Sailing Justice: Patuxent to Hooper Straight on Eastern Shore

We sailed to the eastern shore to see the sailing and navigation challenges we have heard of, and to see some of the 39 bay vanishing islands before they are gone. Erosion from storms and waves, climate change are causing shorelines to erode away and retreat. I will mention some island information from the wonderful book "The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake" by William Cronin 2005.

The 7.9 changed to 8.0 in knot speed under main and spinnaker. Good for 30,000 pound Justice! (in True wind 18 knots. Water temperature 68.63 in 21.2 feet of water.)

Flock of Pelicans and passing fish traps to port

We sailed between the 63' tall Hooper Island Light (location west of Hoopersville on chart below) and the fish traps (not on chart).

By eastern shore of MD, we mean Dorchester and Somerset counties, southwest of Delaware border.

Here see Upper, Middle and Lower Hooper Islands, connected by bridges. Honga River is on the inside.

Middle Hooper still has dwellings and people living and working there,

left photo

Right photo with overlap

Lower Hooper's dwellings and farms are gone now:

The first opportunity to get in with our 6.5 draft, is below Lower Hooper Island through the Hooper Straight. We continued east. With Bishops Head to the north and Bloodsworth Island to the south, It goes SE then NE. The channel buoys were findable but I wouldn't want to find them for the first time in low visibility or at night. During the day, sometimes you need binoculars to see the next mark.

I could spend all day counting "Danger areas" on the bay. See the one to the right of Bloodsworth Isl. -

property of US Navy, in 2005, was still used for bombing and ordnance testing and training navy Seal teams.

Hooper Straight 41' tall marker, hard to see in haze from afar with it's skinny legs, but we did not need it before we could see it:

I am still trying to find out what these wooden cross structures on Bloodsworth Island are.

The "Straight" is not very straight. Above is "heading up" orientation.

Wide enough for barges and tugs to get through, but i wouldn't want to pass one in the narrow parts to the channel. We saw one coming out before we "went in".

Once through the straight, we headed south toward Deal Island, which would lead to Crisfield about 12 miles south. We examined the vastness of these open spaces between low-lying islands that don't provide wind protection. Most of the bottom outside of the channels is very shallow. Only little slivers of 10 - 7 feet anchorable areas exist. So now that we have an updated weather report, we are safe in most places tonight, but it's nice to find one out of the way of ships.

We decided Crisfield and Onancock would take at least a day down and a day back to the Hoopers, and headed back north to go up the Wicomico River ( not to be confused with the Wicomico off the Potomac River or the Great Wicomico River south of the Potomac River).

Part way up, around the Great Shoals Bell (below), we turned to port into the wind, and had to adjust our mainsail and furl in both headsails. Dave was steering and decided to help me furl in the jib and staysail. It was blowing 15 knots or so, so it was still hard to do. The both sheets got loose in the flogging of the jib, then Dave had to direct his attn back to keeping on course through the narrow channel. I was reminded to get "the knot" at the end and pull it from there, the only safe way to pull it into the boat before it gets caught in the propeller, AND not get hurt. I wanted to pull from the upwind block, between blocks, but that wasn't working. Though the knot stopped at the block was out of reach, I eventually listened, grabbed it and we got them in. We then put knots farther from the end. It was not necessary to have the knot at the very end.

We do use autopilot a lot of the time, but just didn't have it on at that momento.