Position           38:20.12N 76:26.24W

Date                1830 - 29 May 2011 (UTC -4)

0800 saw us away from Fishing Bay, Deltaville and a careful motor round the shallows and back out into the main Bay.  Winds light and south to south west meant motoring for the first three hours but then a breeze set in and we were able to sail.

Encouraged by such activity we resolved to try the cruising chute.  We last used the chute during the Arc and there was a minor repair to the furler required, re-fixing the rope guide.  There was also a new bracket, made in Grenada, for fixing the furler to the bow fitting to be trialled.

All fixings done we hoist the b****y thing only to find that there was a wrap that must have occurred last time we furled it; it is so long ago that we could not remember what happened.  Solving this involved dropping the half furled sail onto the deck and then gently unfurling and unravelling it.  It was a lot of sail; fortunately the wind was light and the job was successfully completed and the sail hoisted.  There followed three hours of great running in increasingly hot conditions; running with only 5 knots of apparent wind does not give much in the way of cooling and the temperature was in the 30’s.

We approached Solomons Island at 1800.  A major feature of anchorages and creeks in this part of the world is firstly the lack of depth and secondly the tortuous nature of the channels; both require a careful approach to avoid grounding.  We followed Alice up Mill Creek to find a quiet anchorage and eventually dropped with less than a metre under the keel in a creek surrounded by elegant real estate.  This is definitely a choice weekend retreat for the wealthy from Washington and surrounds; we are currently on y 40 miles from Washington DC.

The surroundings deserved something special and a great Spanish Chicken dish was washed down with some of Tesco’s Finest Chablis, chilled of course.