16 things to know when cruising Chesapeake Bay

[Music] do [Music] so [Music] all right mateys hey you know i've been cruising the chesapeake bay and beyond for i don't know 24 25 years and i'd like to share with you today about 16 points that i've kind of learned and i find helpful to keep in mind i'd like to share them with you today now first thing is don't drink and drive please and then in the description it'll be like different chapters or time spots on this video that you can jump to different ones as you go along well the first thing i'd like to do is just talk about the bay in general i mean this is one of the greatest cruising grounds in the united states it's a sandy bottom it is fairly shallow for most water there's a lot of deep areas plenty there but there's also a lot of shallow areas and don't take the bay for granted i mean you can go up and down the bay and you can see shore just about all the way along but it can get rough and it can get a little dicey out there so watch the weather be particular go out and have fun and what's the best time of year to go cruising well really whenever you can now on the bay the summer gets really hot and muggy to me i like the fall cruising the fall foliage and i like early spring now especially for us sailors the spring and fall offers some great sailing because it's a little breezier you take july and august even june it starts to get hot and muggy and the air just kind of sits you don't have a lot of wind to move you along the second thing is keep in mind as i mentioned the bay is pretty big a lot of shallow areas a lot of deep areas study your charts now upside down here i use envy charts you know i got the paper charts i really like them but then it also comes with an app that you can put on your phone or your tablet and use that as a gps chart plotter so i do that and it's kind of important to look at these charts because things change a little bit now the paper charts don't get updated as frequently as the electronic charts for example here in rock hall we have two new green buoys within the last couple of years on the charts it only shows one and it's out of place they when they dredge the channel they moved it and they put a second one in there so your electronic charts normally are updated pretty frequently i know nv charts updates it i don't know how often but it's very frequent because it's showing both green buoys out there and approximately where they are again approximately they just put them back out they might be off a little bit a key thing to remember is when you're coming into these harbors or into these areas your chart may show one thing or even your electronic chart may show something and the buoy might not be where it is on the chart but honor the buoys those are the most accurate now sometimes they do move around a little bit in heavy storms but the coast guard is very good about keeping them in the correct locations or moving them where they need to be so by studying your charts not only do you get an idea of where you can go and what you can do but you can stay safe with it well the third thing is by studying your charts you're going to know where the shallow areas are or at least have a good idea of where they are they're well marked on the charts and on the electronic charts so keep an eye out for that when we talk about the shallow areas on the bay there are numerous ones and they vary with the tide and the winds so let's say an area shows a mean low water of six feet or seven feet it might only be five feet if the wind has been blowing in the right direction and the tide is going out you'll have a better idea of that by looking at your charts and keep an eye on your depth sounder for these shallow areas another thing with these shallow areas sometimes the water will get a little rough around there because you have deeper water and then it piles up on these shallow areas and the fourth thing is which goes along with the shallow areas are there's a lot of narrow channels you know one of the problems with marinas they're on shore they're in the shallow water or near the shallow water or you have to go through shallow water to get to them so these channels and they're really well marked i mean even here in rock hall it's a seven foot mean low water and that's pretty standard on the bay for most of these marinas unless you're like in baltimore where it's 24 feet or 12 feet deal maryland and the same with deltaville there's a long channel there to get into the marinas but they're normally very very well marked in fact most of these the only way you could make it any safer is if you tied a line from buoy to buoy to buoy if you get outside of those buoys you could be in a foot to two feet of water very very quickly so be careful with these narrow channels and keep an eye not just on the forward buoys but the ones behind you because you might be looking you know i'm looking at you guys now and i'm looking and i look like i'm doing good but the boat is going like this but i still look like i'm on the correct side of the buoys if you look behind you you'll see you're drifting into the shallow area and some of these shallow areas your depth sounder it's not going to give you a lot of time to react for example the susquehanna channel now that's been dredged a few years ago to something like 12 or 14 feet now starting to show in again so as they dredged that it also made it a little bit wider you have a little bit more time to react but when i first started boating that was really really narrow and it shallowed up quickly and another area like that would be kent and arrows the thing there is the way the channel comes in and then turns the current can be four or five knots in there if not more so you have to keep an eye on that when you're entering these narrow channels and when you finally get in it was worth the time the other thing is that once you if you're new to these areas it may be a little intimidating at first you run these areas a couple of times you're going to become more comfortable with it and it's going to become more enjoyable and the fifth thing is there are some areas that can be potentially dangerous and by that i mean the weather turns the fog rolls in or the winds roll in and to give you an example let's talk about let's start on the north end of the bay up by the susquehanna channel there so you have the susquehanna river the northeast river the elk river and cnd canal and the sassafras all coming together in a relatively short space when all that water is coming out and the tide is trying to come in that can get a little rough and on the other hand with the winds depending on the winds it can make it very choppy so that's an area another area that i found particularly challenging at times is around the seven foot knoll by outside the baltimore area where there's some shallow areas there's some nice deep areas and that's why it gets choppy because you have that deep water moving along now it comes shallow it's got to pile up that area can be very very tricky plus you have the shipping vessels coming and going further up the patapsco just outside of baltimore there's a six knot zone by fort mchenry and i had a power boat i did it too i'm not saying blaming power boats for it it's just the way you have to do it you're flying in there i guess you don't have to you can slow down ahead of time but you're flying in there you get close to the six knot zone you start cutting back on the throttles now the boat instead of being up on plane it starts sinking down it's called plowing water and you're pushing a big wake the same thing with boats coming out of baltimore once they hit that six knot zone it's more effective for a planing boat to power up and get up on plane as quick as possible it's also safer because you're not pushing as much water but while you're getting up there might only be a minute or two but you're plowing and then as you come up your wake dissipates a little bit in addition you have all the tugboats coming and going out of that area now most of them have moved out of the inner harbor area and they're a little further down so it's not quite as bad but these tug boats push a pretty good size weight they don't look like they're moving very fast and they're not but they can push a three to four foot wake on them so you've got to be careful of that and really just about the mouth of any river can be a little dicey at times the um the chester river it's really not that bad but it can get a little uh dicey on occasion but not as bad as the potomac now as far as i'm concerned i don't really like the potomac very much to go across i've been across it numerous times and sometimes it's been just beautiful but most of the time especially in a sailboat i mean i was going across at one time it's 12 miles wide first of all so if you're in a sailboat and you're going four knots you know it's going to take you a few hours to get across there but i was going across there one time and i mistimed it i mean it was it's not the river's fault it was my fault i mistimed it i was doing one knot in reverse i had the sails up i had the engine running now i wasn't doing it for long you know a few seconds or so but it took me a long time to get across that and it can become very foggy again you have the commercial vessels that you have to be careful of and down by norfolk in that area of course you've got the ocean coming in you've got all those rivers going out you've got the bay going out a lot of heavy traffic not just commercial traffic but you have warships coming and going you have coast guard ships coming and going so that area can get a little rough also i'm not trying to scare you off of it i mean go down there have fun i've done it and i'm still here just be aware of it that you watch your weather windows and be cautious and the sixth thing here talking about being cautious look for debris in the water after storms it can be horrendous i mean i i have seen parts of a pier with um a grill on them floating down the bay and up by in the northern bay the susquehanna river where conowingo dam is when they open those floodgates a lot of debris comes floating down from that and i'm not talking sticks i'm talking tree trunk sizes of wood and a lot of times these are or they're called dead heads or gators short for alligator because all you see is a little bit of it it's almost like an iceberg you see a little bit of the iceberg but the bulk of it is under the water the same thing with these deadheads i mean they're soaked with water the patapsco had a problem with that for a while because a lot of peers in the baltimore area were deteriorating and after storms these these massive pieces of wood would break off and be floating down that and if you listen to your vhf which you should have on all the time the coast guard will come on and report somebody's reported a hazard to navigation a tree trunk floating in the river somewhere and they'll give you the location you know you switch to 22 alpha and you'll get the information as to what's going on there but basically by any river is where you need to look for the mouth of any river is where you need to look for this debris that might be floating down there and seventh now you know crabbing on the chesapeake bay man oh man you can't beat the blue crabs here but that becomes a hazard to navigation on occasion with all these crab pots out there it's almost like a minefield now there's two basic types of um commercial crabbers out there or commercial crab pots out there one of them it's one with a buoy there's a long rope or line and it's tied to a huge cage and it's dropped down and then [Applause] 20 yards or 30 yards down there's another one and they try to put them in a line which which helps but they're going to move a little bit keep in mind these buoys don't they're not straight i mean they're going to move a little bit with the current and the wind so give them a wide berth as you can try not to cut them too close the other one is you'll see a like a little flag sticking up off of a buoy and maybe it's got a red flag on it you look over to the starboard side and uh there's another one with the same color flag and it might be i don't know 50 yards away or so well those can be crab pots also on the on the flagpole or buoy there's a rope the line goes to a crab pot sitting on the bottom then along the bottom of the bay is a long rope and attached to that are more crab pots so it's basically the same thing as the crab pots except it's not individual buoys there might be eight to ten buoys or eight to ten crab pots tied on to that line and as they go along they pick them up they dump them they go back again now most of the time you're fine to go between those two now if the water is pretty shallow let's say you're in a 12 14 foot water area and you see those well you're good to go over that for the most part be careful though let's say that you're in a six to eight foot area and maybe your boat draws six feet some of these sailboats draw seven feet well i wouldn't go through that because if the tide is low you could catch one of those with your keel so again you know prudent mariners it's your choice either go around them or go over them depending on the water depth and what's going on with the weather another thing that you're going to find on the bay uh here's number eight is fishing boats whether they're head boats with taking people out or individuals out fishing one of the key things is trolling so these troll lines might go out 25 40 yards or more the other thing is they have what's called planing boards and they look like this sometimes they're hard to see out there and those can go out there's i don't think there's a legal limit as to how far out those can go so when you see you'll see a like a little convention of boats out there fishing it's worth it to go around them because if you try to zigzag in and out of that you got people with long lines trolling you got these planer boards that might be 25 yards or more away from the boat and sometimes they're hard to see with these waves you don't want to be cutting across those first of all it's it's not polite and courteous to do that to the fisherman and you could damage your boat with that too so that's one type of fishing thing to keep an eye on the next one number nine are fish nets now they're not charted specifically or they're not located on the chart specifically what you'll see on the charts is a dash a dotted line or dashed line and it'll say fish trap area and that might be a half a mile long somewhere in there is going to be a fish trap or might be a fish trap now i'm sorry i didn't get a better picture of this but this is kind of what it looks like from the water and this is how those things are made i mean look at the size of these poles and those nets so you want to try and avoid those and those are usually around all they'll be along the shore but also by the rivers i know there's some uh here on the chester river over on haven't seen any up at the sassafras but there might be up there south river uh near salomons near deltaville um in those areas and i know there's got to be a lot more out there than that so just be aware that they're there if you're cruising in the evenings and nights i was talking to the guys over here where i got some of these pictures from i asked i said this do people run into these all the time what they used to do is put a light on one end light on the other end what they found is people went right between them they're not navigation aids guys they're there to warn you of the fish nets so now what most of them are doing is they'll put one in the center and one on each end and hopefully you guys don't run into these now i've never run into them and i'm sure it's a mess if you do because look at the size of these things again this is somebody's livelihood and it's your recreation don't ruin your day and number 10 of course commercial vessels this is a major waterway you have norfolk and baltimore which are major ports you have the c d canal which connects delaware bay and chesapeake bay so boats coming up from the ocean maybe they stop at norfolk then they come up to baltimore then they go through the c and d and up to philadelphia or vice versa you know or they come up from new york city they come up delaware bay philadelphia or they may come up delaware bay to baltimore and these guys are pushing a pretty good size wake and they can't stop on a dime i mean it can take them up to a mile to stop so be cautious of that another thing to be cautious of on these commercial vessels number 11 here is outside of annapolis there is a commercial vessel anchorage area and there might only be one or two boats there there might be six or seven votes there try to give them a wide berth especially you know let's face it guys if you're sailing and you come around the back of one and the wind is coming the other way well you've just lost all your wind the other thing is if you're coming around if you're a power boater and you're coming around how do you know who's coming around the other side for the couple of minutes it takes to go the other direction or to go around this i think it's better to go around it than to try and go through it and number 12 here while we're talking about annapolis you're going to mention deltaville in here too sailing capitals of the area a lot of sailboat races but really anywhere that there are marinas and yacht clubs you're going to have sailboat races try to avoid those it's it's courteous you're going to have more fun by not being involved in that and staying out of their way just usually they're kind of like a friday saturday sunday not too much during the week but kind of keep an eye on that be aware that a lot of these clubs have sail races almost every weekend another thing number 13 here another thing that you'll see out on the bay are what's range lights and you see these towers these little giants in the water well that's what they are there's a higher one and a lower one and the commercial vessels line up the lights this light to this light to know that they're in the channel and then when they see the next one lining up they know where to turn now it's not legal to anchor next to them or tie up on them so but just to kind of know they're interesting i mean some of these are very interesting towers that those are out there try to stay clear of them now number 14 are real biggie to be concerned about and be cautious of is the restricted areas or the prohibited areas and there's a number of those on the bay for example aberdeen proving ground pools island looks like it'd be a lot of fun to go to that's a restricted area they use that for target practice or have used it for target practice there could be unexploded munitions there so you want to stay clear of that area another area would be the patuxent naval base they have a target range out there it's it's on the charts there's a couple of yellow buoys there you can't miss it go around it don't get too close to these areas and there's a couple others on the bay too where there's a research center and then there's another pier that comes way out for uh liquid uh or gas some type of uh cargo ship loading and unloading and of course norfolk where the navy base is there's a whole line of warships there and they've got cruiser boats going up and down that so just be careful of that you know it kind of like where the navy station is and the coast guard station so when you're in these areas and even in the middle of the bay here you'll see the navy or the coast guard escorting vessels or you need to stay 100 yards away from them and 500 yards away from any navy or um coast guard ship you don't want to be visited by um gun boats that's for sure but just be aware of it be safe i know you see these things you go wow let's go get a look at this use your binoculars guys don't get too close to these 100 yards 500 yards stay safe out there there's not a lot of bridges on the bay there are some on the rivers you know like the patapsco the rappahannock i mean most of all the rivers have most of the rivers have some kind of a bridge near them you got the key bridge you got the bay bridge and especially the bay bridge here don't get too close to those bridge abutments because the water swirls around there and one time this happened to me one time i was sailing i wanted to give this other guy a wide berth fishing boat and i got a little too close to the um to the bridge abutments and man next thing i knew the boat was going like this all over man i had to jump up and work quick i thought i was going to crash into the darn thing so give that plenty of room because of the swirling water and 16 last but not least and very important too is the tug boats pulling barges and you'll see these tug boats and then way back there you'll see a barge especially for the power boaters don't think that you can cut in between that i mean i guess you could try but more than likely you're not going to make it because there's a long steel cable that's only a few feet under the water pulling that barge and let's say if you did clear the cable and you had a power failure or sail boats if you had a drop in wind these barges they can't stop on their own it's being pulled maybe six to eight knots by the tug boat the tugboat can stop but he can't stop that barge by the time he gets back there to try and stop it you could be over a mile and by that time they've run you over so just be careful out there have a lot of fun on the bay and the bay is just a lot a lot of fun there's so many nice little towns to go and visit there's numerous anchorages there's fishing there's water skiing there's paddle boarding there's kayaking you name it you can just about do it out here on the bay i think the key thing is be cautious have situation awareness know what's going on around you pre-plan watch your weather windows and have a lot of fun until next time guys happy and safe boating to you your family and friends cheers

Channel: Sailing Vagabond Epicurean

Views: 59,047

Keywords: sailing, boating, waterfront vacations, coastal cruising, adventures, beach, marina hopping, marina life, marinas, Chesapeake Bay, ICW, Atlantic Coast, Coastal Cruising, Chesapeake Bay Living, marinas Chesapeake Bay, marinas NC, marinas SC, marinasGA, sailing adventures, cruising adventures

Id: U9TfTin25Ic

Length: 29min 10sec (1750 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021