Chesapeake Sailing Club

August 2011

SCUTTLEBUTT

Newsletter of the Chesapeake Sailing Club

Calendar at a Glance
    Aug 6 - Broad Creek
    Aug 13 - Picnic and Business Meeting
    Sep 3 - Grays Inn Creek
See the detailed Cruise Schedule

Commodore's Column
Dave Ewing, Cherette

I hope everyone is having a great summer and enjoying everything the Bay has to offer. We have had some very nice raft ups and the best is yet to come. August 6 is a trip to Broad Creek.

Our annual meeting and picnic is August 13. Beside being a nice get together it is time for elections! My term as Commodore is up at the end of this year. We vote at this meeting for a new Commodore. The Treasurer's term is also up. The nominating committee offers the following recommendations. We nominate - -
Mal Singerman as Commodore, Susan Whaley as Treasurer and Frank Cingel as Webmaster. As always, additional nominations are always welcome. Just let us know before the meeting. I'm looking forward to a great meeting and hope to see a lot of you there.

Vice Commodore's Report
Joe Powers, Aquavit

It's been a hot summer and it has interfered with some of our on-shore events. We ended up canceling last week's dinner in the West River. We hope that will be the last time that happens.

Weather should not be an issue for the August 13, picnic at the Belvedere Yacht Club. It will be held at 2 PM and the CSC will provide for the entrees, soft drinks and wine.

Within the next week we will put out a call for salads, side dishes and desserts.

The annual business meeting will be held immediately after the dinner.

Fleet Captain's Report
Dave Nance, Ariel

Our good weather fortunes continued with a cool (for July) cruise to Queenstown on July 9 & 10. Ariel, Bay GyPSy, Captain Queez, Southern Lady and Tieve Owna enjoyed a good sail to Queenstown Creek. Well, Captain Queez motored at sailing speed to the creek. Bay GyPSy provided a big cockpit for everyone to enjoy wine, lots of munchies and great company. Sunday morning the fleet anxiously awaited the return of Glenn and Skittles from a kayak tour of the headwaters of Queenstown Creek. Does anyone else see a similarity between Glenn's kayak and a nuclear submarine?

Intense summer heat and humidity kept the CSC fleet tied to their docks and power plugs for the land and water cruise to West River on July 23. We look forward to the re-scheduling of this event.

Keep hoping for a break in the hot weather for the next cruise to Broad Creek on August 6 and the annual picnic on August 13.

Cruise Report-
A Night at Queenstown Creek
Glenn Whaley, Bay GyPSy

The CSC flotilla - at least, a fair part of it - set off for the Eastern Shore over Chester River way and a very pleasant evening at anchor in Queenstown Creek last month. Saturday/Sunday, July 9-10, to be exact. And notice I said "set off for" and not "set sail for". Might be a fine distinction but it's a pretty important one when there isn't much in the way of breeze, at least not from a useful direction. Which there wasn't. But being intrepid boatfolk, we sallied forth anyway.

The 'we' involved here were Southern Lady (Frank and Liz Cingel), Ariel (Fleet Captain Dave Nance and Lois Carey), Bay GyPSy (Glenn, Susan, and Skittles Whaley), Tieve Owna (Mal and Anne Marie Singerman), and Captain Queeze (Paul and Shirley Berson). The Bersons used to sail but now have a power boat. Since all us CSC-ers be family, we love them anyway. (The Chesapeake Sailing Club is a forgiving lot, after all!)

So we all rendezvoused (is that a word?) in the north fork of Queenstown Cove, right across from little Saltworks Cove. Some rafted up, others anchored solo. It was warm but pleasant, with uncharacteristically low humidity for July. Seventeen hundred hours found us rallying onboard Bay GyPSy for happy hour. A great time was had by all. [Editor's note to self: The CSC host boat provides wine for overnight anchorings-out. It's BYOW for the long (Spring and Fall) cruises.]

After a very nice evening and very comfortable night, we all took our sweet time relaxing the next morning. It was just that kind of laid-back, lazy day. Glenn and Skittles went kayaking and explored the far reaches of Ditcher's Cove, the long-ish northern part of Queenstown Creek (this time without incident ☺). Lots of beautiful scenery and virtually no civilization up there, they found. Unless you count the high tension lines that cross the cove at one point. But, hey, nowhere's perfect. As a kayaking heaven, though, Ditcher's Cove came pretty close.

Finally, we all eventually weighed anchor and left. It was really more of a mosey or maybe a sashay (can boats do that?) than it was a sortie. Anyway, thus endeth a little slice of heaven. After an incredibly leisurely morning, we were all enroute home - Rock Hall for some, the Magothy for others. It was a totally swell weekend. Can't wait for the next one!

Member's Corner-
The Second Battle of Battle Creek
Or How to Ground a Kayak
Glenn Whaley, Bay GyPSy

Battle Creek, a tributary of the Patuxent River, is a wonderful place. It has beauty. It has history. It has lots and lots of marsh grass, if you go far enough up. And it reputedly has the northern most stand of mangroves in the continental U.S. (also if you go far enough up). More about going up the creek in a minute. Anyway, there's enough right there to recommend it as a primo Chesapeake Sailing Club cruising site. It was all of that and more as the intrepid flotilla of the CSC reached the halfway point of the annual Spring Cruise at a grand anchorage near the mouth of Battle Creek. And, as it turned out, our favorite sailing club ended up even adding to the aura of the place as protagonists in the Second Battle of Battle Creek. Well, at least two of its members did. That would be Glenn and Skittles of Bay GyPSy.

First, a note of history. What gives Battle Creek its fame? It's certainly not for making breakfast cereal. That's the other Battle Creek, the one up Michigan way. Hard to sail there, being as it is landlocked and all. No, this one got its name as it was reputedly the place from which the British staged their attack on Washington, D.C., in the War of 1812. But that's ancient history. There's a much more recent engagement worth the telling. And this is the tale. . .

It was a grand morning on the creek in early June. The flotilla of cruisers had passed a quiet evening with just a touch of gusty wind and a spray of rain showers that were gone by the time the morning was fairly launched. 'Twas a grand morning for exploring a creek. So that's what Glenn and Skittles set out to do. Embarked in his new inflatable kayak, a present from First Mate Susan, Glenn and Skittles intended to seriously put the kayak through her paces by exploring the headwaters of Battle Creek, MD. Yessiree, they be explorers! Never saw a mangrove tree in Maryland before. Gonna go get a picture of one of those, they were.

So off they paddled. Well, 'they' is sort of relative since Glenn did most of the paddling. But Skittles did keep a sharp lookout. She was particularly interested in various patches of dry beach and grass that they passed. Glenn wasn't, which almost caused a mutiny. A compromise was reached early in the expedition when an old, low pier provided an easy way to get to (a) explore something neat (Glenn liked that) and (b) fertilize some grass (Skittles' whole objective, as it turned out - who knew?).

Lots more paddling. Battle Creek is actually a lot longer than it looks on a chart - at least if you're in a wind-challenged kayak. Most of the flotilla probably noted that there was a very light, very pleasant breeze that morning. They were right, of course, but then they weren't paddling an inflatable kayak. Those who were, though, had a different perspective. One that played a key part in the battle that followed.

After traversing a good bit of the scenic shoreline, the vegetation turned to marsh grass and ducks and turtles, and the creek turned into a meandering rivulet that was pretty wide but also pretty shallow. Like one or two feet shallow. But, hey, inflatable kayaks fully loaded (180 pound paddler, 15 pound lookout, and maybe ten pounds of boat) still only drew six inches. Plenty of water!

The waterway got narrower and narrower, and then widened out again right at the end. They had reached the headwaters of the great Battle Creek! Well, almost. There was this one really neat looking patch of open water off to the port side with what looked like mangroves at the far end. You gotta see that up close if you get the chance! So that's what they set out to do, in a very gingerly way on account of because the water was getting thinner and thinner.

And that's when the battle began. You have to imagine the scene here to catch the full significance, to feel the intensity, to capture the pure energy of what followed: On one side, a man and his dog and his inflatable, high-sail-area kayak. On the other side, upper Battle Creek with its more or less adequate (and now getting disturbingly less adequate) water depth, wide open space for wind to play on, and just about now one of those gusts that hadn't happened for at least a couple hours. And, as it happened of course, it was an on-shore gust. That would be toward shallow water. Really shallow water!

Recognizing that this was very ungood, Glenn tried backpaddling as fast as he could to not go toward the far shore which was many long, very shallow yards away. At which he failed. Miserably. First, the kayak plowed heavily into what they thought was marshy muck. Now, you can live with muck. It's much harder, though, to live with the first mangrove knee you've met personally when it pops up right under your bum in your inflatable kayak. The creek had obviously won the first skirmish.

When things look bleak, it's best to let things settle before undertaking drastic action. In this case, that was easy as there wasn't a whole lot in the way of drastic action available to take. Blessedly, the gust died down and didn't return. Not that it could have blown the poor kayak any further aground than it did. I mean, when you're hard aground, degrees of aground-ness can seem pretty relative. But still, no more wind was at least some consolation. So, too, was the fact that the mangrove knee was only tickling tushes - there was no disquieting sound of hissing air. Under the circumstances, that was a very good thing.

Okay, so there they are several yards from any kind of solid land, hard aground (how embarrassing for kayakers everywhere!), and with precious few options. Well, can they paddle their way free? Seems obvious - but only to those who haven't tried to paddle in about four inches of water. And did I mention that the muck was very, very slimy? Paddling didn't do diddly, except to throw lots of evil smelling goo all over the kayaker, the dog, and the kayak. Hmmm. And walking to shore wasn't going to happen, either, as the goo was also very, very deep. Glenn was never sure how deep; only that his paddle wasn't long enough to find out. Well, what about a helpful cellphone call? Nice thought. But cell phones are only helpful if there is signal. Nope, none of that going on way up here. That would require civilization, which there also wasn't so much of. So they sat for awhile and thought.

Being as all that thinking wasn't producing much, they eventually tried something else. With some careful effort (working hard to avoid that dreaded hissing sound, you know), they managed to work their way off the sunken knee. Then, by shifting weight from side to side and sticking the paddle way down into the muck and pushing - but only a little, or any forward progress was lost (ask Glenn how he knows this) - they began to make a little progress. The wind gust didn't return, either. So, second skirmish to the kayakers.

After a goodly amount of effort, they finally got back into safe, deep water. Well, okay, so it was only eight inches. But that seemed wonderful to them at the time. Then off they went to some seriously deeper, cleaner water to try to remove the layers of goo. It mostly worked, too, as they only had a thin veneer by the time they got back to the home fleet. And with their return, the Second Battle of Battle Creek was finally over.

So who would you say won?

Webmaster and Editor
Frank Cingel

top