake stops — anchorage or marina — that don't ask us to stray far off the run up to Annapolis. A quiet, well-protected spot to sit for a day or two, close to the rhumb line and within reach of a grocery store, would be perfect. Reply and let us know where you'd drop the hook.

As for the run itself, the sea saved the best for the numbers: 195 nautical miles made good over the 24 hours — an 8.125-knot average and the fastest day of the entire crossing. And we did it still turning the same 1,350 rpm we set leaving Bermuda. The gain over yesterday's 181 miles came entirely from the ocean, a following swell lending us a push rather than any heavier hand on the throttle.

Follow the dot: trackmywake.com/wake/next-chapter.

— Chris & the crew of Next Chapter

Chris and Crew -

Recommendations for great places to stay on the Chesapeake Bay going north - this could take a minute (or a week). I have been boating on the Bay for more than 50 years and haven’t seen it all. Our beautiful Chesapeake is spacious!

Easy places going north are available on both the Eastern Shore and the Western Shore, and right in the middle of the Bay.

Sarah Creek off the York River on the Western Shore has a great anchorage and York River Yacht Haven Marina with a good restaurant, a nice pool and a local Selene, WAITINONAWOMAN, our former Shangri-La, now owned by Mike and Angie Gilliam who I am sure would love to meet up with you. The Yorktown Revolutionary War Museum is right across the bridge and is a world class stop. Shopping and restaurants are close by.

The East River off Mobjack Bay on the Western Shore is a beautiful river with lots of pretty anchorages. John Lennon and Yoko owned a home there they planned to convert to a studio but the unspeakable happened.

Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore is a great town with lots to see and do. Restaurants, shops and some stores.

Onancock on the Eastern Shore on Onancock Creek is a wonderful town with a nice dock run by the town, anchorages and golf carts to rent to get to restaurants, shops and stores.

Tangier Island right in the middle of the Bay south of the Potomac River is a time capsule. The Old English spoken there tells you a lot about the island - Neither it nor the folks who live there have changed much in a couple hundred years. Good restaurants, lots of crab and Smith Island cake to eat, more golf carts and you can tie up side to at Parks marina, although Mr. Parks passed a few years ago.

We live right on the Potomac, which is big water, but you can stay at one of the many beautiful anchorages on the Yeocomico River behind our house. I just hosted the Summer of ‘26 Rendezvous last weekend at Olverson’s Lodge Creek Marina and Steve, a friend of mine and the owner, has my empty slip waiting for you. Either he or I have a loaner car for you. I would love to serve you a beverage of choice and swap stories.

Across the Potomac, there is the Saint Mary’s River, where we hosted the first part of last week’s Rendezvous. Last night we attended the final performance of the season by the Chesapeake Orchestra there at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland. Lots of great anchorages and a few restaurants up and down the river. Smith and Jutland Creeks, a little closer to the mouth of the Potomac, have great anchorages, a few restaurants and Point Lookout Marina.

Solomons, Maryland, on the Western Shore on the Patuxent River, has great anchorages, marinas, restaurants, easy shopping and more. Another maritime museum. I can help line up a slip for you there with folks I know or you can just shop the many marinas.

Oxford, Maryland on the Eastern Shore on the Tred Avon River is a fun little town. More Selene folks, Corey and Tracy Chamness on Leizu, are local there and Corey is a master bartender. If you stop in there, ask for one of his crafted Mai Tai specials. Good local ice cream also.

Saint Michaels on the Eastern Shore as you approach Annapolis is busy, expensive, fun and has the best maritime museum on the Chesapeake Bay. If you visit there, you can go in the “back door” and anchor on San Domingo Creek and take a tender in. You should plan to spend a full day at the museum, and then another walking the town and touring. Bring a bankroll.

Please call or email me if you want more detailed information or plan to stop locally near our home. I am packing a 40’ container this weekend with all of our boat stuff, including tender and motorcyle, to go to Norfolk to be loaded on a freighter bound for Hong Kong. We will meet up with our new Selene OE 60, Shangri-La, during the last week of September to be the first folks from the US to take delivery of a new yacht at the shipyard. Then we will be at Lantau Yacht Club in Hong Kong for a couple of months before heading to the Philippines for the season. The long plan is to cruise the South China Sea for a couple years. Then who knows? Our “No Plan Plan” has worked well in the past so we are sticking with it.

Best regards - Jack

(703) 609-2033

jacktburgess1@gmail.com

Jack Burgess, Shangri-La 6047

Chris,

If you don't want to venture too far off the path, i would recommend Solomons on your way north. Access to grocery, West Marine, hardware store, a few restaurants and a cute little town. Zahnisers, Spring Cove, Calvert Marina and Solomons Yacht Center all how pools. Zahnisers is our favorite. Calvert marine is on the other side of the creek, so the other marinas are more convenient. You can also anchor or Zahnisers has mooring balls.

All except Calvert, you can walk from the marina to West Marine, liquor store, 7/11, urgent care, small town and maritime museum. The grocery store is a little more than a walk but easy to get to with marina staff or Uber.

If you happen to need Lowes, Tractor Supply, Target, Belk or any of the big stores they are about 5 miles over the bridge in Lexington and Hollywood.

If you decide to spend a couple more days and don't mind veering off a little, I would recommend doing a nice 3 day tour spending a day in Cambridge, then to Oxford and bend around to the back side of St Michael and anchor in San Domingo Creek. There is a town dingy dock up the creek with access to town. Oxford and St Michael are a little more difficult if needing provisions. (Stores in Oxford seem to be closed more than they are open). Easton, the main town, and about 10 miles from both Oxford and St Michaels. (Easton has great restaurants).

FYI - Cambridge is a nice little town, but there is a little bit of homelessness and also a little crime. I don't know any boaters that have had a problem, but it was mentioned to us.

As Jack mentioned, both Solomons and St Michaels have excellent Maritime Museums. Both are worth the stop.

Hope you find some great spots. We really enjoyed our time in the Chesapeake.

Don Keller

Anastasia

Hello Chris,

While heading for the largest estuary in the U.S., a different vastness for Next Chapter is on the horizon.

If time destination is to an Annapolis berth, the western shore is favored here.

A layup consideration is the Sandy Point anchorage. Great Wicomico River, just south of the Potomac River.
Sandy Point anchorage is ~7 Nm from the edge of the south bound shipping channel, and 70ish Nm from seeing the Naval Academy.
Huge anchorage, mud bottom yet not loose, mainly ~14- 16' throughout.
More scope from the NNW, otherwise it's fine.
Before Sandy Point's Green is Cockrell Creek, Reedville, VA, - a victorian era town, and in their menhaden fishery peak the highest per capita town in America.


Jeff Seed
Ritual

Log #24: Day 3, Across the Stream

Friday to Saturday, crossing the Gulf Stream toward the Chesapeake

First, a heartfelt thank-you. After yesterday's note that we were sizing up anchorages for landfall, the recommendations came rolling in — favorite anchorages, marinas, quiet creeks to tuck into. We're reading every one of them, and are exploring them all. The piece we're working through now is how each option lines up with our arrival time: when we drop the hook tomorrow evening drives everything downstream of it and how comfortable the last jump up to Annapolis will be. Thank you.

Day 3 out of Bermuda, and the day belonged to the Gulf Stream. The wind clocked all the way around the compass, filled in on the nose just in time to fight the current, and threw up a short, steep sea right when we were crossing it — the classic wind-against-current setup. We came out the far side later in the afternoon into flat water, a few miles poorer for the effort but pointed right at the Chesapeake.

It started in the small hours. Around 2:30 AM the wind that had been sitting comfortably off our port stern quarter began to walk forward, settling onto the port beam and building to 25 knots — then peaking a little north of 30. Through the rest of the night and into the morning it kept marching across the bow until it came around to a steady 18 knots out of the north. The timing could not have been more deliberate if it had been arranged: north wind, right as we reached the Gulf Stream, which is setting hard to the north itself. Wind against current — the one combination every passagemaker learns to respect.

The Stream paid us back in the usual coin: 6 to 7 foot wind waves stacked up at a very short period, the kind of steep, close-spaced sea that only builds when the breeze is shoving against a fast current. What saved the ride was the angle. The waves were coming from just abaft the beam, so rather than slamming into them we were shouldering them and letting them roll under — uncomfortable, but honestly tolerable, and a good deal kinder than taking that same sea on the nose would have been.

By about 2:30 in the afternoon we were through it. The wind eased back to 15 knots, the short chop lay down into gentle 3-footers, and Next Chapter settled into what, after the night we'd had, felt like a genuinely smooth ride.

The one place the Stream really extracted its toll was our speed over ground. Our average through the crossing fell to 5.2 knots — painful to watch on the plotter after the runs we'd been putting up the last couple of days. At times we were crabbing almost 40 degrees, the current sweeping us sideways while the bow pointed well off our intended track to compensate.

That, for the boat-nerds among us, is exactly the moment you're grateful for an integrated chartplotter and autopilot. With the plotter and pilot talking to each other, the autopilot steers to the waypoint — it holds our course over ground and quietly feeds in whatever crab angle the set and drift demand to keep us tracking true. A lot of boats cross oceans in plain compass "auto" mode, holding a heading and letting the current push them where it will, then correcting after the fact. Integrate the two and the boat does the trigonometry for you, mile after mile, so every one of those hard-won miles is actually made good toward where you're going.

The plan is to get high enough up the Chesapeake that Annapolis — where Next Chapter will be available for purchase — is a comfortable single-day jump from wherever we drop the hook.

Despite the Stream doing its level best to slow us down, we still logged 173 nautical miles for the day.

Follow the dot: trackmywake.com/wake/next-chapter.

— Chris & the crew of Next Chapter

Congratulations Chris (and crew), it looks like you're almost at the Chesapeake! What an accomplishment. It takes good planning, good crew and a good boat to do what you did.

Regarding taking the plumb line to a distant waypoint across a strong current. It's often quicker to take an "S" shaped track that maximizes (or minimizes) time in the current. I use PredictWind's Power Routing feature to plot a course and then download the waypoints into my chart plotter. It uses the current Gulf Stream data and some math to plot the course.

I your case since you're crossing almost perpendicular it doesn't matter as much as if you are crossing at an angle. I just did the following example from northern Bahamas to Fernandina Beach to show the suggested course if I left right now.

Richard Nye

Untethered, 57-22

https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/MV_Untethered/

Hello Chris and crew,

Welcoming you into our beautiful Chesapeake!

Fair warning - Don’t go for a refreshing dip in our waters right now. If you do, the sea nettles will definitely impress you with how much sting the little critters pack. They concentrate in the pretty anchorages where the water is calm, but they are everywhere right now. We have a “nettle pool net” that lets us get in the water in a protected 20 foot space off the dock or boat. Otherwise, we would just be dock people (or maybe spa people).

Best - Jack

Jack Burgess, Shangri-La 6047