We put over about 11:30 a. m. at Elk Neck State Park near Northeast, Md. This is our favorite launching spot: it's a longer drive than some of the marinas, but the fee to use the park slip is only $5.00. There are four ramps with two floating docks, plus a large parking lot and, if you forgot to fuel up on the way, a fuel dock.
The first thing we discovered is that we had left the cooler in the car! Fortunately, we had plenty of water. The cooler was filled with fruit and other healthy stuff we probably would not have eaten anyway!
We ran down to Still Pond Creek, so my wife could do some water skiing, then headed south. We passed to the west of Poole's Island . We had a copy of a post from the rec.boats Usenet newsgroup which identified Poole's Island as the site of an unofficial nude beach. We saw no nudes, but did see many "U. S. Government Property--Keep Off" signs.
There were also several watch towers left over from World War II. They stirred memories in me, since I grew up in the Eastern Shore of Virginia and similar watch towers stood at Cape Charles guarding the entrance to the bay.
Aberdeen Arsenal and Edgewood Proving Grounds were to our right. Some days, you can hear the boom of artillery from them, but on this day things were quiet.
We stayed towards the western shore of the bay for the rest of the trip, arriving in Annapolis at about 5:00 p. m. We could see the Francis Scott Key Bridge and even the towers of downtown Baltimore as we passed the mouth of the Severn and Patapsco Rivers.
Most of the way down, we found ourselves running into headwinds and chop, which, for reasons of personal comfort, kept us from running wide open throttle (WOT). When I fueled up at Annapolis, I took 24 gallons. After doing some arithmetic and estimating resting times, I figured we used 6 gallons per hour to get there. High test.
Links of Interest:
Description of a stay at Elk Neck State Park
Maryland State website for Elk Neck State Park
Turkey Point Light, at the end of Elk Neck
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Copyright 2001 Frank W.
Bell,
Jr.
Last updated