We departed from Baltimore at 7:30 am and headed down the Potapsco River to the Chesapeake Bay. We easily could have spent more time in Baltimore, but other adventures await. Besides, we have to go back since we never did get a good picture of Ft. McHenry...
Our trip of 54.7 miles took us to the very northern end of the Chesapeake Bay where we entered the C&D (Chesapeake-Delaware) Canal. Our final destination was Chesapeake City, which is 3.5 miles up the canal. Of course, the Bay gets narrower at the end, which created quite a wind tunnel effect. The early breeze was less than 10 mph with waves under 1 foot, but locally the winds were double that until we entered the C&D Canal. Information about the canal says the both cruise and cargo ships use the canal. Sure enough, we had only gone about 2 miles along the canal when we passed this container ship.
The C&D Canal connects the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays and is 16 miles long. It was originally dug by hand and opened in 1829. The original canal was partly above ground and had locks at either end. The locks were filled by pumps driven by steam engines. The town of Chesapeake City prospered as ships stopped here to wait for the locks. In 1927 the C&D Canal was widened and deepened to sea level, which eliminated the locks. The town suffered further in the 1960s when an entire street with 39 old homes was demolished to further widen the canal. However, a number of beautiful old homes remain.
Some are lived in, but 5 have been converted to bed and breakfast places (see picture above), and the old downtown has some cute shops. I really like this old house that overlooks the canal and was built in 1849 by the Bean Family. Like many of the other (tiny) older houses, it has been added onto several times, but the original charm remains.
There are several marines with either a hotel or restaurant attached. We opted for the free city dock in the hope that it would be a little quieter... There is a $15.00 fee for 50 amp electric power, but they do not make much (if any) money on us with battery chargers, 2 HVAC units, TVs, computers, etc. We got here about 2:00 pm having made good time thanks to favorable tides. The entire 16 miles of the canal has a "No Wake" restriction, which for us means a speed of about 5 mph. I throttled back the engines to about 800 rpm, and the GPS still showed a speed over the ground of over 8.5 mph. I thought "that's impossible". It turns out that the tides can have speeds of over 3 mph (obviously).
The last picture is of the Chesapeake Inn (and Ballroom and Restaurant and Tiki Bar and Marina). They were having a special of 2 for 1 on hamburgers in celebration of Cinco de Mayo Day. The Admiral opted instead for shrimp tacos, and her comment about the tacos was that they probably did not know what the celebration of Cinco de Mayo was all about. I think that means that we have probably gotten too far north to find decent Mexican food very often (?). I had a Caesar salad with a 5 ounce crab cake. The crab cake was excellent with hardly any "filler" as is common in some restaurants.
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