On the Way to Baltimore

Monday, September 19 - After 5 weeks in Annapolis, we are on the move again!  We left Annapolis with our Looper friends, Tom and Julie Van Hall, on Sum Escape.  It feels great to be traveling with another boat.  All the work is finally done on Tug LeeLoo (new AIS antenna, new powered WiFi antenna, and a new KVH TV3 satellite TV system) and, while we were happy to be on the move again, we thoroughly enjoyed being in Annapolis!  It is a city that we highly recommend visiting for its history, great restaurants and accessibility.  The cruise to Baltimore was nice, although we had a lot of boat traffic since it was on a weekend.

                                                         Goodbye Annapolis

                          Going Under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge - Very Impressive!

After a "short" cruise of 33 miles from Annapolis we pulled into Baltimore Marina Center - Inner Harbor and happily found floating docks once again!  We have found very few floating docks in the Chesapeake, so finding a marina with floating docks feels like a luxury!  It is so much easier to get of and on the boat when tied up to a dock that floats up and down with the tide.  

                                   Pulling Into a Floating Dock at Baltimore Marina

Baltimore is a great city to visit - it definitely has a big city feel to it.  Being docked in the Inner Harbor allowed us to walk and/or take a water taxi to the other side of the harbor where there were plenty of great restaurants, entertainment, the National Aquarium, the Science Center, and 4 historic ships that could be toured. Over the weekend, it was a hub of activity!

                                          Skyline View of Baltimore from Tug LeeLoo

                             Coast Guard Sailing Vessel "Eagle" Used for Training

Over the weekend the Coast Guard Sailing vessel Eagle was visiting Baltimore.  It was open to the public for tours.  The eagle is a steel sailing vessel; its LOA (length overall) is 297 feet.  It was built in 1939 in Germany and was used as a training vessel by the German Navy.  It was "given" to the United States as part of war reparations following WW II.  The Coast Guard they wanted the the vessel, so they dispatched a few officers and crew to Germany to bring the ship home.  The only problem is that they didn't have enough crew for such a large ship and most of them didn't know how to sail, certainly not a ship that size!  So the US crew recruited a bunch of former German navy sailors, who also didn't know how to sail, and together they brought the Eagle (the vessel's new name) back to the United States. The Eagle has a full-time crew of about 50 and it takes on an additional 100 or so "student" crew members for three-month summer cruises.

When Carey disembarked the vessel he asked a Coast Guard sailor if he was too old to join the Coast Guard.  The young lady said "Probably".  That's the same answer he got when he tried to enroll at the United States Naval Academy.  Only they said something about being overweight in addition to being too old.  Darn! 

We have exciting news to share, we completed a milestone -- 365 days on the Loop -- on September 16!  Our journey began in Racine, WI on September 16, 2015.  With luck, we will need at least another year to complete the Loop!

Tomorrow (September 20) we plan to leave Baltimore and anchor out overnight.  We haven't anchored for several weeks, so it will great to be "on the hook" overnight.  We have had a lot of rain, but the weather is supposed to be clear for the next few days.  Then we will cross the Chesapeake Bay and go up the Chester River to to explore the town of Chesterton.

More later . . .