Homecoming
Next morning Inyanga castoff from our raft after goodbyes and motored out of the harbor. They had a little farther to go than we did and wanted to get an earlier start. We finished breakfast and tidied up the boat, then raised the anchor for the last time, and picked our way out of the anchorage. Once in the bay, we pointed the bow south and forged on toward Deale.
We had light breezes on the nose, of course. Prevailing winds this time of year are southerlies here in the bay, and all along the Atlantic coast, but it helped being in protected waters, as the chop was minimal and the motion of the boat easy.
We’re about five miles north of the bay bridge at Annapolis
As we drew closer to the bridge, it grew in height and breadth. Ruth took a several photos of as we approached and passed through.
South of the bridge, we were really in the home stretch. Just 12 miles to go, and everyone of them familiar. The markers for Rockhold Creek hove into sight, and we aimed for the channel.
Travelling up the creek to our home slip, as we have done so many times seemed unreal after our odyssey of approximately 1000 miles, 10 weeks of travel afloat, and countless anchorages.
It’s good to be home! We will savour the conveniences of living on land now that we have spent the summer without them, and we will enjoy the comfort of routine – so starkly different to living life aboard a sailboat.
I don’t think we will undertake so long a trip on the boat again. There are places to go, and things we would love to do on the water, but I think a chartered boat for a week would satisfy those desires. Places like the Caribbean that we would like to sail may be best done through a charter company. We will still have adventures around the Chesapeake, and there are many places here we haven’t explored, but we’ve experienced living aboard for an extended period now, and I think that has satisfied our desire.
We love the cruising condition of the boat now. She’s more capable than ever, and perfectly equipped to enjoy cruising for weeks at a time, or just day-sailing.
middlebaysailing 
Mr. Bailey, I really enjoyed your travelogue. I owned a 1987 Watkins 29 from 2007 to 2017. I lived just off Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, a 30×8 mile inland lake in Wisconsin. I had taken sailing lessons on Lake Superior and chartered on Lake Michigan prior to purchasing the boat which had somehow spent its whole life on this fresh water lake in Wisconsin. I was still very actively involved in my career at that point so I was content to just poke around pretty cautiously on our lake. Your postings over the years always was of interest to me but your recent adventures are impressive, really venturing out there. I found your reflective comments near the end to be of some comfort to me for not being more adventurous in my outings. I found it interesting that we often had 15-20 knot winds on our lake which could make things interesting even though we were always in sight of some shorelines.
Kevin, thanks for your comment. When we read about sailing exploits in the glossy sailing magazines, they tend to promote the idea that real sailors go off-shore, and voyage long distances, while the rest of us coastal cruisers are only semi-sailors. The truth is, however, that coastal cruisers out number the voyagers by a long shot, and that most people don’t want to voyage off shore. That kind of sailing is full of discomfort that I’m not willing to endure. If you have bad weather that makes your journey miserable, it lasts until the weather changes. Often more than a day. With our kind of sailing, you don’t even have to venture out when the wind is blowing too hard. You can stay comfortably at anchor and wait for more civilized conditions.
There is no virtue inherent to enduring poor weather under sail. I’ve done enough day sailing in bad weather to know that’s not how I want to spend my time on the water. We sail because it’s fun, not because we like to endure miserable conditions.
Most of the time during our trip this summer, we four would discuss the weather and our daily sailing goals thoroughly, and we all agreed that sailing in poor conditions was no fun, and we didn’t have to do that.
There is nothing wrong with being a fair weather sailor!