We sat at the dock over night and had some great views of the sky while at the marina. It was peaceful on a Friday night with just a few boat neighbors arriving and having friendly conversations. The next morning we left the marina (finally) and fueled up in Back Creek at Annapolis Landing.
Went to Spa Creek to see a friend and saw dinghy races in the harbour, so we have to detour around them.
We sailed for a couple of hours. Then we heard a call on VHF that called us by name. It was a tug about a 0.5 nm away and we were on a potential collision course. He called out and asked our intentions. We made a plan to avoid him. After we agreed to the plan, we realized that that was the first time our new AIS came in handy. Totally worth it.
And this is where the sailing ended for the day as a storm popped up over Annapolis. Soon, we had 2-3 hours of storms that we needed to avoid, so we furled up the sails and turned on the engine. Our goal was to stay out in the Bay and avoid squalls, lightning and difficult conditions. Looking back at Annapolis, it disappeared into the clouds and rain.
At one point, things felt a bit dicey out in the Bay with the storm tracker looking like we would get swallowed up by winds, rain and tempest.
We carried on South to Bloody Pt. and we circled and circled along with a few other boats. The storms continued to build and combine such that we knew we would have difficulty getting back in for the evening.
We monitored the weather on our phones, radar, and visually on the shore. We also texted back and forth with friends like Ray who were on shore and seeing storm tracks while following us on MarineTraffic. We saw a gap in between two major storms and we hit it perfectly. We made a run for it all the way to the marina. It was good to get home.
This was a good test of our storm-reading capabilities. We were prepared well, and I felt that dropping the sails early allowed us to freely turn the boat in circles to avoid lightening and storm tracks. That was a close call with lightening less than 1 mile away!
The Loxodograph 