Our Kent Island circumnavigation started on a Friday morning, when Captain Frank Mummert met with the crew, Heather, James and Sarah, to review their experience and expectations. Although all three had been through Maryland School classes before, this was their first experience with using pilotage and coastal navigation tools to plot a course. After a morning of working through sail drills while on the anchor, the crew went out to lunch and developed their meal plan for the trip. Then, it was back to the school to plan the courses for the path Frank had directed, while the Captain went to the store and picked up the items needed to fulfill the meal plan.
The next morning,
ACADAME
left the dock at about 0800, headed out for the mooring field at Annapolis. The wind was initially a steady 5 to 10 knots from the east-north-east, so the trip was a pleasant beam reach down the Chester River and around the south end of the wildlife refuge on the Eastern Neck Island. However, an alert crew soon noticed that the bilge pump was running more often than normal and a quick examination discovered that Frank had set up a valve to run water into the boat.
Score one for the Skipper of the Day Heather who handled the drill competently and successfully, then performed a three bearing fix to determine where we were and restarted the navigation plan. Unfortunately, the wind, by this time, had started to drop and shift and once the boat was actually in the Chesapeake Bay and headed toward the Bay Bridge, the crew was forced to
motorsail, as the wind was now too weak to push the boat effectively down wind.
The crew had developed, during their navigation planning, a technique to counter a problem that had plagued students in all of Frank’s previous classes. The problem is that there is only one point of reference between the chart for the area above the Bridge and that for the area below. Previous classes
always had to use the single point of overlap as a waypoint, even though it took the boat off the desired plan.
This crew had figured out a process, using some triangulation, which allowed them to develop a course directly across the two charts - a maneuver which will forever after be known in Frank’s navigation process as the Farbonggio (named by the crew by taking parts of each crewmember’s last name). The Farbonggio maneuver allowed
ACADAME
to sail directly from a point on the northern chart to a point of the southern chart, effectively shortening the trip by more than a mile. In addition, it allowed
ACADAME
to catch up with, and eventually pass, her sister ship, SCHOLARSHIP, also headed to Annapolis.
After dropping the sails near the entrance to the Severn River, we were able to motor into the mooring field, catching what turned out to be one of the last balls in the outer field. After a trip into town for a bit of window shopping, we returned to the boat where Sarah turned out a delicious meal of chicken and vegetables. By the end of the evening, the crew fell into their bunks, tired but happy.
The next morning appeared gray and wet. The predicted wind was out of the south and variable, which ended up being a valid forecast. However, the rain, which had only been predicted at 30% probability, showed up in buckets. In fact, the cool, wet weather had the crew wondering if this really was the first day of August!
The lumpy seas and driving rain precluded sail raising, so we motored down the Chesapeake Bay, keeping a close eye out for objects appearing out of the rain, since both shores, at one point, were hidden. It was easy to imagine that we were actually far out to sea as the boat pitched and rolled in the broken waves. James, our Skipper of the Day, developed several fixes, but all of them had large areas of uncertainty because of the difficulty in getting a good bearing reading. Still, we did finally reach the Bloody Point Bar Light and rounded up into Eastern Bay.
As we did so, the rain began to abate and become more sporadic. This was a very good thing because the traffic from Saint Michaels to Annapolis was beginning to increase and we spent a significant amount of the next two hours avoiding boats headed on the course opposite ours. Of course, it didn’t help that we suddenly had an engine overheat alarm, but it turned out that Captain Frank was simply running another one of his drills. This was soon sorted out and we were able to fix our position and carry on.
Based on Frank’s requirements, we ignored the easier run into the Miles River - going south of the
big shoal off the mouth of the river - and instead cut between the shoal and the peninsula marking the Wye River. Using techniques from offshore navigation, we made our approach high of the actual cut through and then followed the depth contour around until we found the deep water again. While this was a little more stressful than our other option, the crew agreed that the extra education was worth it.
By the time we found ourselves in the slip at Saint Michaels’ Marina, the sky was clearing and the wind had dropped to nothing. While it looked like it was going to be a pleasant evening, we were glad to have access to electricity again, if for no other reason than the supply of fresh ground coffee was getting low. After a dinner ashore and exploring the town, the crew snuggled up in their bunks for another well-earned rest.
Morning found us at the Blue Crab restaurant for breakfast and then underway. We stopped at the service dock for a quick pump-out of the holding tank and some fuel, then headed out for the Eastern Bay. After rounding out of the Wye River, we set the main and genoa and started sailing up the Eastern Bay and into Prospect Bay. Since the wind was coming out of the north, we had to tack up and Sarah, our Skipper of the Day, was kept busy doing two and three bearing fixes to determine when we needed to change courses to arrive at Kent Narrows Lift Bridge at 1330, the time that our calculations showed that we would have the least current to pass through the bridge. We arrived at the bridge at 1320 and were able to pass through as part of a two boat “flotilla.”
Once back in the Chester River, we stopped at Red Buoy 6 to acknowledge the fact that we had circumnavigated Kent Island, and set our sail, which we had dropped to go through the bridge, for home. Unfortunately, the Fates (or Frank) wasn’t done with Sarah just yet and the cry of Fire soon broke out on the boat. Once again, it was just a drill and Sarah soon had the problem sorted out, our position developed and we were underway again.
We had to motor-sail up the river, as the wind had dropped through the afternoon. We found ourselves in Comegys Bight, just north of the entrance to the Corsica River, and dropped two anchors in a
Bahamian moor. Dinner was more vegetables but the protein this time was scallops and bacon! Again, Sara worked her magic in the galley and we sat in the cockpit, enjoying a delicious meal, as we watched the sun head for the western horizon. The evening was spent reviewing for the upcoming 104 exam.
Underway again in the morning, we motored back down the Chester until we were south of the LC junction light. We then set the sails and practiced Crew Overboard maneuvers. First, the entire crew performed the maneuver at each position, then Frank ran the drill by throwing the COB mannequin in the water and calling out one of the crewmember’s names. That crewmember had to go down into the cabin and the two remaining crew had to perform the rescue alone. Finally, Frank demonstrated that the rescue could be performed single-handedly, with sufficient experience and practice.
We headed back to Lankford Bay Marina, dousing the sails and stopping at the pump-out and fuel docks along the way. After clearing the gear off the boat and cleaning up, the crew moved to the classroom to take the test and wrap up the course. Another successful 104 class was in the history books.
Captain Frank Mummert
On board S/V AcadAme
Rock Hall, Maryland
August 2021
