We leave Rock Creek and make the 8-mile trip up to Fells Point in Baltimore. On the way we pass a special buoy that marks the spot where Francis Scott Key was held prisoner on a British ship. In the "dawn's early light" he saw the American flag still waving over Fort McHenry and it inspired him to write the "Star-spangled Banner".

We also pass a lot of interesting ships that take tourists out on day trips from Baltimore. Below is the pink and green "Lady Maryland", a beautiful skipjack.

Luckily we get in early before the rain starts. Jennifer's parents, Bob and Wynette are coming down to be tourists with us. In fact Bob pops his head into the office at the exact moment that we are checking into Henderson's Marina. Bob and Wynette stay at Henderson's Wharf hotel, which is associated with the marina. They have a car so we go to Lexington Market. We buy a few vegetables, two dozen clams, and two of the world's most expensive crab cakes ($24). It rains off and on all day but we do not let that stop us from touring.

In Baltimore's Inner Harbor, we get to board a huge Mexican tall ship named Tuahatemoc. It is a square-rigged, three-master with 5 spars on the foremast. They let us climb all over the deck but not below. Jennifer and I had seen the boat coming up the bay two days earlier.

Since we have a car, we go to the grocery store and get a fair amount of provisions. We shower up and as a prelude to dinner, we shuck and eat the clams accompanied of course with a bottle of Chardonnay. The clam smell and the mess is probably a bit much for the rather fancy hotel room, but we press on. We go to a small local restaurant called Henningers for dinner. It is in the back of a bar and it is excellent. We have perhaps the best restaurant dinner of our trip.

In the morning we Go for a run with Jennifer's father. We see all kinds of stuff including

• a new statue that commemorates the massacre of Polish officers before WWII,
• the Civil War Museum that was also a stop on the underground railroad,
• some signs describing the Great Fire of 1904,
• the Coast Guard ship, Taney, that is the last ship from the bombing of Pearl Harbor that is still afloat, and
• everything else around the inner harbor.

For Jennifer and I it is our typical Tourist running: run for ten minutes; stop and read some historical signs; turn north; turn south; turn west; and somehow make our way back after 40 minutes of running in just under an hour.

After we recoup from our run, we take a water taxi from Fells Point into the Inner Harbor. There we take a bus tour with a docet named Bob Oliver. It was just the four of us on the bus so we obviously got personalized attention. We went all over the city and he told us about Baltimore's history, crafts, architecture, celebrities, politics, and sports. It was a great tour. We have a crab cake lunch at Philips and take the water taxi back to Fells Point.

Within an hour of Jennifer's parents leaving, my sister Carol and her husband Albert arrive. We have a bottle of South Australian Shiraz with them and then head to a local bar called the Dead End. We wander up to the Fells point harbor and eat dinner at Lista's, a Mexican restaurant. We go to a bar called the Hook, Line and Axe, which is a bar with a fireman's theme. We walk around Fell Point and find a giant outdoor club called Bohager's. We almost go in but find it a little intimidating to wait in line with twenty-year-olds that are getting their Ids checked. Carol and Albert head back to Jersey and we call it a night.

We clean up the boat and finally get around to cooking the world's most expensive crab cakes. I prepare them with oyster mushrooms and a load of butter. They were good in an obscene, over-eating sort of way.

We meet another enthusiastic cruising couple, John and Janet, whose boat is on the hard. They are very friendly and we had met them on our previous visit to Baltimore.

We leave at noon to make the tide and head for Fairlee Creek across the bay on the Eastern Shore. There is terrific wind behind us the whole way. Even though down-wind sailing is fairly easy, we still have to double reef the main and we only unfurl the tiniest, hanky-sized headsail. At one point the headsail gets away from us and we both end up with rope burns. Jennifer wonders if it is indeed still a rope burn when it is a line that causes it.

We get to Fairlee Creek in no time. The entrance, as seems typical of the whole Bay, is very narrow and winds in. The final entry point is no more than 50 feet wide. While we sweat our way past the tiniest of channels, there are people on a nearby beach sitting in lounge chairs. They are enjoying themselves drinking Frozen drinks at Jellyfish Joel's and awaiting our seemingly eminent demise.

Inside, there are still about a dozen boats anchored all over and it seems like these are just the dregs of a long, packed weekend. We drop a hook, cook dinner and call it a night.

The next day is one of the most beautiful that we have had on the trip. We decide to layover and take advantage of the now empty Fairlee Creek. There are light winds and very few motor boats around so John goes up the mast to fix the steaming light. He discovers that the sleeve for the headsail has separated and he comes down, pours over the Selden installation manual, goes back up and rejoins it. He is using our TopClimber to go up and he still cannot get high enough above the mast to take the light apart. The Top Climber goes up a line that is raised by the mast's halyard. It can only go to the joining point of the line and halyard, so it is important to get the halyard all the way to the top while keeping plenty of tension on the climbing line. We figure that next time, we will get it exactly right. At least he figures out which model the light is so that we can get a replacement bulb.

As a treat to ourselves, we make a lunch and go around the point to the cliffs on the Bay. It is a beautiful sunny day, we are all alone, and it is warm. It reminds me of the Caribbean. We take a VHF radio, two chairs, a table, our camera, two cokes, two beers, two bottles of water, and two sandwiches. We have one of our best days reading, eating, and collecting pure white rocks that we plan to put into our traveling rosemary plant. The pictures below are a high-tech 360° surround-o-sightÒ recreation of our experience.

We visit Mears marina and check out the price for transients. We drill holes in a couple of shells and make jewelry to represent our sea-going lifestyle. We make a nice dinner and go to sleep early. For some reason, we use almost no electricity in the two days at Fairlee, so we don't have to run the engine to charge our batteries.

We get up early to catch the tide, but someone from Louisiana came in late and anchored right across the narrow channel. It makes the exit more exciting than it should be but we are fine. As we leave there is a lovely great blue heron seeing us off.

We travel the ten miles up to the Sassafras River. The Sassafras is wide and long with dozens of places to anchor. We travel 5 miles up river and into Turner Creek. We want to try this anchorage because it is listed as a Chesapeake Bay hurricane hole. The entrance to the creek is especially confusing. The cruising guide suggests staying slightly to starboard of the middle of the channel. We do that and run aground. We back off and try again. We see two small green markers way to starboard but from where we are they look like they are almost on the shore. We go aground again trying to head in their direction. We back off and then back completely out and anchor outside of the creek. We put the motor on the dinghy and go in with a line and our dinghy anchor. We find the right way to go in. There is another couple at anchor and we get advice from them on how to enter as well. We try again and this time we get in without any problem. The markers that looked on the shore are actually out 50 feet and mark 15 feet of water.

We anchor and notice that the bottom is rocky, actually a lot of little stones. The anchor chain dragging across the stones makes a noise that had raised fear in our hearts in Fairlee Creek. At least now we know what it is.

The creek is loaded with birds. There are half a dozen very large great blue herons and there are two turkey vultures that are closer that we like. There are lots of mallards with new babies everywhere. We motor ashore to a state park that has a dinghy dock. We go for our usual 40-minute run but this time it is up hills, over very hot country roads, through a wheat field, and over a short but nice and shady trail in the woods. Afterwards we go for a rare swim. The water is still too cold but the temperature is getting close to reasonable. We put up our canvas cover that shades the front part of the boat and keeps it pretty cool on an otherwise hot day.

The tides are running in our direction early in the morning so we motor out of Turner Creek at 6:45 AM. Sadly, we go aground again leaving the creek. That makes three groundings and three anchorings in one tiny creek. Fortunately, we get off easily and motor the 5 miles out of the gorgeous Sassafras. We pass around Grover Point and turn north. We exit the Chesapeake Bay for the first time in 6 weeks. We enter the Elk River that takes us to the C&D Canal that joins the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. The tide is with us and even though we are motoring, we zoom along with the tide at well over 7 knots. We try to get a holding tank pump out at Schaeffer's Marina but like last year, no luck. We dock at the Chesapeake City dock. It is great. There is no electricity or water but there is also no charge.

We meet two couples, Joe and Dreama and Warren and Bobbie, who both come from big, serious, cruising ketches. Joe and Dreama have been cruising full time for 18 years and Warren and Bobbie for six years. Obviously they are our heroes. Coincidentally, Joe, Warren and Bobbie are retired Navy, each with about 20 years. Its 20 and out and then retirement for life.

We go to a restaurant called the Yacht Club and have burgers for lunch. We walk out of town about a mile and half to a small grocery store and buy bread, a Snapple, and a 12-pack of beer. Jennifer is making pecan, chocolate-chip cookies. I am sitting in a folding chair on the dock, typing away on the PC, which is plugged into a 110-volt plug on the dock.

We go to the nearby ice cream store and get some ice cream to go with our cookies. As we sit there looking out at the harbor, we see that the crew of a catamaran has convinced a crane doing construction across the way to help them raise their mast. They tie a line around the mast about half way up, hook the crane on it, raise the mast and somehow guide it onto the deck. We try to determine which of the sailors looks the most nauseous, because that will be the owner.

Once the mast is stepped, the line that was used to raise it won't come down. Several people try pulling it in various ways, but it still remains stubbornly about 15 feet up the mast. One of the construction guys (we can tell the construction guys from the sailors by the hard hats of the former) gets a long pole, which is about two feet too short. Finally one of the construction guys puts on a harness and the crane raises him up the mast, where he unties the line.

The entertainment is not over. There is a schooner that ties up on the public dock. It's coming back from taking a group of kids out for a sail and runs aground on the approach to the dock. It backs up and tries again and again, digging out a channel for future use. One of the passengers, it is impossible to tell who is crew, jumps the ten feet from the deck to the dock and starts taking lines from the people on board. The captain continues to gently rock the boat to the dock. Right behind the schooner, a ketch goes aground in the same place as the schooner. Definitely favor the east side of the entrance to Chesapeake City.

We meet a family that is cruising on a trawler. They have been in the Bahamas for four months, and are heading up to New York. There are three kids, parents, and a dog on the boat. The kids are being home-schooled using the Calvert system. The boy that we meet is very well spoken, so the schooling must be going well.

We get up and run in morning. Our forty-minute run takes us out of the "big city" into horse country. There are big, mowed, open fields and rolling hills. The weather is damp and drizzly but we have a pretty good run.

We leave Chesapeake City and finish off canal at seven knots with the current behind us. As usual there are lots of big scary ships like this car carrier.

In the Delaware River we find a small amount of tide in the face. But by the end of an hour, the tide has turned and our motoring speed quickly changes from 4.4 to 6.2. The river transitions into a wide-open, basically empty and boring, bay. We enter the Cohansey River and find some low water at entrance. In fact our depth sounder alarm goes off, which we have set for six feet. We entered the river from the east and we anchor when the river winds around so that we are facing west. It's a difficult place to anchor. The underwater shoreline is steep. Even when we get it right, the depth varies from 8' to 30' in our swing on the anchor.

We must wait for the tide in the Delaware River to ebb. So we take the dinghy up the empty winding river to explore. The shore is mostly reeds and sedge. There is nothing man-made for two miles. Finally we find a marina in Greenwich, NJ, which is in the southwest part of the state. There are very few people in the marina, but we do meet a guy who is waiting for someone to repair his inverter. He tells us that while there is plenty of water in the Cohannsey, you need to favor the north shore as you leave. Back at the boat, we catch the tide at noon. Our trip down the Delaware is uneventful and mostly motoring. Much of our entertainment on these long motoring trips comes from the VHF. We hear someone report a fish kill to the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard wants to know what species of fish is dead. Sometimes I think they ask these bizarre questions just to keep people talking on the radio. Whenever someone reports a boat in distress the Coast Guard wants to know how many people are on board, which is reasonable, and how many are children. Are they going to send a smaller boat if there are a lot of children?

We eventually sail through the fish kill as well. I don't know what species of fish it is.

We round Cape May point and briefly enter the ocean. We cannot go through the canal because the bridge is too low or our mast is too high. We anchor at Coast guard station, just after green marker number five. There is a shark tournament in Cape May. Unfortunately, its being sponsored by our favorite marina in Cape May, South Jersey Marina. There are hundreds of large shark-fishing boats coming in the inlet after a blood thirsty day of fishing. This parade of boats goes on for hours, causing an incredible roll in the anchorage.

We are surprised to see Grand Eagle anchored next to us. Grand Eagle is Warren and Bobbie's boat. They are the young retired-navy couple from Chesapeake City.

We try to find a marina but everything is loaded because of the shark tournament. We are able to find a slip at Two Mile Landing Marina. It's probably not booked because it's on the wrong side of a drawbridge and doesn't have fuel. We go through our first bridge of the trip. Each time we go to a marina, we need to determine which side we should tie up. Usually, this is the side with the finger pier. So as we approach Two Mile Landing, we see our assigned slip, right inside the T-head, we are sure that this is a port side tie-up. But the dock master comes out to help us with our lines, it becomes apparent that there are full-length finger piers on both sides of the slip. This causes some confusion since John is trying to position the boat on the port-side finger pier, the dock master is standing on the starboard-side finger pier, and I'm running in between. Despite the confusion, it's an easy docking experience.

There is a fast current in this stretch of the intercoastal waterway and the water is very clear water. We can easily see all the scum on our boat. The marina is also reasonably priced. This will surely be the last slip we get for less than two dollars a foot, since we are going north and it is after Memorial Day.

Chores, chores, and more chores, this is the real reason we came in to a marina. The nearest supermarket is three and a half miles a way, so we run there, do a heavy shopping and take a Caribbean Taxi back for $10. Since the marina has no fuel, we have to take the dinghy and go get diesel. The dinghy ride is unpleasant because of all the chop from the thousands of shark-killers and in fact we get swamped once. I make a quiche for overnight trip up the coast while John does the laundry in a single washing machine. We have lunch at the Crab House which is the marina restaurant. For dinner, we walk a mile down the road to a pizzeria we saw during our run. We have an enjoyable dinner of pasta, cheesesteaks, garlic bread, and a slice. Perhaps we were hungry.

We decide that we should make a big run in the sailboat. In December, we plan to go the fifty miles from Florida to the Bahamas, so we both feel that it is good practice to be comfortable with even larger ocean runs. We decide to go all the way from Cape May around Sandy Hook and into the Atlantic Highlands. That is a total of 120 miles!

We plan to leave early in the morning. We know that no matter what we do on a long trip, we end up very close to averaging five knots an hour. Therefore, our trip should last 24 hours and we should arrive at 7 the next morning. Obviously, that means sailing throughout the night and therefore we need to carefully plan our shifts and sleeping. It is important to us that we stay reasonably fresh so that we can make prudent decisions throughout the trip and during anchoring the next morning. We usually do 1-hour shifts, where Jennifer steers for an hour and then I steer for an hour. Keep in mind that we have an autopilot, named Otto, who really does most of the steering. Most of our shifts involve sitting behind the wheel, looking for hazards to navigation, avoiding other boats, and directing Otto to make course changes by pushing a button. We will keep the 1-hour shift plan in place until later in the evening. Eventually we will switch to two-hour shifts so that off-shift person can get two-hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Also, during a 24-hour trip, the weather is more likely to change than during our typical 4-6 hour trips. We have felt comfortable doing a 6-hour trip starting in the morning even when there have been thunderstorms predicted for the afternoon. We want perfect weather for this trip. Finally, we do not want to spend 24 hours motoring or sailing into a head wind. We know that climbing into the waves is both uncomfortable and slow. We prefer winds under 15 knots coming at least 75 degrees off our nose. The predicted weather is ideal. There is no precipitation predicted until late the following day. The winds are 10-15 Knots out of the northwest, turning to 10-15 out of the southwest. Again, this is perfect. As we leave Cape May, we sail 70° and gradually this becomes more and more northerly.

There is a slack tide at 730 AM so we leave at 7 so that we can make a leisurely exit out of Cape May. The wind is decent most of the time, remaining 5-10 knots behind us. If the winds get above 8 knots then we raise our sails and sail even though we only move along at 3 knots. During one especially enjoyable stretch we are able to raise out cruising spinnaker. It lasted for 5 hours, which is the longest that we have ever had the spinnaker up.

Fortunately, all of our planning has paid off and the trip is pretty much uneventful. The straightest course from Wildwood to Barnegat Inlet goes far out to sea away from the curving Jersey Shore. We end up 8 miles off shore at the furthest point. A few other events mark the day. There is a pod of about 20 Dolphins off of Atlantic City. We see a huge fire somewhere behind Long Beach Island. From our boat, it looks a good deal behind the island. It looks like miles and miles of burning. The surprising thing to us is that ash from the fire falls on our deck. At that point, we are four miles offshore. As it turns out there were 15,00 acres of Pinelands burning well into the mainland.

As we get into the evening, we plan our sleeping shifts. Jennifer takes the first one from 10 to midnight, while I sleep. Then I cover midnight to 2 AM. During my shift, the moon rises through the fire ash behind us. It glows a magical orange. Jennifer covers 2 to 4 and I do 4-6. I get the sunrise on my shift as well. We round Sandy Hook at 530 and a departing cargo ship forces us close into the hook as it maneuvers in its narrow channel and we stay out of its way. We arrive at 6 AM and select an anchoring spot behind the Atlantic Highlands wall. We both bed down and get some well-deserved rest until about 11 AM.

So we finished our big trip, completing and easy 23 hours. After our 4 hours of sleep, we are up and ready to explore. We take our dinghy to the Highlands, which is about two miles away. There we got to our special restaurant, called Moby's. Jennifer has a clam sandwich and I have an entire lobster that we enjoy on the deck overlooking the Navesink River and the Sea Bright / Highlands bridge.

We make the long trip back in the dinghy and decide to go to the Atlantic Highlands to explore marina prices. It would be fun to stay down the Jersey Shore for a week instaed up in Jersey City. The marina is cheaper than Liberty Landing in Jersey City. The price is $1.50 per foot and the seventh day is free. The electricity is $5 per day for a total of $339. Liberty Landing Marina is $10 a foot for a week and the electricity is $3.40 per day for a total of $363.80. Since our truck is at Liberty Landing and it has floating docks, we decide to go there.

We play a few rounds of our favored Skipbo game. We decide to go ashore and walk around. Maybe we will go to the marine store and maybe we will get some dinner. We find the dinghy dock and walk ashore. Last year when we came here, the municipal section of the marina closed at dusk, so we checked with the guard to make sure everything was okay. He told us that they now stay open 24 hours. However, if we wanted to use the dinghy dock, there was a charge of $12.50. We could not believe it. In Annapolis, the dinghy dock is free. In Baltimore, the Inner Harbor is only $5 and they only bother to collect that at the busiest events. In Crisfield, there is a $10 docking charge, but at least it included use of the showers and pool. We turn around and leave without paying.

We decide to go the Atlantic Highlands Yacht Club, who runs a launch service for moored and anchored boats. The launch tender tells us that the club charges a flat fee of $20 a day from noon until 10 at night. Since it is 6PM, we decide that is also an unreasonable charge. By this time we are determined to get ashore at a reasonable price somehow. We take the dinghy outside of the walled area. We find a sandy area and beach the dinghy and go ashore for free. We go to a bar, have a beer, and decide that we do not want to spend any more money in the municipality of Atlantic Highlands. We return to the boat believing more than ever that going to Liberty Landing is the correct choice.

We get up early, fill the boat with diesel and sail to Liberty Landing in the Morris Canal off the Hudson River. We are excited to be going "home." As we round Sandy Hook, the breeze picks up enough for us to sail, so we drift along making about 3 knots in a gentle breeze. We see a square rigger coming up the channel. We think that it is the Half Moon, which is a replica of Henry Hudson's ship. We had read in the paper that the boat was in the stuck in the Christina River, waiting for a drawbridge to be fixed. As soon as the bridge was fixed, the Half Moon was the first boat out. It seems to be going down the Raritan Bay. To me this is not the obvious choice of destination, but I am glad we are not blocking its way in the channel.

We pass by the famous West End light house that lights the way through Ambrose Channel and into New York City.

There is so much commercial traffic that we must motor so that we can cross the channel quickly enough to be out of everyone's way. VHF channel 13 is full of grumpy ship's captains trying to stay out of each other's way. They don't need any complications from the pleasure craft.

We sail up past the Statue of Liberty. There are even more boats here, mostly cruise boats taking tourists past the Statue. There is also the usual assortment of blimps, helicopters, and airplanes. I've forgotten how overwhelming this all is.

Once in the marina, we go to D dock, with the other transients. We are near the trawler that we saw in Chesapeake City that is named Nostrun Again. We see Quami and the other dockhands that took care of us all winter. A miracle occurs and the truck starts. We go to the mailbox and get 6 pounds of mail, including the notice that the yacht club meeting is tonight. We go and see all our friends in the yacht club.

Liberty Landing is our homeport. We have a lot of chores to do. We want to see people, go to a party with John's family on Saturday and my family on Sunday, so we have decided to stay here a week. We dock and bring our rosemary plant onto deck, which has come to signify to us that we are "planted" in.

This is the end of the first part of our journey.