RAFT-UPS - 2004

Nightingale raced over in the Annapolis to Miles River race, loaded up the boat with cruising gear at the Miles River Yacht Club and motored up the Wye River to check out the originally-planned rendezvous point just past Drum Point on the main Wye. Upon counting over 40 boats in many rafts with more arriving, and no Bayfarers, we kept on going to Quarter Creek. We had a prime spot by ourselves in Quarter Creek. Augie loves the beach here. Saturday night was very clear for the best view we've ever had of the International Space Station which speeded across the entire sky, west to east from about 9:30 to 9:40 at an amazing magnitude -0.6! Unfortunately the visability wasn't quite good enough for 15 power binocs to pick up Comet Neat. Andy, Joyce, and Elaine hosted the wine & cheese party. A new feature was Bill & Sue's cheese fondue - funny thing - no one needed dinner afterwards.

The Sail or Drive attracted as many drivers as sailors, but it worked out well. Nightingale and Wind Rose anchored off of Cantlers where Val & Jane and Hal & Maggie met them for a great dinner on the deck. The other Maggie and Murphy were quite put out at not being included in the dinner. After moving the boats to a more secure anchorage farther up the creek, the evening was capped by a dominos marathon - no clear winner emerged, but definitely a fun night. No fog this year going home, but we didn't miss it at all.

It's been a tough cruis'n year for the Bayfarers. We squeezed the mini-cruise in between the many Hurricanes this year. There was Charlie, Francis, and then we were doused by Gaston and Hermine just before the mini-cruise, followed by a drenching by the reminants of Ivan a bit later. - And probably more to come - Karl is on the way.

There were also many underwater attacks against Bayfarer boats - entirely too many to be a coincidence! Should we be reporting this to the Office of Homeland Security? First, Nightingale Schneider had her rudder torn off by an unknown object on the way out to a Wednesday Night race. Then, Catnip Stefancik had prop damage and spent a week or two in Solomons being repaired. Next, Wind Rose Lawrence suffered an underwater assault close to home which will require major rudder repair and a new prop shaft. Not to mention that Freeflight Taliaferro suffered a massive attack on her bottom by numerous sea creatures including some monster barnacles!

Anyway, Nightingale started the minicruise in the Hurricane hole in Harness Creek which was a great place to ride out the that windy night. There were some very demanding mallards here, who insisted on being fed - although I haven't seen as many mallards as usually elsewhere. Freeflight joined us and we had a nice sail across the Bay through Knapps Narrows, except for the cloud of Musca domestica (house flies) that joined us just past the mouth of the South River and decided to stay with us. We spent several days in an unnamed cove up Harris Creek - nice spot - nice weather - nice swimming - nice everything, not even any of those early morning crabby people. We then moved to the Town Creek anchorage and treked around Oxford. Had a great meal at the the Latitude 38 restaurant a short walk out of town and they gave us a ride back to our dinghy. Next, off to Leadenham Creek, but our original destination, Baby Owl Cove, looked like it had a recent invasion of the McMansion plague. It could have been worse, but we found a nicer small cove further up the creek (at the 7 foot spot, although there actually was more water than that there) that was really very nice and secluded. Catnip joined us there for a fun, relaxed, Labor Day weekend where we did as little as possible and enjoyed the great weather. Catnip and Nightingale headed back to the Magothy Monday while Freeflight stayed out for another week.

Nightingale caught back up with Freeflight in Shaw Bay on the Wye (wye knot!) on Friday afternoon and spend the night in Shaw Bay (why is that tree lit up all night long on the peninsula?). Shaw Bay began to fill up the next morning and One with the Wind arrived just at the beginning of the 2nd annual Oyster Boys/Janie Meneely concert. Jeff Holland, Kevin Brooks and Janie were singing from the top of a work boat, surrounded by their fans. They publicly complemented Nightingale for flying a Maritime Republic of Eastport burgee. After the great music, when things had calmed down, we pigged out on hors d-oeuvres and later watched a Schneider Austrian ski trip video, followed by dominoes. It was a great clear night - no planets, but we had a spectacular -0.5 magnitude International Space Station crossing. Nightingale had to split for home the next morning, while the others stayed out for more cruising.

Freeflight sailed all the way to the Hurricane Hole a day early in order to hold us a prime spot in the center of the Hole. When Nightingale arrived about 10pm Friday night, following a strenuous trip on a dark and overcast (thankfully not stormy, though) night down the Bay dodging thousands of crab pots, all of which seemed to be intent on sneaking up on Nightingale's prop, everyone anchored in the Hole seemed to retired early, so Nightingale dropped its own hook in a shallow corner to spend the night. The next morning, there was a thick fog which cut down on the number of our attendees, but One with the Wind and Wind Rose sailed through it to participate in the Halloween festivities. Augie really enjoyed the visit through the woods to the Quiet Waters annual Howl-o-ween Bark'n Bash where he sniffed more dog butt that ever before. Not to mention the free dog snacks (which he later shared with Maggie and Murphy on Wind Rose). Chris Emersen provided the culinary hit of the afternoon, her pumpkin soup, that has become a Bayfarer Halloween tradition, followed by the usual more-than-adequate hors d-oeuvres on One With the Wind. This year, the pumpkins for the carving contest were very small in order to make room for everyone to participate and judge them. They were really so small that it was almost absurd to try carving them so, since we hadn't had a Day of Adsurdity contest yet, we agree that this would also be the Annual Day of Adsurdity contest. The carvers turned out some fine examples, all unique in their own way making the judging very difficult. We had two parts, in daylight, and later after it turned dark, lit with a candle inside. Val Taliaferro's entry, won the daylight part, after a second vote resolving several ties. The lit contest was won by Bill Schneider's representation of Augie, who posed for his carving on the pumpkin. Therefore, Val and Augie's names will now be inscribed on the perpetual trophy (see at the bottom of this page). What? A dog winning the Day of Adsurdity? That's adsurd! A Seafarer 31 poked its nose in the Hole and looked about for a bit, but didn't come close enough for us to tell them about our Seafarer origins. All-in-all, Just another great Halloween raftup.

A cold front zeroed in and disuaded those of use who had planned to head across the Bay on Friday (fair skies but winds gusting to 40 knots!). Not-quite-so strong winds from the southwest shortened our trips across on Saturday morning. By the time we got to Dividing Creek, the winds had increased a bit and were driving whitecaps up the creek. However, Dennis found a protected spot in the first cove to port where Rick & Chris rafted up to him and Bill & Sue put their hook in separately for Val & Jane to raft up (in case the winds backed around to zap us). Since Dennis was planning on leaving early in the morning, when Rick arrived - Rick lowered his anchor after rafting up with Dennis. Dennis then raised his anchor creating an interesting problem. When Dennis' anchor broke the surface, we noticed it had hooked a chain! - He was pulling Rick's chain, so to speak! Since no one really wanted to clean and fry up Dennis's first catch of the day, they unhooked the chain (with a bit of difficulty). We first all got together for a great walk with the canines across the island (Augie even enjoyed a short walk through the chilly waters on the far side). The leaves were crunchy underfoot and we spotted a nice flock of cedar waxwings near the camping area. On returning to the boats, we left our hooks in but let the rodes out and reversed toward each other, rafting up bow to stern - Wind Rose to Free Flight. We certainly got some strange stares from passing boats trying to figure out what we were doing. Hot spiced wine was the order of the day. We partied hard - and had the usual fine time. Bill brought his banjo along but thoughtfully spared everyone a demonstration of his talents on it. WAMU's Hot Jazz Saturday Night provided spirited background music for the continued party in the evening. The stars were fantastically clear, the winds having blown out all the smog and the next day was bright, and clear, furnishing a great breeze to sail home. Since Suzie had to go on travel and couldn't make the raftup, Dennis probably had a workout lowering his sails, but Maggie and Murphy were there to help ("Murphy, fetch that line").

RAFT-UPS - 2005

The Sail or Drive was fun. Nightingale managed to find Chris & Dave O'Neil (& Bequi, who wagged her tail at us all) where they anchored in the Deep Creek cove, with Jerry & Roanna, without even turning on the GPS (it was at least a 5 minute trip from the dock). Tim & Sandy Lynch and Val & Jane joined us at the Deep Creek Restaurant where we throughly pigged out on some fine food and later we 6 R'ed (returned from the restaurant to the raftup for refreshments, relaxing, and reminiscing) We traded island stories with some great input from Jerry & Roanna and Chris & Dave derived from their cruising experiences.

It was not a dark and stormy night. In fact, in contrast to the scorchers of weeks we have had up to now, Saturday and Sunday had great weather. The temperatures were perfect, no rain, good wind, and very comfortable evening for sleeping. After a mess of emails, we decided on West River at the last minute. Dennis and Suzi promised they would be able to find it (they keep their boat there). Those of us sailing down the bay had a great sail and the current was ripping behind us - Nightingale was wing on wing most of the way while Rick tried his new spinnaker rig. We understand he is not as enamored of the dousing sleeve as before since his evidently didn't work. To get some shelter from the northerly, we anchored in South Creek but the drawback was that occasional power boats evidently were too illiterate to be able to read the 6mph buoys and we were bounced a bit. But the great weather made it worth it. There was a good turnout - Wind Rose, One With the Wind, Tidewater Tales, Catnip, and Nightingale. We snacked heavily while exchanging stories and later played Dominoes outside in the evening under the stars. It was one of the best evenings outside ever since the temperatures were perfect and, even though we had a electric light on the dominoes table in the open cockpit, there were no bugs at all!

The original plans were that the Taliferros would meet the Schneiders in St Georges Creek (off St Mary's River on the Potomac) after Nightingale completed the Governor's Cup race Friday night Aug 5th (Annapolis to St Mary's City). However, Nightingale was hit by lighting in the Gov Cup race. Actually we got 3 charges that night. Geoff got a shock off the wheel. A bit later Karl got really zapped from the forestay when a bolt hit the water near us. Then a bolt hit the top of the mast and sparks flew everywhere, - the red hot radio antenna landed in the cockpit between two crew, but no one was hurt. We decided to head back home at that point.
After we got back in about 3:30am Saturday morning after being hit, we did a quick assessment Sunday morning and found the major damage was only to the electronics so Sue & I left for Smith Creek Sunday morning to catch up with the Taliferro's. Since Val was having a bit of problem with his engine (it seems to be fixed now), we decided to not go so far as originally planned and to take it easy instead. We had lots of fun doing as little as possible - the most significant problem was that I almost ran out of books to read but we had great weather, not even any hurricanes. It was a bit hot at times, but we ducked in between the nettles. We did St Georges Creek - a very nice anchorage, then went up to Solomon's to anchor offshore of the Maritime Museum to listen to the Crosby Stills & Nash concert. Stills, when he passed by us in a large power boat with the rest of the performers crossing the creek on the way to the concert, called out, "Is that a Nightwind? A great boat!" We then messed around the Little Choptank - all the creeks at the end near Cambridge seem to now be loaded with McMansions - not worth going up that way again. However, we found a neat cove up Hudson Creek complete with eagles and some marshland. It was good protection from the storm that blew through (and cooled things off nicely). Friday evening we checked out Slaughter Creek since we hadn't been there for awhile. The Coast Guard is gone! The large houseboat they used to live in is now a very nice restaurant. Great food and inexpensive too. We dinghyed down to explore the vast marshlands and convoluted stream south of the Slaughter Creek bridge that makes Taylor Island into an Island. Well worth the trip.