Bay Sailor: Day 4 Chesapeake Beach to Wicomico

We had a sad start to the day as The Steve had to be put ashore today to return back to Vienna life.

On the plus side, we had the first woman on the boat during the Spring trip. Although she was only aboard briefly, she was a natural fit for the princess chair.

What a great decision to ease up and just go cruising rather than pushing for DC. We went out today and just sailed around without worrying too much about our destination. Short handed now, we enlisted the ship computer to do some of the work but Fast Steve still had the demanding task of pushing the button several times to sail us across the river.

After a while the wind totally died. It was weird to see the Potomac this still. We did not care much though because every time the wind died, we fished, and when we got a breeze, we sailed. New Steve was able to sail the boat against a 1 knot current for 1/2 and hour such that we were standing still relative to the ground. We bottom fished while sailing. Caught a few small croaker. Then Fast Steve showed us some racing techniques where he was able to create apparent wind using current and then sail the apparent wind. We sailed past Cobb island with no wind blowing at all.

We decided to stay on the Wicomico river across the Potomac and down a bit from Colonial Beach. About 3 miles up the river there is a bend where there is a popular wharf and a store next to it that provides supplies and serves breakfast. We anchored out and while new Steve was cooking dinner, I caught a nice sized catfish. I then started telling Fast Steve about various bottom fishing techniques. He said he preferred cast and reel fishing which I informed him did not work on catfish which as we all know are bottom feeders. No one told the catfish. He caught a monster catfish easily 3-4 times the size of mine on his second cast.

Every try to clean a catfish? Turns out even with instructions from the internet it is ridiculously hard - yes new Steve actually had printed instructions from the internet with him. Using knifes, a hammer, pliers, gin, and a variety of gruesome techniques Fast Stever was able to clean both fish with occasional help in just under an hour.