Todays trip was about thirty two miles in about five hours. We had crossed the bay for the fifth or sixth time, but who’s counting? All of our trips across have been fairly smooth and uneventful and this trip was the same. I followed the marked commercial channel and finally came to Still Pond. There are two anchorages listed- one just off the channel in the pond, and the second one was back into the creek which opens into a large, shallow but well protected area. As we made our way in I consulted with Lauren and we decided we would try to go back to the more protected spot. It got real shallow real quick as we made our way toward the channel markers to go to the back area. The depth finder went from thirty feet in the channel to showing eight feet as we worked deeper into the pond. I was looking at the channel markers and the first set were pilings, not floating markers, and they were about eighteen feet apart- we are about thirteen feet wide! I slowed down and continued on through them to the next set of floating markers which weren’t much wider. The depths would fluctuate from eight to twenty feet deep and we held our breath as we zig zagged around a bend to the back anchorage. As we came around the corner we could see there were about twenty other smaller boats anchored around, with many people standing in the water next to their boats in knee deep water! Holy crap! I continued to hug the edge where the chart showed the deepest water of about ten feet and continued on a little farther back. There was one guy on his boat watching us with his mouth hanging open- I guess bigger boats don’t usually come back here? I continued to watch the depths and when it started to drop a bit I told Lauren this was as far as we were going to go. I circled around to turn us into the wind, but had to maneuver us in place a bit as I was afraid to try to make a complete circle. Once we were positioned to the wind we dropped anchor and let out our anchor line. I made sure we were secured and shut the engine down. Whew. Here we are!
The day was a hot one and the pond was an awesome swimming hole. I got out the rafts and we floated around chilling in the refreshing fresh water- the pond is fed by a fresh water creek so it was nice to be in fresh/ not salty water. The other boats in the anchorage slowly cleared out and by night fall there were only two other boats left. We took Frank to a small beach we passed on the way in and he got to run around off leash and play and eat weird stuff/ dead fish/crabs, even though we would yell at him and try to stop him from doing it. I’m glad he’s not a licker! The evening was uneventful and calm back there.
We determined our next stop which will be Chesapeake City. There is a free dock available there and it is half way through the C&D Canal, which we have to travel through to get to New Jersey.