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.