Bad Luck on the Sassafras River

Upon leaving Summit North Marina on Tuesday, we cruised 4 hours to the beautiful Sassafras River, intending to stay a few days to explore the creeks by dinghy and hike a local park off one of the creeks.  After anchoring in a lovely spot, we dropped the dinghy in the water and... it wouldn't start.  No amount of prodding, probing, or bribery would start it.  Time to start calling for a small-engine repair service, except that we're out of cell phone range and couldn't hail the upriver marinas on the radio.  So, up comes the anchor and we pull the dinghy upriver toward civilization.  While Norm is on the phone trying to find a repair person, Vicki is toodling around the river checking out some area by shore that might be good for anchoring when she grounds Tide Hiker - oops.  Norm comes to the rescue and backs out of the mud and we're off again.  After about 15 minutes of proceeding upriver, Norm looks back and says those dreaded words "Where's the dinghy?"  It's immediately evident that when backing off the mud, we cut the line to the dinghy.  Turn around the boat to search for the dinghy.  There it is -- floating on the side of the river in an area too shallow to take the big boat to retrieve it.  So, we anchor on the opposite side of the river, hail the boat next door and they happily take Norm in their dinghy to get Tide Hopper.  (Boaters sure are nice people.) 

That was quite an adventure and we still hadn't found a repair service.  Our best hope was one in Worton creek, about 2 hours south, which was supposed to call us back the next day.  And they did!  Off we went to Worton creek the next day -- to the fuel dock of Green Point Landing Marina.  Jack's repair service had Tide Hopper running in a few minutes and pronounced our problem an anomaly.  We were tripped up by an anomaly!  He also adjusted the carbuerator and Tide Hopper is purring now.

This is going to be a beautiful weekend for anchoring, so today we're off to the Chester River, a few hours south of here.  And we'll be using Tide Hopper alot to let her know we appreciate her.  On Monday we'll head into Haven Harbor Marina in Rock Hall to have an adjustment made on a loose support on our new awning. 

The No Booze Cruise to Lose

As you can tell from the previous blog posting, our time in Summit North Marina was a food fest.  What you didn't see in the blog is that, over the course of 4 days, Vicki had three birthday cakes.  Rog and Lisa surprised her with a yummy carrot cake, Norm bought her favorite Black and White Cake from Papa's bakery, and Peg and Mike brought a decadent chocolate cake.  All of which were eaten with abandon.  All this eating and partying leads us to ... the No Booze Cruise to Lose which commenced Tuesday upon leaving the marina to cruise the upper Chesapeake.  We'll be cruising the eastern shore to Rock Hall/Chester River, then crossing to Annapolis for fuel and cruising the rivers north and south of there until landing in Baltimore for a month at the end of August.  During this cruise we're on a diet and no alcohol.  So far, we've each lost about 5 pounds.  We'll be svelt by the end of August.  Stay tuned for updates.