Wednesday May 16, 2018 - Solomons to Middle River (home)

With rain in the forecast (for the next 3 days), my plan was to go about 40 miles to Annapolis and anchor out until tomorrow.  I figured I would be able to time my return home to miss most of any storms/rain.  The wind was south at about 15 going out of the Patuxent River but died to about 10 once I got into the Bay.  That was good because there is lots of fetch with a south wind and the seas can get pretty big and rolley.  I really don't like sailing downwind so I had decided to leave the cover on the main and sail with the genoa only.  That way, if I did get any bad weather, I only had one sail to deal with.  I ran the engine the entire day.  I made fairly good time until about 11am when it started raining.  I furled the genoa and then it was motoring the remainder of the day. 

I've come to realize that when you are going from the mouth to the head of a river or tributary like the Chesapeake Bay, the tides and current are delayed as you progress.  So, if you stayed in one place and maximum ebb was at noon, you would expect maximum flood to be about 6 hours later.  But as you move up the bay, maximum ebb moves back in time so that maximum ebb might be at 2pm further north.  Well, for the 11 hours I was heading north, the current was in some state of ebb the entire time.  That meant I had between .2 and 2 knots against me all day.  I was off Poplar Island at about 2pm and considered going into the Rhode River for the night since the current would be favorable in the morning.  But, as I've said before, when you get close to home, home is like a magnet - it's pull keeps getting stronger the closer you get.  I want through the Bay Bridge at around 3pm and at that point, I was committed to getting back to the marina before dark.  There had been very little wind all day but at about 4pm, it began building from the East and made the last 10 miles one of the roughest parts of my entire trip.  And, of course, it was still raining.  I came through the cut below Hart Miller Island and was in my slip just before 7pm.