Hi Everyone,
I hope this finds you all well and warm. You are receiving this because you have been on my Sailing with Friends mailing list (or you recently subscribed). I have moved to Substack for my blog/newsletters and this is the first one for 2025. We are going into the third year for some of you, if you have had enough it is very easy to unsubscribe. We will miss you but I understand. Welcome.
It’s been a cold few weeks and not too conducive to sailing. ESCAPE is all winterized until mid to late February. I was just down checking on things and all is well but it’s a sad scene. Snow and ice, the bay is frozen and the tide is so low, ESCAPE is sitting on the bottom!
I went down on the sugar scoop and stepped on the ice to see how thick it was but couldn’t really tell. It was mushy and broke through so I’m hoping there is no damage being done to the hull, I think we’re safe.
Our Last Sail of ‘24
We moved ESCAPE at the end of October from Port Annapolis Marina to Anchor Yacht Basin just off of South River in Selby Bay. The crew, Eric, Maureen and Capt. Dave made it a fun and easy trip.
We left Port Annapolis Marina about 1400 with light winds out of the NNW which gave us a nice course on a port tack out of Back Creek across the ship channel far enough out to allow us to jibe and get a starboard tack back around the Thomas Shoal Lighthouse and at the mouth of the South River.
We made it to our new marina in time to have a little daylight for docking and time for cocktails watching a beautiful sunset on Selby Bay and Turkey Point Island. We had worked up an appetite and headed to NOVA Sushi in Edgewater (2 doors down from West Marine). I highly recommend if you are in the neighborhood. It’s wonderful.
Sailing into 2025
I know we’re not out of the woods yet but it looks the temperatures are going to be a bit warmer over the next 2 weeks and hopefully beyond. We have quite a few projects to get done before our charter season starts up in April. I hope we can do more Sailing with Friends outings this year. We did more last year than the year before so we’ll try to keep the trend moving in the same direction this year. Our SWF list has also grown so I hope to see a few more folks on our SWF trips.
Around March 1 we will be moving ESCAPE to Hartge Yacht Harbor on West River. It is just south of Edgewater in Galesville, MD close to Stan and Joes. It’s about a 15 minute drive from Annapolis. From the WDC area, it is about the same as driving to Annapolis, just a different exit on the beltway. Really nice folks and I’m looking forward to our new home.
Also for 2025 I am using Substack for my primary communications tool, or at least that is the plan. I will still maintain the website (www.sail-escape.com) and keep it current. Given my limited communications budget ($0) and the ease of setting up on Substack, I believe it will be a good tool. For all of you that have signed up on the website, I will automatically sign you up here. You can easily unsubscribe at anytime.
I am really looking forward to getting ESCAPE out on the water and doing some sailing with you. Stay warm and safe and hopefully we will see you soon.
Thanks for your support.
Cap’n Wayne